Category: The Bluest Eye

Introduction

Toni Morrison wrote her first and famous novel, The Bluest Eye, in 1970. The author tells the story about the tragic fate and death of Pecola Breedlove, an African-American girl whose mother knew that her dark-skinned child would grow up ugly. The Bluest Eye portrays the tragedy, which results when African Americans have no resources with which to fight the standards presented to them by the white culture.¹ The novel was banned in many American schools because of vulgar and obscene language, as well as sexually explicit descriptions. Nevertheless, this book addresses some crucial issues, such as appearance stereotypes, racism, and femininity, and depicts complex relationships between the main characters.

Summary of the Book

The story begins in 1940, it is told on behalf of nine-year-old Claudia MacTeer, Pecolas only friend, who is younger than the main character for two years. Pecola Breedlove, a dark-skinned girl, lives in a world owned by whites. She believes that her life would be better and easier if she were white, too. Blue eyes are a symbol of whiteness for the little girl. She watches her father, Cholly Breedlove, who becomes increasingly violent and frustrated as his dreams are shattered. Moreover, he suffers constant humiliation because of the color of his skin. Her mother, Pauline, fends off the problems by an orderly life, continuous cleaning, and working as a maid in a white family.

One spring evening, Pecola is raped by his drunken father. She gets pregnant after he rapes her a second time.² The traumatized girl loses touch with reality and goes to the priest and swindler Elihue Micah Whitcomb, nicknamed Soaphead Church, with a request to make her eyes blue. He claims that he can help, but in exchange for a favor. Soaphead Church wants to get rid of the old, sick dog and gives Pecola the poisoned meat, saying that only feeding the dog will show if her wish comes true. When the dog starts gagging and limping, Pecola believes she will get her blue eyes.

The rape and the incident with the dog drive Pecola crazy. More than that, her baby dies, which finally leads to destroying her connection with reality. The girl believes that her eyes have turned blue, and she invents an imaginary friend who is always there and tells her that her eyes are the bluest in the world. Pecola Breedlove, who could not see herself figuratively before, has solved the problem. Now she literally sees herself in the most perverted and tragic form.

Main Characters

Pecola Breedlove

The protagonist of The Bluest Eye is a young dark-skinned and poor girl growing up in the early 1940s. Almost all people repeatedly call her ugly, from other pupils to her mother. This continuous bullying and criticism, that Pecola has to suffer, lead her to seek escape from her misery. That is why she begins to dream of becoming more beautiful and possessing blue eyes. This false belief becomes entirely destructive for the little girl, consuming her life, and creating critical mental problems. At the end of the novel, Pecola becomes convinced that everyone looks at her strangely because she eventually got blue eyes. Furthermore, she imagines a friend whom she frequently talks to about her dream come true.

Claudia MacTeer

The primary narrator of the novel is a curious, emotional young girl who is brought up in a loving family. Besides, she represents a rebel character throughout the book as, unlike Pecola, she tries to resist appearance stereotypes and beauty icons. This position can be exemplified by the way she treats the protagonist. Claudia is kind to Pecola Breedlove, loves her, and even sincerely feels guilty about Pecolas tragic fate. What is more, she and Frieda sacrifice their money, which they save to buy a bicycle as a payment to God, as they hope that it will help Pecolas baby to survive.

Pauline Breedlove

Pauline is Pecolas mother, and her character allows readers to see how appearance stereotypes and beauty perception can determine the persons behavior and relationships with others. Like her daughter Pecola, Pauline imagines her elaborate world, which entirely consumes her. For example, she believes that in the household where she works as a servant, the kitchen is her kitchen; the money she is given to buy food for the employers family is her money. Furthermore, she pretends even that their little daughter is her daughter.

Soaphead Church

Soaphead is a very controversial character as he is the most religious man in the novel, but, at the same time, he is one of the most immoral people. His real name is Elihue Micah Whitcomb, and he got his nickname for his hair and profession. He considers himself to be a Reader, Adviser, and Interpreter of Dreams.³ That is why he tries to help people solve their problems. When Pecola Breedlove asks him to give her blue eyes, he tells her to feed his landlords dog, and then, her dream will come true.⁴ However, he poisons the meat, and the dog dies, which results in Pecolas losing her mins and believing that she now has blue eyes.

