The Bluest Eye Research Paper

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I discovered Toni Morrison a year ago, and with just one read I was taken away by the beauty of her craftily word and the depth of her thought. I promised myself not to stop until I read all of her work. Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye is the first novel, published in 1970. The Nobel laureate’s winner sets a high bar, which she continues to raise with every new literary masterpiece. The Bluest Eye incorporates a lot of characteristics of Morrison's future novels, as well as it discusses some of the main themes, such as sexism, gender roles, lustful desire, broken families, dehumanization and objectification of children, racial tension and racial identity. In the novel the author not only focuses on the subject of racism, but also highlights…show more content…
As a result of psychological programming, a racist Anglo-American society brainwashed people of color to believe in white superiority. For hundred years African-American community was told about their inferiority and physical inability to look attractive according to the white standards. Toni Morrison provides the reader with a very realistic portrait of internalized racism by creating a character like Pecola Breedlove, an eleven years old black girl who simply cannot see her own beauty; she believes that the only way to look pretty is to get a new set of blue eyes that will make her look different, so everything around her will become different. Her family also follows the logic of white superiority, considering the physical features of the European-American as a standard of beauty, whereas Africans are ugly. Their poor financial situation made them live in a storefront, but Breedloves chose to stay there because they believe they are ugly. The narrator tells the reader that “although their poverty was traditional, it wasn't unique. But their ugliness was unique” (38). Breedloves accepted the “master's”…show more content…
They are completely obsessed with the idea of whiteness, and often remind everyone about their ancestor, a British nobleman Sir Whitecomb. This family separate themselves “in body, mind and spirit from all that suggested Africa” (167). Furthermore, Whitecombs are convinced of DeGobineau's idea that “all civilizations derive from the white race, that non can exists without its help, and that a great society is great and brilliant only so far as it preserves the blood of the noble group that created it” (168). They transferred this Anglophilia to all their children and grandchildren, and made sure that the following generations would continue “lightening the family.” Whitecombs don't stop with just its separation with the rest of their community, but they imitate the exploitive nature of white class: “they were corrupt in public and private practice, both lecherous and lascivious,” the worst part is that it was considered their noble right by “most of the less gifted population” (168). The latest member of the family, Elihue Micah Whitecomb, as Morrison indicates, “learned everything he needed to know well, particularly the fine art of self-deception” (169). He later becomes Soaphead Church, and continues to carry the idea of superiority among African-American community. On Soaphead Church example Morrison proves to the reader that there is no limit to people's degradation; lack
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