The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison - Term Paper Example

? Analysis of the Bluest Eye by (Toni Morrison) al Affiliation The bluest eye is a short emotional story revolving around the life experience of Pecola, a young black girl seeking love within her family and social society. She feels ugly following the world perception of beauty, which is associated with whiteness. Similarly, she embraces the world’s view and she begins her search for blue eyes, so that she can conform to the standard of beauty, and people can get to see her as beautiful, rather than an ugly black girl. She believes that with blue eyes, she will change the way she and others view her, and hopes to inspire her parents to love her and probably stop the frequent fights. She was born of an abusive father, who rapes her and a neglectful mother, who ignores to protect her. She became a victim of rape following her father’s repetitive oppression and social mistreatment. The story is build upon the themes of racism and sexual abuse within a social setting consisting of blacks and whites, being elaborated through symbols and the lives of different characters. Keywords: Racial Prejudice, Racism, Internalized Racism, Sexual Violence, Physical Abuse, Psychological Effects, Trauma, Beauty, Emotion, Black And White Complexion, Whiteness, Cultures, Social Life, Rape, Idealization, Narrator, Blue Eyes, Symbols, Family, Community, Childhood, Vulnerable Introduction The novel was written in an elaborative manner, as expressed in the short story that depicts the tragic events experienced by a young black girl in her private and social life. The story is heartbreaking to a certain extreme, as the rough side of the girl’s (Pecola) life unfold; she experiences child abuse from her father, who could have been on the fore front to offer her protection and guidance in her difficult life. At the same time, the story’s explication generates a beautiful and interesting prose that can be easy to follow for any reader. The issues espoused in the story line affect ones emotions, sympathize with the suffering girl, teach the readers some lessons in life, and uplifts and relates to the very similar issues that are plaguing in the modern societies, due to distinguished embraced cultures and discrimination. The author (Toni Morrison) used multiple perspectives as part of the modern techniques to elaborate the plot of the story, following a childhood conversation, and involving individuals’ confessions in the context of lacking satisfaction on social and natural factors, in a world of diverse cultures. The novel focuses on several themes, internalized racism and its effect on society taking the central theme (Shmoop, 2010, p.1). From the theme, sub issues of cultures, color line, beauty, and conformity take the center stage, focusing on the young black and white girls. The story structure seems to have two different narrators, the first one is Claudia MacTeer, who primarily recounts her experiences as well as describes that of her unfortunate friend, Pecola; her voice narrates in a combined perspective of an adult and a child, simply because she was an earlier witness in her childhood, and fervently remembers all those events in her developed adult life (Toni Morrison, 2004). You realize that the happenings in the story do not occur in a chronological order; at times there are flashbacks to recapture events that had occurred even before the girl’s childhood, to relate to their early life. This is possible through the other omniscient narrator, who reveals the history and other complex characters spanning through the different lifetimes, to merge the events to Claudia’s narration. Through the latter narrator, the section of the story dealing with the past of the Breedlove’s storefront, Soaphead church and the psychic, and Pecola’s father early sexual humiliation are exposed for the reader to understand the influential characters, and the events that contributed to shaping Pecola’s life; the revelation is beyond Claudia’s narration (“The blue eye,” 2013). The narrations also describe the events based on seasons to give the reader an idea of time for specific happenings. The concept of human relations and how both adults and children perceive it is demonstrated through the repetitive Dick and Jane narrative, as well as in the young girls’ different lifestyles of their parents. The story has its low and highpoints that instigate different ranges of emotions, marking Pecola’s rape by her father as the climax of the crooked lives and story’s plot. It is a story that trades on search for love from a broad perspective involving the inner self, family, friends, and the entire society, who also have different views in life and their own tormenting pasts. It involves a search for identity, issues of gender and class inequalities, sexual initiation and abuse, and life control as demonstrated by different characters in the novel. Internalized Racism In the cultural diversity that people live in, some people become controlled by what the society thinks and expect from them. Such views alienate an individual from the reality of his/ her life and try to conform to what they want. Once the ideal is internalized and accepted, loss identity becomes visible as individuals deny their own life and cultures to absorb foreign ones. Pecola refuses to accept her black nature, and instead wishes she was a white girl in order to receive her parents’ attention and love. Since she believes that beauty is a product of been white, Pecola goes to an extent of praying daily to God to have blue eyes; according to her, it is the only way everyone can change the way they view her (Toni Morrison, 2004). Her reasons for the thought have been shaped by a series of activities in her family and life, causing a feeling of rejection and difficulties in her social life. At school, she was described by Claudia to have gone through numerous teasing from school mates, the majority being boys and the light skinned girls. The desire to conform is a