Main Themes of the Book

One of the central issues addressed in The Bluest Eye is racism. The main characters of the novel associate white skin and blue eyes with beauty and innocence. For example, the psychological traumas of Pecolas father, who was humiliated by white men, resulting in his rape of his daughter. Besides, Soaphead Church is obsessed with genetic and racial cleanness. As for the protagonist, she seeks to have these features of beauty throughout the story, which, eventually, turn into the loss of her mind. Another critical theme of the book is femininity, as the author describes the life of African-American women in the 1940s. At those times, they could only get married, have children, and work for white families.⁵ Otherwise, dark-skinned women and girls inevitably become prostitutes and socially excluded people.

Personal Opinion

Toni Morrison managed to depict wisely the horrible effects that racism, poverty, and imposed stereotypes might have not only on adults but on children as well. The Bluest Eye makes readers reconsider their principles and values as everyone has his or her vision for beauty. More than that, nowadays, the media and fashion industry enforce their rules, and people often forget that beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.

Conclusion

In The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison discusses an unusual point of view in American historical fiction. She purposefully wrote this story focusing on the realities of African-American womens lives in the 1940s. Due to addressing some controversial topics, such as racism, humiliation, and child molestation, there were numerous attempts to prohibit the novel in schools and libraries. Nevertheless, this book is thought-provoking and remains relevant even in the 21^st century. That is why The Bluest Eye is still popular among readers across the world.

Bibliography

Hunt, Michelle. Women as Commodities in Danticats Breath, Eyes, Memory and Morrisons The Bluest Eye. Pennsylvania Literary Journal 8, no. 2 (2016): 120-149.

Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York City, NY: Random House, 2014.

Sarkar, Sajal, and Jahan Moshref. A Comparative Study of Pecola and Gyanoda: Sex, Violence and Beauty in the Bluest Eye and Arakshaniya. American International Journal of Social Science Research 3, no. 1 (2018): 22-26. Web.

Study Guide for Toni Morrisons The Bluest Eye. Farmington Hills, MI: Gale, Cengage Learning, 2015.

Footnotes

1. Study Guide for Toni Morrisons The Bluest Eye (Farmington Hills, MI: Gale, Cengage Learning, 2015), 2.
2. Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye (New York City, NY: Random House, 2014), 3.
3. Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye (New York City, NY: Random House, 2014),
4. Sajal Sarkar, and Jahan Moshref, A Comparative Study of Pecola and Gyanoda: Sex, Violence and Beauty in the Bluest Eye and Arakshaniya, American International Journal of Social Science Research 3, no. 1 (2018): 23.
5. Michelle Hunt, Women as Commodities in Danticats Breath, Eyes, Memory and Morrisons The Bluest Eye, Pennsylvania Literary Journal 8, no. 2 (2016): 120.

Introduction

The influence of popular culture on the wide masses of population in different periods of time of every societys development has always been evident. Television and radio as the main mass media sources have created a new, distorted reality to which some people became sensitive and others ignored. It is widely known that the means of advertising, promotion, and distribution have always managed to represent innovative, non-existent images and to make them desirable, wanted, and longed to by the common public, even when people understood that artificial life differed from the everyday routine life and could never be like that.

The same situation of blind following the popular culture idols that were hand-made by the promoters and PR managers who created an ideal white culture in the USA and managed to persuade the nation in white superiority, beauty, and aesthetic propriety to the profile of the country, while black people were simply neglected and reduced in their social roles, were considered freaks who did not deserve an equal role in the American society. But what is more terrible is that the nature of that popular culture was so devilishly natural and systematic, so well-designed and over-grasping that it created such a distorted, stereotyped and discriminative vision of black and white people not only in white residents of the US but managed to convince vast groups of African Americans in their ugliness and uselessness.

People lived in the desperate wish to be like the Hollywood white stars, the girls hated themselves and knew nobody would feel pity with them, no one would hear them and they would never achieve any significant goals in their lives because they were ugly. The popular culture that propagated the beauty of light skin made even light-skinned African Americans avoid communication with dark-skinned ones, thus creating hostility and segregation even within their group. What was the most horrifying and destructive was that the people believed the idols created by the community and raised their kids with the feeling of being useless freaks who were unhappy initially to have been born with the black skin color.

Popular Culture Influence on the Minds of Heroes of The Bluest Eye

The work of Tony Morrison titled The Bluest Eye also investigates the roots of such problems that existed in the 1940s in the USA and which they witnessed when they were young girls. Their participation in the story is limited because the main character is Pecola Breedlove, the young black girl who got insane at the end of the story due to the set of events that will be described further. The girls who tell the story, Claudia and Frieda, are already adults when they recollect the events of their childhood, and finally, when many years passed, they understand the true causes of the tragedy that happened to Pecola. They analyze the whole story in great detail, following their own life and the life of the Breedlove family who crippled the poor daughter mentally and physically, making her unprotected and persecuted by the community that could not step over the prejudices they had been nurturing for centuries and to save the victim from her horror (Morrison).

