Literary Analysis of The Bluest Eye by Toni

Morrison : History and Slavery

Posted by Nicole Smith, Jan 15, 2012 Poetry No Comments Print

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Unlike so many works in the American literature that deal directly with the legacy of
slavery and the years of deeply-imbedded racism that followed, the general storyline
of Toni Morrisons novel, The Bluest Eye does not engage directly with such events
but rather explores the lingering effects by exploring and commenting on black selfhatred. Nearly all of the main characters in The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison who
are African American are consumed with the constant culturally-imposed notions of
white beauty, cleanliness, and sanitation to the point where they have disengaged
with themselves and have a disastrous tendency to subconsciously act out their
feelings of self-loathing on other members of the black community. By offering
readers multiple examples of this through the viewpoint-shifting narration of events
and revelations that led to tremendous character complexity, as suggested in this
literary analysis of The Bluest Eye Toni Morrison is ultimately engaging her readers
in a dialogue about how these characters (not to mention readers themselves) can
overcome these hindrances to having a healthy relationship with self-images and
interpersonal relationships. In presenting the various modes of escape and retreat
into hollow notions of whiteness, Morrison demonstrates how this is a damaging way
to work through so many years of being abject and objectified. However, as suggested
in this analysis of The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, she does offer a hopeful
message about the minor ways in which healing can begin.
Instead of making the plot of The Bluest Eye center around events of overt racism
or such African American issues in order to address the looming specter of slavery
and race, the focus of the book and this analysis of The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison
presents readers with a more complicated and ultimately deeper portrayal of the
effects of racism via an emphasis on the way self-hatred plagues the black characters.
In the narrators description of how the Breedlove family was ugly, it is stated in one
of the important quotes from The Bluest Eye, You looked at them and wondered
why they were so ugly; you looked closely and could not find the source. Then you
realized that is came from conviction, their conviction. It was as though some
mysterious and all-knowing master had given each one of them a cloak of ugliness to
wear and they had each accepted it without question (39). What Morrison is stating
here is that the feeling of low self-worth after years of being put down is still
perpetuating and is resulting in an ugliness that is constantly felt, if not directly seen.
More importantly, the narrator suggests that they accept this imposed feeling of
ugliness and lack of self-worth without questioning its source and it is this accepting

of self-hatred, a hatred that comes form outside the family is one of the biggest
problem faced by the family. However, it is not just the family that suffers from this
feeling of polarity caused by black self-hatred, it is the entire community; the
Breedlove family, while the focus of the story, is but one story among a community of
many similar ones. By presenting characters who hate themselves because of what
they are told they are, which reinforces racism and the social hierarchy, Morrison
attempts to work through what this self-hatred is, where it comes from, and how it
has a devastating influence on the lives of people who, while physically free, are still
bound by the society that keeps them hating themselves.
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By offering different voices of narration and points of view in the Bluest Eye by
Toni Morrison, it is gradually revealed that this self-hatred is not because of poverty
or hardship, but because of a cyclical and historically-based tendency of white culture
to promote its own superiority. Unfortunately, so many of the black characters in the
novel and especially those who fare the worst by the end, including the two women
members of the Breedlove family, heavily internalize the powerful images of white
superiority. As suggested in this analysis of The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, these
cultural reinforcements about white superiority act as the mysterious and allknowing master that perpetuates misery among the black community. In this
society, white is seen as the only thing worth offering credence, watching, idolizing,
and respecting and this is devastating to the black characters in the novel, especially
those who are poor and completely unable to live up to the cultural images of white
perfection. Pauline is just as a much of a victim of these notions of white superiority
as her daughter is although to slightly less tragic ends. Like many other black female
characters in the novel who attempt to deny themselves an identity apart from white
society and race issues, Pauline greedily devours these messages in culture though
film. Of Pauline, the narrator says, She was never able, after her education in the
movies, to look a a face and assign it some category in the scale of absolute beauty,
and the scale was one she absorbed in full from the silver screen. (122).
Certainly, the images on the silver screen are those of whites, Clark Gabel and Jean
Harlow and Pauline tried to make herself look like Harlow but is crushed when,
despite her best efforts at mimicking her hair and grace, her tooth suddenly falls out,
reminding her that she is not a beautiful white woman and making her hate herself
even more. Of these films, Pauline kept this order, this beauty, for herself, a private
world and never introduced it to her storefront, or to her children. Them she bent
toward respectability (129). Her self-hatred is enacted on her children and this
cycle of violence and self-hatred is perpetuated and is evidenced in situations such as
when Pauline chooses to comfort her employers white child (who calls her by her
name, even when her own children cannot) as opposed to the burned Pecola.
Through these passages, Morrison is showing the roots of where these issues of black
inferiority in the mind of African Americans stems from and how, because of