psychological effect, which occurred after Pecola felt racially inferior in the mixture of her friends and the society. The Author brings forth racial discrimination in the novel through Claudia’s interaction with Maureen Peal, a young light skinned girl, African American who at one point express what she believes that light complexioned blacks like her, were more beautiful than dark complexioned ones, who were viewed as ugly (Daniels, 2010). The statement is handled with bitterness by both Claudia and her sister Frieda, but their friend Pecola seems to embrace the idea based on her silent reaction after the hurting words. Openly, the narrator (Claudia) reacts to the situation, not just because Maureen endorsed light complexion, but because her inner secret of racial shame had been revived. This was like punching on an open wound; her reaction wanting to hit Maureen was due to anger that was accumulating within her, given the fact that Pecola had admitted defeat over her racial identity, and both the narrator and her sister were subjects to internalized racial shame. The Author uses the symbol of white complexion and blue eyes to identify beauty as attached to the society of the narrator, which tries to differentiate the black and white race in the time. Throughout the story, embedded messages portraying whiteness as superior can be pointed out; they entail incidences of the white baby doll given to Claudia, the admiration of Shirley temple and white beauty in the movies, and Maureen’s expressions that light skinned girls were cuter than dark skinned girls (Toni Morrison, 2004). Critically, the reader explores the unsatisfactory nature of Pecola in her racial identity, being convinced within that unless she possesses blue eyes, she would entirely remain ugly. Her thinking is naive and constructed in the event of harsh mistreatment and abuse in life, thinking that children from white families do not go through such bitter experiences. She is repetitively hurt and even when raped by her father, her mother refuses to accept it and instead hits her; she moves to an extent of visiting a psychic healer to acquire her wish of blue eyes, and even if the hope of receiving the eyes was a fraud, one would reason out with her as to why she ever wanted to change her ‘black, ugly nature.’ At one point, Claudia and Frieda were teased by their white neighbor, Rosemary Villanuci that they could not get a lift in her father’s car, simply because they were black (Shmoop, 2010). Foolishly, Pecola’s mother can afford to soothe another white girl, but hit and hurt her own flesh because of a mere accident, never minding her inner feelings. Following the repetition of the Dick and Jane opening narratives, the stress the author makes centers on love boundaries experienced within a social setting that are depicted to involve symbols of homes, pets, families, and friendship. The passage’s hidden message reveals the difference in the two social lives of white and black societies, criticizing the blacks households and family units as an expression of violence, abuse to lives of their children and pets, and poverty while upholding happiness, love, and contentment in the white’s families; a suitable comparison of Pecola’s social setting with those of white girls families (Rainwater and Scheick, 1985). However, this was not always the case even in the modern lives. While Pecola had led a brutal life due to her parents and society influence, Claudia and Frieda had more of a peaceful life, even if poor and black. No wonder Pecola always wanted to feel loved, and in her world it could only happen if she had blue eyes like the white girls, which could make her conform to their standard of being beautiful. Nevertheless, one could criticize the racial theme to be centered so much on the young black girl, neglecting the white girls. In any struggle involving different parties, there is bound to be some reactions from each side. However, the racial prejudice in the novel seems to categorically analyze the effect on the blacks with very little information on the white. The blacks too were no saints, and the reader expects some incidences focusing on the impact of prejudice against the white girl’s childhood. The novel’s focus on rape and sexual abuse in blacks’ social settings alienates them further from interacting in the modern society; this is because the black families are viewed to possess such immoral behaviors. According to Adamson and Clark, reading the novel can make the readers feel helpless and afraid, due to the obscenity and destructive absurdity expressed through sexual violence as demonstrated by the blacks’ social life in unfolding the racial theme (1999). This is because of the dilemma the reader is left in, as to whether there is a relation between racism and sexual violence. Moreover, the blacks are depicted as vulnerable and dangerous, simply because Pecola is seen as a victim of the entire black community instead of her parents, especially her father who rapes her severally. Sexual Abuse The author intendeds to involve the reader’s participation by awakening his/her emotion, which comes out as anger or sympathy in the sequence of events of sexual violation to the children, least the adults’ attitude towards sexual acts. Toni Morrison calls upon each reader to witness the damages caused by the members of the society (despite of their races, relation or age) on the young children, in their life development as a psychological effect. According to Dillon, the cycle of oppression was the initial cause of other sexual abuses; stating that most characters in the novel were normal and born in purity and innocence just like any other child, but were being haunted by the bitter experiences they went through, that downgraded their morals due to societal treatment (n.d.). Cholly’s experience is portrayed to initiate the cycle of traumatic events; as a child he was abandoned by his mother and later taken in by his aunt (Jimmy), who later died before Cholly had gained a self identity psychologically, such