Exploring Toni Morrison`s 'The Bluest Eye' - Essay Example

Exploring Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye creates practical and thematic components that continue to be integral in her subsequent works. The story vividly examines a black neighborhood in the 1940s, and illustrates that the episodes there stem from broader social forces of poverty and racial discrimination. This paper explores the novel’s major scenes, title, characters, themes, prologue and afterword, symbolism, and conflict. The title The Bluest Eye has a vibrant meaning to the novel.

The Black girl, Pecola Breedlove, does not like her physical look and, hence, desired to be beautiful. Beauty for Pecola is fair-skinned and blue eyes. This makes her dissatisfied of her own appearance. Hence, eyes are repeatedly brought up all through the story to highlight the thought that these ideas are constantly on the consciousness of Pecola. The Bluest Eye creates two major characters, Claudia and Pecola. The grownup Claudia narrates an important moment in her, her sister Frieda, and Pecola’s lives.

In majority of the novel, the audience witnesses these three characters and reacts to Claudia’s interpretation of them. The entire story focuses on the formation and ruin of Pecola’s character. In several major scenes, audiences only observe the novel’s characters. Nevertheless, in general, the all-seeing storyteller goes over most of the historical background of each character in a straightforward manner, and often shows their impetus to sustain the audience’s consideration or appreciation.

The minor characters are varieties, designed to embody particular attributes or reactions but not to stir up the powerful sentiment or complicated knowledge that emanates from more inclusive characterization. Their significance rests in their relationship with Pecola. This relationship is simply dispassionate. The story’s prostitutes, namely, Marie, Poland, and China, keep Pecola amused with tales, and she consequently admires them. The storyteller differentiates these prostitutes from social and literary expectations of a ‘whore’ with compassionate spirits or willing preys.

The novel explores the forcefully vicious impacts of established racism on the Black community and its individual members. Individual racism is expressed in harsh, unfair treatments by people. Established racism, in contrast, can be involuntarily continued by individuals who merely have not dwelled on racial matters, or individuals who cannot go beyond their training or experience. Personal racism is expressed in the novel when Mr. Jacobowski, the salesperson, avoided any physical contact with Pecola because of her racial affinity.

Established racism is shown in the act of omitting African Americans from required American schoolbooks until the 1970s, and, of course, the Black people’s enslavement. Toni Morrison significantly contributed to contemporary American awareness by illustrating in the novel the negative psychological consequence of established racism. Established racism, reinforced by individual racism, grinds down the sense of worth of every character as they try to make sense of the mainstream culture’s image of them as irrelevant, second rate, and unattractive.

The parents of Pecola viewed themselves negatively, and hence lacked the ability to be good parents. The novel illustrates how established racism penetrates and ruins the psychological well-being of Black people. Perhaps, the most difficult section of the story is the Prologue and Afterword. Morrison looks like she is trying to contrast mainstream images of supposed customary family structure and dynamics with other household units that are not admirable. In addition, Morrison changes the plot at times.

Hence although several episodes show mainly Claudia recounting, others have fashionable aspects such as Pauline narrating her experiences. In the Afterword, the author reveals she tried to prevent polluting the African American community or Pecola herself, and this the reason she decided to apply diverse points of view in the story. Hence, instead of disappointing the audience, she tried to persuade them to think about these changes in point of view to make the whole experience more fascinating and psychologically engaging.

Several of Morrison’s major symbols are plain items, and she depends greatly on these symbols to communicate inherent meaning; hence she integrates them frequently to notify the audience of their importance. One example is when MacTeer gets a blue-eyed, fair-skinned baby doll as a Christmas gift: the doll embodies the reality that society places too much importance on the ‘ideal’ physical traits of White people. Certainly, Morrison has gained expertly the skill to successfully apply symbols in her novel.

Besides factors like valuable items, titles, and names of character, she has discovered a technique to incorporate symbolic values into even the tersest description. In examining the levels of conflict within the novel it is vital to keep in mind that Morrison’s creations are not simply understood through reading practices gained with regard to the pragmatist narrative where expression usually creates the feeling of intelligibility, that is where the symbol and the symbolized are witnessed as a similar object.

References Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Vintage International, 2007.