Black Naturalism and Toni Morrison: the Journey Away from Self-Love in the Bluest Eye

Race often plays an important role in how an individual is viewed based on societal standards and quality of life. A vast majority of the characters in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye attribute the difficulties they face and the outcome of their lives to being African American in an era when people with dark pigmentations of skin were viewed as second class citizens. Morrison’s novel focuses on the different spectives of African Americans, both male and female, who differ in the standard by which they live their lives based on their experiences with racism following the depression era of the twentieth century. The issue of race and class is essential in understanding the mindset and actions of characters such as those in The Bluest Eye, the lengths the characters were willing to go to in order to conform to society, and how consequential decisions they made in order to endure and to survive had a lasting impact on the quality of their lives. Race and class defined how characters throughout the novel dealt with elements such as beauty, self awareness, ethnic identity, morality and the idea of society’s opinions.

Toni Morrison, the author of The Bluest Eye, centers her novel around two things: beauty and wealth in their relation to race and a brutal rape of a young girl by her father. Morrison explores and exposes these themes in relation to the underlying factors of black society: racism and sexism. Every character has a problem to deal with and it involves racism and/or sexism. Whether the characters are the victim or the aggressor, they can do nothing about their problem or condition, especially when concerning gender and race. Morrison's characters are clearly at the mercy of preconceived notions maintained by society. Because of these preconceived notions, the racism found in The Bluest Eye is not whites against blacks. Morrison writes about

With one pivotal phrase, Toni Morrison creates an essential schematic for understanding the rest of her novel, Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination. She captures the essence of a central issue within American literature when she coins the phrase, “sycophancy of the white identity” (Morrison 19). Through this meticulous selection of words, she conveys the idea that the white identity is a parasite. It bases itself on, often at the expense of, the Africanist identity. The white identity derives its power, freedom, and autonomy from the imagined African identity’s lack of these concepts. Morrison argues that one’s sense of identity requires an other opposite identity off of which one can feed and ultimately reject.

According to Frederick Douglass, “it was the blood-stained gate, the entrance to the hell of slavery, through which I was about to pass. It was a most terrible spectacle. I wish I could commit to paper the feelings with which I beheld it (p.4).” Frederick Douglass and Toni Morrison literatures examine the stigma of slavery, and the perceptions of its dangers. They illustrate what life was like and the mental as well social impact it had on enslaved African-Americans and their life after gaining freedom. Richard Wright convinces his audience in Black Boy that he was tired of the limitations and outcries in the South “I was not leaving the South to forget the South, but so that some day I might understand it, might come to know what its rigors had done to me, its children (284).” Alice Walker obtains her readers attention by transforming young women into their own characters with a voice using spiritual guidance. In Native Son, Bigger has achieved is lost after being apprehended and brought into captivity, as he transitions back into silence and passivity and begins to recover only in his final confrontation, whereas Douglass in the same prevailing convention, only heals after the regaining of his freedom. Through these literatures, and many others, African-Americans find multiple ways to alleviate and recover from the intensity of undesired bondage and bigotry.

Toni Morrison is America’s most prominent contemporary authors, that published her first breathtaking novel “The Bluest Eye” in 1970’s, right after the peak of the African-American movement in the late 1960’s. The mass popular movement was indeed a poignant reminder of the passing of time. As the novel has gained increasing attention from literary critics around the world, it has set the very definition of black standard beauty and its conformity to white standards. Morrison gives the audience an insight of how Pecola Breedlove, a passive and impressionable 11- year old, views her own standard of beauty amongst the cruelty of the white society. For Pecola, there are two things in this world; beauty and ugliness. Beauty is varied through different

Although written decades apart, Jacqueline Woodson’s Another Brooklyn and Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye both explore the trials and tribulations that young black girls must endure as they begin to step into womanhood. While the burdens that the protagonists in each of these texts differ in some key ways, one of the most interesting things that both Woodson and Morrison depicted was a sense of difficulty in coping with these changes, and rather than having any semblance of mastery over their circumstances, these young protagonists would instead project their emotions onto something else as they try to discover what causes their suffering.

Racist ideology is institutionalized when how people’s interactions reflects on an understanding that they share the same beliefs. However, in The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, the topic of racism is approached in a very unique way. The characters within the novel are subjected to internalizing a set of beliefs that are extremely fragmented. In accepting white standards of beauty, the community compromises their children’s upbringing, their economic means, and social standings. Proving furthermore that the novel has more to do with these factors than actual ethnicity at all.