that he engages in sexual activity in the same day that his aunt was buried (Shmoop, 2010). Probably, the bitter experiences of loss of guardians have been difficult to handle, that Cholly sought sexual comfort from a Darlene. You realize that his life and growth had been supported by the female gender, with no information of the male guardians available. In their sexual activity in the field, they were mistakenly seen by two white men, who mocked them by forcing them to continue having sex as they watched, shining a flashlight and laughing at them; at his tender youthful age, that was a lot of humiliation tampering with his psychological perception that he directed his anger on poor Darlene and the rest of the women that he spent with (Shmoop, 2010). His oppression led to him oppressing other women, whom he perceived as weak persons. Critically, he himself is the depiction of weakness, since he had failed to resist oppression at a tender age. Comparing Claudia MacTeers and Cholly at their young ages, both are black, but Claudia, even being a girl child stood up against violation in her social life through various ways, something that Pecola’s father was unable to do. Instead, the injustice he experienced as a young man, developed into self contained rage, and cultivated hatred towards the weak and powerless African American women in the society, because they reflected his own influence in comparison to white men. Cholly demonstrated his weakness and psychological damage through the violent sexual attacks of all the women after Darlene, and raping his own daughter severally before she became pregnant (Dillon, n.d.). In the white families, childhood is depicted to be showered with love and care, while for the blacks, there is an act of negligence demonstrated by Pauline, (Pecola’s mother) who refuses to sympathize and hear out her child, as she tells the truth concerning her father’s act. The voice of Pecola and will to speak out is blocked by her own mother, and as the pregnancy develops she becomes the talk of the society, causing her more harm. However, the reader can only be left to view that the girl’s childhood was a period of danger, rather than safety in Pecola’s family if not for the rest of the blacks. According to Joannou, “Morrison is interested in sexual violence primarily as a domestic phenomenon….Pecola and Frieda are sexually abused by a member of the family and by a friend of the household respectively” (2000, p. 170-71). For Pecola, the psychological trauma was instigated by both sexual and physical activities in her surrounding. Apart from being raped, Cholly’s house had a kitchen, a living room and a single bedroom, where everyone slept in the same room; meaning Pecola and her brother, Sammy saw and heard everything involving her mothers physical assaults, and probably their parents sexual intercourse, pictures and images that could have contributed to the traumatic memories she experienced (Mcquail, 2009). She has grown tired of the harsh and threatening family life that she even hopes she can disappear to escape viewing the situations. However, her eyes were there to see everything and when confronted in a discussion over having seen a naked man, she becomes agitated and is quick to defend herself. Cholly hides the bitter experience through his brutal acts of violence and frequently drinking that seems to give him a break from depression. However, he has children but does not know how to raise them; his rough life has clogged his judgment of a bright life and he develops to be a man of no feeling. For Pecola, the violence increases her desire to have blue eyes; she is frequently described to have stared in the mirror wondering and trying to identify the secret of ugliness that made her feel alienated, ‘if only she had blue eyes,’ that would not be the case. Unfortunately, the violence and loss of her baby intensifies her trauma that she ends up loosing her mind (Shmoop, 2010). Because of the cycle of events as narrated, though not a defense, the reader gets to understand the motivations behind Cholly’s brutal act, which eventually made his daughter a victimized object of her father. The vulgar sexual depictions have a literal intention to emphasize on the families and communities responsibilities towards their children development, identity, and protection against sexual oppression. The readers are motivated to read the entire story such that by the time they are done, their minds open up to the critical issues affecting not only adults in families, but children who are very vulnerable and often misunderstood. The readers are left to choose which characters to side with, but most importantly, understand the implication of sexual violence (incest, rape, molestation, prostitution) in a real world. Reference List  Adamson, J., & Clark, H. A. (1999). Scenes of Shame: Psychoanalysis, Shame, and Writing. New York: SUNY Press. Daniels, A.M. (2010, December 20). Race in Toni Morrisson’s the Bluest Eye. Retrieved from http://revolutionarypaideia.com/2010/12/20/race-in-toni-morrison%E2%80%99s-the-bluest-eye/ Dillon, A. (n.d.). Morrisson’s Sexual Depictions. Retrieved from http://ayjw.org/print_articles.php?id=525106  Joannou, M. (2000). Contemporary Women's Writing: From The Golden Notebook to The Color Purple. Manchester: Manchester university press. Maya Angelou’s “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.” IRWLE, 5(I). Retrieved from http://worldlitonline.net/2009-jan/art2.pdf. Mc Quail, J. A. (2009, January). Scriptotherapy in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and  Rainwater, C., & Scheick, W. J. ed., (1985). Contemporary American Women Writers: Narrative Strategies. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky. Shmoop. (2010). The Bluest Eye: Shmoop Literature Guide. Los Altos, CA: Shmoop University Inc. The Blue Eye Narrator. (2013). Retrieved from http://www.shmoop.com/bluest-eye/narrator-point-of-view.html Toni morrisson: The bluest eye. (2004). 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