YhanTejedaPerez

4-28-15

English 3045/Professor Curseen

The Bluest Eye – Close Reading

Toni Morrison’s novel, The Bluest Eye is about social acceptance and not fitting in. One must find and learn to accept your own true beauty. The novel is about a girl named Pecola who is black, lonely, and comes from a poor family. Pecola only dreams about having blue eyes because she believes blue eyes would make anybody beautiful and instantly prettier. In short, blue eyes are seen as the sign for being beautiful simply because they are unique and most people consider them beautiful. After being picked throughout her life Pecola has begun to believe she will always be ugly. Her low self-esteem makes her feel worthless, lonely, and unhappy because she in unable to change her appearance. Pecola’s desire is to be accepted by society as beautiful. She fails to understand that the only person who needs to accept her is herself. The Breedlove’s are constantly struggling with daily obstacles and are society’s scapegoat for everything that goes wrong. They don’t know how to deal with life’s everyday struggles. They are the shame of the town and are despised. Some would say Cholly is the reason for the Breedlove’s un-acceptance to society and the violence directed towards them. The Bluest Eye uses tactics such as flashbacks to allow the reader with the opportunity to decide for themselves the cause of the Breedlove’s non acceptance to society and the daily struggles in their lives. By looking closely at Cholly’s character and his past we are able to see the novel from a different perspective. Cholly is the cause for all the suffering inflicted onto the Breedlove family. He is the reason for the shame and violence brought upon the Breedlove’s. Looking at the novel through the lens of Cholly’s character and past, we can see why the Breedlove’s are society’s target for hatred.

By examining pages 38 through 44 in The Bluest Eye we can see how this small passage about who Cholly is changes the way we look at the entire novel. We are able to see that it is because of Cholly that the Breedlove family has been the target of violence. Upon one of Cholly’s or any man’s most memorable moment, losing his virginity, he was humiliated by two white men. As the lines states, “When he was still very young, Cholly had been surprised in some bushes by two white men while he was newly but earnestly engaged in eliciting sexual pleasure from a little country girl…For some reason Cholly had not hated the white men; he hated, despised, the girl”(Morrison, 42). This moment in Cholly’s life has the greatest significance to the person he turned out to be. Cholly handled the situation by not going up against white men who are more powerful than him, the white men who embarrassed him, but instead unleashing his rage on the black women in his life who are socially less powerful than him. I believe this was the moment in Cholly’s life that has affected his future the most, thus the reason behind the Breedlove’s pain.

Cholly has a humiliating past has shaped the person he’s turned out to be. For starters, he was abandoned by his mother at birth so he deals with feelings of neglect. His inability to express his feelings contributes to some of his horrific actions. For example, the following quote shows how raping Pecola was his own way of expressing how he felt about her, “What could he do for her – ever? What give her? What say to her? What could a burned-out black man say to the hunched back of his eleven-year-old daughter? If he looked into her face, he would see those haunted, loving eyes. The hauntedness would irritate him – the love would move him to fury. How dare she love him? Hadn't she any sense at all? What was he supposed to do about that? Return it? How?” (161). Does it make Cholly’s actions anymore right? NO! Morrison seems to be making a case of sympathy for Cholly, but his actions are beyond sympathetic. The thought of a father and daughter having a sexual relationship is sickening to anybody with a right mind, and the thought of a father raping his daughter should be sickening to everybody. This is one of the most disgusting and vile actions associated with the Breedlove’s.

Looking closely at both Cholly and Pecola we can see how violence is associated with them. For Cholly, violence is just a tool needed to control another person. He physically abused Paulina because it was his way of controlling her. Morrison made both these characters so they need each other. They find meaning in their lives by abusing each other and inflicting pain. The violence within the Breedlove home caused by Cholly has become an ugly representation of who they are. Cholly’s humiliating experience as a young man made him feel powerless, which he was. So this one moment is the reason behind his actions. The reason behind why he needs to physically abuse Pauline or be violent. As a result of Cholly, of who he is, and what he’s done, the Breedlove’s became the target of violence.

There are many forms of violence throughout the novel such as physical, verbal, and racism. An important form of violence seen in the novel is racism. Throughout the black community there seems to be racism directed at themselves. They believe the stereotype within their own race that perceive Americans as far superior in terms of intelligence and beauty. Racism stemming from Pocola’s own race creates wounds that are deeper than racism coming from other races. One’s own race is supposed to be more understanding of what they’re all going through, so being the target of racism by your own race is painful. At one point in the novel there were a group of boys circling around Pecola yelling, “Black e mo. Black e mo. Yadaddsleepsnekked. Black e mo black e moyadadd sleeps necked. Black e mo…” (65). Pecola was always a constant target whether it be by her own race or by another.

The community viewed Pecola as if she were trash as seen through the lines, “The birdlike gestures are worn away to a mere picking and plucking her way between the tire rims and the sunflowers, between Coke bottles and milkweed, among all the waste and beauty of the world – which is what she herself was. All of our waste which we dumped on her and which she absorbed. And all of our beauty, which was hers first and which she gave to us.”(205). This quote states the community took out all their uncertainties onto Pecola. All the ugliness and everything negative they felt resided within themselves were thrown on Pecola as she became a dumpster for all the waste. It can be said that Pecola has suffered the most out of her family. Being raped by her father put a large negative cloud surrounding her that only highlighted how ugly her community believed she was. Hurtful words of racism can sometimes hurt more than physical violence. As Geraldine said, “His mother did not like him to play with niggers. She had explained to him the difference between colored people and niggers. They were easily identifiable. Colored people were neat and quiet; niggers were dirty and loud.” (87). These lines exemplify how deep racism ran and now she would pass it down to a younger generation so he may think and behave the same way she does. Even upon Pecola’s birth the extent of racism was off the charts. While Paulina was giving birth the doctor by her bed says, “These here women you don’t have any trouble with. They deliver right away and with no pain. Just like horses.” (124-125). This scene demonstrates how Pauline was dehumanized by being compared to an animal. The doctor’s verbal abuse is beyond cruel and can be seen as extremely violent action even though it’s not physical.