They understand that the vision of the life they all had at that moment crippled their souls and influenced their lives so much that they were not able to perceive reality adequately. Such distorted reality made Pecola live in her imaginary world, made her mother Pauline who wanted to resemble the white people uglier than she was because of her ridiculous attempts, etc. Thus, at the end of the sad chain of events, Pecola became destroyed by her own family.

First of all, it is necessary to understand what kind of popular culture was created in the 1940s and what images of beauty, taste, and style were promoted. As it comes from the book, Frieda, Claudia and Pecola adore Shirley Temple who has become the true start of that period of time (Morrison). Films with her starring in the main roles were often shown, making all women want to be as beautiful as she was, and wanting blue eyes and blonde hair similar to those she had. Surely, everyone understood that it was impossible to resemble Shirley Temple fully, but the US women were ready to give everything to be even a bit similar to her.

Continuing the discussion of the role of popular culture, it is also necessary to mention that not only images of white, beautiful, and clever people were promoted on TV, but the images of black people were intentionally created in a negative form to promote segregation, destruction of self-esteem of African Americans living in the USA and the formation of their belief that they were doomed to failure in their life due to their origin. African Americans were allowed to play only minor roles of maids and servants in the white families  this way the popular culture fixed the subordinate vision of black people in the USA, both in the minds of white and black people. This intentional distortion of reality made a great negative contribution to the promotion of racial equality in the United States, making not only white people treat African Americans with arrogance and the innate feeling of dominance, but destroying and reducing the black peoples self-esteem and making them subdue to white people.

The white dreams can be seen in the passionate wish of Pecola to have blue eyes which she could not have because of her being black. Pecola was a miserable girl who lived in a dysfunctional family with a father who was a drunkard and a mother who did not attribute any attention to her children, so she created another reality that she liked more. She saw the solution to all her problems in having blue eyes because she was sure her beauty would bring her an absolutely different life. The naive idea of blue eyes solving all problems really causes sympathy and compassion because of the girls sacred belief in the beauty of popular movie idols who shaped the aesthetic vision of the whole nation for many years (Morrison). The ridicule and tragedy of her dream can be seen in the letter of Soaphead Church written to God when Pecola leaves:

She must have asked you for them for a very long time, and you hadnt replied&Thats why I changed the little black girls eyes for her, and I didnt touch her; not a finger did I lay on her. But I gave her those blue eyes she wanted. Not for pleasure, and not for money. I did what You did not, could not, would not do: I looked at that ugly little black girl, and I loved her. I played You. And it was a very good show&. (Morrison 143).

Speaking about the girls who are narrators of the story, they have also adopted a controversial attitude to the popular culture that shapes their lives as well. On the one hand, they like Shirley Temple who is on the mugs they have, and their dolls are made according to her image, so they have much to discuss with their favorite actress. But on the other hand, Claudia expresses real hatred towards her white dolls because of their beauty and non-resemblance to her mirror reflection, understanding that she will never become like them. For this reason, she hates her dolls, and together with loving Shirley Temple, she hates her understanding the huge gap they have and the failure their life has turned into because of their skin color.

Coming back to the Breedlove family, it is necessary to investigate the life way of Pauline Breedlove, Pecolas mother. When the girls recollect Pauline, they describe her passion for US television and the idols cultivated there. They tell that Pauline at once started to resemble these heroines of the US television blindly without understanding the simple fact that they were absolutely different and she could never become like them. Thus, Pauline freaked herself and became uglier and uglier because of her stupid attempts to become at least a bit similar to her white favorites. This physical ugliness separated her from her husband who started to treat her coldly after the birth of their children, and in addition, she started to become a moral freak when she became the servant in a white family (Morrison).

Paulines life was active and vivid in the family where she served, and she lived a full life there neglecting her family and kids for the sake of white people, the family of the Fishers, who treated her kindly but never considered her seriously. But Pauline seemed to not need anything but to be there, with them, to touch their normal white life and to obtain a feeling of being beautiful, normal, and adequate at least for a short period of time. Pauline did not understand that even living with a white family did not make her white or normal, and the problem was not in her color of skin, but in her mind and self-esteem. She treated the family of her masters more closely and kindly than her own closest people in the world  her husband and kids, and finally she allowed to destroy her daughter and did not do anything to save because the reality in which she lived was not appealing to her. Pauline was living in her dreams and was ready for everything for the sake of prosperity and welfare of the Fishers; she seemed to love the Fishers daughter more that she loved her own children, which was a real drama for her whole family.