frustration with being unable to live up to such standards, hatred is born and cycled
on husbands and children.
While her mother repeatedly engaged with the notion of white superiority and
neglected herself and her daughter as well as engaged in self-hatred, her case pales in
comparison to that of her daughter. Pecola represents the most complex case of the
destructive idealization of white culture and subsequent denial and obliteration of
black identity and is the tragic symbol in Morrisons attempt to detail this legacy of
racism. By the end of the novel, she exchanged her mind for the blue eyes she
thought would make her loved and is even further ostracized by the community that
failed to see its part in what happened. The inherent sense of being ugly and
unworthy is a main part of Pecolas character as she spends Long hours she sat
looking in the mirror, trying to discover the secret of the ugliness, the ugliness that
made her ignored or despised at school, by teachers and classmates alike (45). Aside
from her good treatment by Claudia and Frieda, Pecola is ostracized in her
community and even by her mother, who prefers cleanliness and the orderly life of
the white family she works for or the simplicity of beautiful women and men on film
to her real life in the storefront. By thinking that having blue eyes will make people
love her, Pecola is expressing a wish that has double-significance to the main ideas
Morrison is presenting for readers. On the one hand, there is the more obvious idea
that blue eyes, which are associated with whiteness (which is, in itself, a non-color)
means that she will be racially accepted. On another level, by wishing to change her
eyes and thinking that this change will allow her to see things differently, Pecola is
wishing that she could blind herself from the self-hatred in her family and
community. Morrison is offering readers a complex understanding of this self-hatred
that perpetuates many of the problems characters have by first offering a solution by
non-color, only to show that this leads to blindness and insanity as in itself, it is
nothingness. She is working through the culturally-confirmed ideas of white
superiority as it exists in images of blond, blue-eyed, and white-skinned people as
lacking substance.
Claudia, particularly since she is often a child as a narrator in The Bluest Eye by
Toni Morrison, is relatively unconcerned about adult interactions and, more
importantly, not yet a part of the seething self-hatred that has crept into the lives of
older girls. In her revelations, particularly when she reminisces, she offers a shining
ray of hope in an otherwise bleak novel as far as the topic of festering black selfhatred is concerned. She is such a beacon of hope because she is able to cast aside the
notion of self-hatred, although this seems to be more because its in her character to
do so than for any other reason. For instance, the reader is offered a clear distinction
between Claudia and the other women when Pecola first moves in with the family
and gazes adoringly at Shirley Temple on the milk cup. Upon seeing this, Claudia
launches into a stream of thoughts that probe her feelings that are so opposite
Pecolas. Not only does she despise Shirley Temple, she is unable to see the beauty in

the white and blue-eyed dolls she is given at Christmas. Not only did she not see the
point of being a mother to it or finding it fun to sleep with, I could not love it. But I
could examine it to see what it was that all the world said was lovable (21). Unlike
other black women in the novel, particularly Pecola and her mother, even if it is
indirectly and partially because of childish disinterest, Claudia is able to see past
culturally-confirmed notions of what is beautiful. She dissects and then examines
what lies behind the round moronic eyes only to find sawdust and hollowness. The
adults around her are unable to comprehend her reaction to the doll, The emotion of
years of unfulfilled longing preened in their voices (21) and the connection between
adulthood and indoctrination into what is desirable becomes clear. Through her
childish rejection and common sense inquiry into the beauty of something that is
only such because people say it is, Morrison is able to probe the theme of notions of
whiteness being more desirable early in the novel and, because of her narrator, in a
simple and symbolic manner.
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In relation to the ideas about Claudia being a ray of hope in the novel, it should also
be noted that despite the black communitys rejection of the pregnant Pecola, Claudia
and her sister are the only two people to not see ugliness in the situation. They try to
magically plant the marigold seeds deep into the black earth in the hopes of
resurrecting something to flower in the future. What Morrison reveals by this is that
adults have been far too scarred by self-hatred, culturally and historically imposed or
otherwise, to see anything black as beautiful, even an unborn child. While it is true
that the child was conceived in the most dreadful way, the complete disregard the
community has for its own is softened by the kindness of the sisters who are still
untouched by this deep, relentless and cyclical hatred of all that is black or, more
specifically, all that is not white, clean or sanitary. While this sense that Claudia
represents perfect hope for a foreseeable future where this constant desire for
whiteness at the sake of all that is real and present and good in the lives of black
people is shattered when Claudia reveals that eventually she too would learn to love
Shirley Temple and cleanliness, saying that this learning to appreciate white as
right in societys mind was a adjustment without improvement (23). It is
disappointing that she eventually turns to the same standards as those she criticized,
but this nonetheless allows Morrison to reinforce how strong and powerful of an
enemy these cultural icons of what is right are, even for the strongest minded girls.
Morrison points about how the atrocity of growing older is that children lose this
capacity to separate images from larger ideals and standards and thus demonstrates
how while Pecola is an extreme case, she is a representation of an entire culture of
African-Americans who have been mislead by the cultivated notion of white
superiority long after slavery and as a result, forced to look beyond their own lives for
fulfillment.

Most of the black characters in the novel suffer from some degree of displacement,
not only in terms of being poor and black in a white-dominated society, but more
importantly, the displacement by culture and its images of whiteness. These images
of white as superior to the characters who are African American, both in physical and
other terms, is the focus of Morrisons message. She is attempting to show readers
how hollow the cultural images that have such an influence on everyones lives are
with particular emphasis on the devastating impact these have on those who have
little else to help guide them in terms of social icons. Although this is a painful novel
African American to read on multiple levels, it is a cathartic one in terms of how it
addresses the opposing ideals of white culture and how these ideals are internalized
by those who are under-represented and marginalized. This novel is the workingthrough of the constantly perpetuating self-hatred that is the result of frustration of
being unable to live up to the ideals of white society and ultimately, the tragic ending
where the ground is unfertile and the future is stunted is a message about how we
need to dig deep in the black earth to look for identity since the surface offers little in
the way of nutrients for growth.