BREEDLOVE?

Essay by geo5University, Bachelor's April 2008

download word file, 7 pages 0.0

Nobel Prize recipient Toni Morrison’s 1970 book The Bluest Eye was written while she was still a professor at the Howard University and was a single-parent of two boys. (Dreifus, C. Chole Wofford Talks about Toni Morrisson 1994). The book itself is centered around a young unfortunate named Pecola Breedlove, a native of Lorain Ohio. The book is so titled because Pecola, an African American, wants to be beautiful and in her regrettable, self-depreciating racist view beautiful means looking like a white woman with fair skin and blue eyes. The controversial nature of this book and the themes it represents, such as racism and incest, have resulted in this book being banned from many libraries. The theme of racism is the most pervasive in the book. In fact, it in Pecola’s eyes the root of her unhappiness is the fact that she is not white. This paper will be about racism and the ruin it caused upon the psyche of a potentially normal girl.

Young Pecola’s tragic existence is depicted in the book as the life of someone who wanted nothing more than to be loved by her family and friends. According to Pecola her troubles come from her dark skin which departs very far from her ideal of white beauty. Not only that but her skin is darker than that of other African American children which makes her an object of ridicule even for them. Her unusually dark skin makes her the target of their ridicule and mockery because they also share her inferiority complex and feelings of inadequacy because of their skin color. Her ideal beauty is Shirley Temple who is, in her opinion, adored by all (Tate, C., Black Women Writers at Work, 1985) hence, her desire to have blond hair and blue eyes. Pecola’s mother Pauline...