Mrs. Breedlove appears a dreamer in the Bluest Eye  after losing her front tooth she refuses from all dreams about beauty and glamour she learned from the films she watched in childhood youth and falls into the dirt, chaos and despair of her ugly world in which she exists with her whole family. Pauline perceives her work as a salvation from the dirt and miserable existence and does not allow these two worlds to merge. She loves her white masters and hates her own family, passively giving up the life they have and not even trying to fix anything, to fight for some human conditions of life and raising self-esteem of her children. Pecola learns from the example of her mother and also dreams only about blue eyes as the only miracle that can change everything, without looking at the real life seriously, which finally brings her to insanity.

Cholly, Pecolas father who raped her in the drunken state and refused to take any responsibility for his actions, was also a moral cripple who Morrison does not protect but tries to explain the roots of his miserable life, self-perception and self-esteem. Being morally destroyed by the white hunters in his youth he has become a handicapped person and affects other members of his family as well. Geraldine is the woman who becomes a moral cripple for the sake of her false vision of happiness in stability, and becomes a victim of popular culture impact and ruins her life refusing from any emotions that make life vivid (Morrison). Every family shown in the book has its own tragedy that lasts for the whole life and does not let anyone escape.

Conclusion

The novel the Bluest Eyes really depict the tragedy of black people who had to live on the verge of ugliness and nobility, who had to seem invisible because of their incompliance with the vision of beauty created by the white promoters of aesthetics and who were deprived of all privileges, even the right to respect themselves. Black people were crippled inside and as a result crippled their children by raising them with the inner feeling of self-hatred, self-humiliation and self-destruction for the sake of the white dream. The case with the moral perversion of Cholly and his further perversion over his own daughter that ruined all familys lives shows the way the African American race was segregated, humiliated and mentally whipped.

The tragedy that had no solution and yielded more and more victims throughout the Depression Era was a real drama for many families who separated from the community because of the perception of their ugliness, who wanted to be invisible and to dive into the dreams offered by Hollywood and did not perceive the reality adequately. The popular culture distorted the reality in each separate mind, which brought about the large-scale, horrifying experience of self-destruction and self-hatred in the vast groups of African Americans without any reasons but the color of skin. The novel is really helpful in understanding the roots for discrimination and moral incompleteness from which African Americans suffered for many centuries, and is really thought-provoking about the influence of popular culture on human minds, about the real value of reality and self-esteem, and the role of the community in human destinies that is often decisive, as in case with Pecola.

Works Cited

Morrison, Tony. The Bluest Eye. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970.

Introduction

Toni Morrison wrote her first and famous novel, The Bluest Eye, in 1970. The author tells the story about the tragic fate and death of Pecola Breedlove, an African-American girl whose mother knew that her dark-skinned child would grow up ugly. The Bluest Eye portrays the tragedy, which results when African Americans have no resources with which to fight the standards presented to them by the white culture.¹ The novel was banned in many American schools because of vulgar and obscene language, as well as sexually explicit descriptions. Nevertheless, this book addresses some crucial issues, such as appearance stereotypes, racism, and femininity, and depicts complex relationships between the main characters.

Summary of the Book

The story begins in 1940, it is told on behalf of nine-year-old Claudia MacTeer, Pecolas only friend, who is younger than the main character for two years. Pecola Breedlove, a dark-skinned girl, lives in a world owned by whites. She believes that her life would be better and easier if she were white, too. Blue eyes are a symbol of whiteness for the little girl. She watches her father, Cholly Breedlove, who becomes increasingly violent and frustrated as his dreams are shattered. Moreover, he suffers constant humiliation because of the color of his skin. Her mother, Pauline, fends off the problems by an orderly life, continuous cleaning, and working as a maid in a white family.

One spring evening, Pecola is raped by his drunken father. She gets pregnant after he rapes her a second time.² The traumatized girl loses touch with reality and goes to the priest and swindler Elihue Micah Whitcomb, nicknamed Soaphead Church, with a request to make her eyes blue. He claims that he can help, but in exchange for a favor. Soaphead Church wants to get rid of the old, sick dog and gives Pecola the poisoned meat, saying that only feeding the dog will show if her wish comes true. When the dog starts gagging and limping, Pecola believes she will get her blue eyes.