One way she covers this is by highlighting Morrison’s disregard for censorship in her work. By presenting us with the raw truth, Morrison’s novel becomes all the more compelling. The author wants us to be condemned by her work; she inspires us to think deeper on its roots. Morrison accepts black history for what it is and therefore can use her work to express her opinion and take a stand for her beliefs. This article shows us the power of censorship and the strides we could potentially make if we were to cast it aside when dealing with things like

In the novel, “The Bluest Eye,” by Toni Morrison the unorthodox structure and undermining content inspired and continues to inspire controversy. Morrison’s creative narrative approach addresses many issues of racism and identity. Through the course of the novel some vulgar subjects are also introduced, such as incest and pedophilia. In the book the point of view founded by the characters following their upsetting lives helps portray the theme of battling internal conflicts formed through extended metaphors and horrible societal circumstances.

The middle class black society and the lower class black society, for example, are quite different from each other and are constantly conflicting. In The Bluest Eye, Morrison distinguishes these divisions and their tensions through characters like Geraldine, Junior, and Maureen Peal, who represent the privileged division of black culture. On the contrary, the less privileged division is represented by the MacTeer family and the “relentlessly and aggressively ugly” Breedlove family (The Bluest Eye 38). Tension between the divided African American society is clearly represented by such characterizations throughout Morrison’s novel.

I have made mistakes along the way, but I remained true to my vision.” (Joseph, 279) African-American literature displays the struggle of identity for African-American people and why identity is important. The journey of identity is harder for African-American people because of the obstacles that are put in front of them by people in power. So the journey to self-discovery is that much more important in African American literature. An example of this is in Their Eyes WEre Watching God when Jamie finally finds peace with herself.

African-American author Toni Morrison, in her novel, Beloved, explores the experience and roles of black men and women in a racist society. She describes the black culture which is born out of a period of slavery just after the Civil War. In her novel she intends to show the reality of what happened to the slaves in the institutionalized slave system. In Beloved, the slaves working on the Sweet Home experiences brutality, violence, torture and are treated like animals. Morrison shows us what it means to live like a slave as she sheds light on the painful past of African-Americans and reveals the buried experiences for better understanding of African-American history. In the story of Beloved, special importance is given to the horrors and tortures of slavery to remind the readers about the American past. Morrison reinvents the past because she does not want the readers to forget what happened in African-American history.

Russell M. Nelson once said, “We were born to die and we die to live.” Toni Morrison correlates to Nelson’s quote in her Nobel Lecture of 1993, “We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.” In Toni Morrison’s novel, The Bluest Eye, she uses language to examine the concepts of racism, lack of self-identity, gender roles, and socioeconomic hardships as they factor into a misinterpretation of the American Dream. Morrison illustrates problems that these issues provoke through the struggles of an African American community during the1940s. Through the characters’ challenges of being accepted by society, the reader can blatantly see corruption not only in America, but also throughout the entire world. Morrison uniquely applies multiple points of view to tell the story of a young black girl who desires blue eyes in order to be socially “beautiful”. The reason the book is so effective is that Morrison bases the themes on personal experiences. By the end of the novel, we do not directly gain a sense of hope, change and progress for the future, but instead raises awareness of racism, sexism and self-identity. To convey the importance of personal experiences vis á vis social issues, Morrison parallels crucial times in history to the novel. The author demonstrates how history affects her characters and how the characters’ lives in microcosm represent what was occurring globally at the time. The Bluest Eye offers the possibility for

Throughout Toni Morrison's novel The Bluest Eye, she captures, with vivid insight, the plight of a young African American girl and what she would be subjected to in a media contrived society that places its ideal of beauty on the e quintessential blue-eyed, blonde woman. The idea of what is beautiful has been stereotyped in the mass media since the beginning and creates a mental and emotional damage to self and soul. This oppression to the soul creates a socio-economic displacement causing a cycle of dysfunction and abuses. Morrison takes us through the agonizing story of just such a young girl, Pecola Breedlove, and her aching desire to have what is considered beautiful - blue eyes. Racial stereotypes of beauty contrived and nourished by

In the novel Beloved, Toni Morrison develops character Beloved as an allegorical figure to embody slavery’s horrific past and the lasting impact that unresolved past trauma has upon the present. Morrison develops the character Beloved to represent all the unremembered and untold stories of slavery and to further the message that we must maintain a collective memory of slavery in order to pursue a hopeful future. Morrison develops Beloved as a character through her interactions with other characters in the novel and they way in which they interact with their past trauma. In Lina Krumholz’s The Ghosts of Slavery: Historical Recovery in Toni Morrison’s Beloved, she comments on Morrison’s construction of a parallel between individual and community memories and the nature of history making as a healing process. Krumholz’s argues that the individual memories of the characters of the novel function as collective memories as well, just as slavery does in our history. It is both deeply personal while being a collective experience, the importance of community and of confrontation of the past therefore presents itself as the theme that Morrison hopes to further. Morrison therefore forms the tragedy of slavery into something that can be manageably remembered and able to handle, while also setting the tone for an optimistic future in the face of this rememory.