The rape and the incident with the dog drive Pecola crazy. More than that, her baby dies, which finally leads to destroying her connection with reality. The girl believes that her eyes have turned blue, and she invents an imaginary friend who is always there and tells her that her eyes are the bluest in the world. Pecola Breedlove, who could not see herself figuratively before, has solved the problem. Now she literally sees herself in the most perverted and tragic form.

Main Characters

Pecola Breedlove

The protagonist of The Bluest Eye is a young dark-skinned and poor girl growing up in the early 1940s. Almost all people repeatedly call her ugly, from other pupils to her mother. This continuous bullying and criticism, that Pecola has to suffer, lead her to seek escape from her misery. That is why she begins to dream of becoming more beautiful and possessing blue eyes. This false belief becomes entirely destructive for the little girl, consuming her life, and creating critical mental problems. At the end of the novel, Pecola becomes convinced that everyone looks at her strangely because she eventually got blue eyes. Furthermore, she imagines a friend whom she frequently talks to about her dream come true.

Claudia MacTeer

The primary narrator of the novel is a curious, emotional young girl who is brought up in a loving family. Besides, she represents a rebel character throughout the book as, unlike Pecola, she tries to resist appearance stereotypes and beauty icons. This position can be exemplified by the way she treats the protagonist. Claudia is kind to Pecola Breedlove, loves her, and even sincerely feels guilty about Pecolas tragic fate. What is more, she and Frieda sacrifice their money, which they save to buy a bicycle as a payment to God, as they hope that it will help Pecolas baby to survive.

Pauline Breedlove

Pauline is Pecolas mother, and her character allows readers to see how appearance stereotypes and beauty perception can determine the persons behavior and relationships with others. Like her daughter Pecola, Pauline imagines her elaborate world, which entirely consumes her. For example, she believes that in the household where she works as a servant, the kitchen is her kitchen; the money she is given to buy food for the employers family is her money. Furthermore, she pretends even that their little daughter is her daughter.

Soaphead Church

Soaphead is a very controversial character as he is the most religious man in the novel, but, at the same time, he is one of the most immoral people. His real name is Elihue Micah Whitcomb, and he got his nickname for his hair and profession. He considers himself to be a Reader, Adviser, and Interpreter of Dreams.³ That is why he tries to help people solve their problems. When Pecola Breedlove asks him to give her blue eyes, he tells her to feed his landlords dog, and then, her dream will come true.⁴ However, he poisons the meat, and the dog dies, which results in Pecolas losing her mins and believing that she now has blue eyes.

Main Themes of the Book

One of the central issues addressed in The Bluest Eye is racism. The main characters of the novel associate white skin and blue eyes with beauty and innocence. For example, the psychological traumas of Pecolas father, who was humiliated by white men, resulting in his rape of his daughter. Besides, Soaphead Church is obsessed with genetic and racial cleanness. As for the protagonist, she seeks to have these features of beauty throughout the story, which, eventually, turn into the loss of her mind. Another critical theme of the book is femininity, as the author describes the life of African-American women in the 1940s. At those times, they could only get married, have children, and work for white families.⁵ Otherwise, dark-skinned women and girls inevitably become prostitutes and socially excluded people.

Personal Opinion

Toni Morrison managed to depict wisely the horrible effects that racism, poverty, and imposed stereotypes might have not only on adults but on children as well. The Bluest Eye makes readers reconsider their principles and values as everyone has his or her vision for beauty. More than that, nowadays, the media and fashion industry enforce their rules, and people often forget that beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.

Conclusion

In The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison discusses an unusual point of view in American historical fiction. She purposefully wrote this story focusing on the realities of African-American womens lives in the 1940s. Due to addressing some controversial topics, such as racism, humiliation, and child molestation, there were numerous attempts to prohibit the novel in schools and libraries. Nevertheless, this book is thought-provoking and remains relevant even in the 21^st century. That is why The Bluest Eye is still popular among readers across the world.

Bibliography

Hunt, Michelle. Women as Commodities in Danticats Breath, Eyes, Memory and Morrisons The Bluest Eye. Pennsylvania Literary Journal 8, no. 2 (2016): 120-149.

Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York City, NY: Random House, 2014.

Sarkar, Sajal, and Jahan Moshref. A Comparative Study of Pecola and Gyanoda: Sex, Violence and Beauty in the Bluest Eye and Arakshaniya. American International Journal of Social Science Research 3, no. 1 (2018): 22-26. Web.

Study Guide for Toni Morrisons The Bluest Eye. Farmington Hills, MI: Gale, Cengage Learning, 2015.

Footnotes

1. Study Guide for Toni Morrisons The Bluest Eye (Farmington Hills, MI: Gale, Cengage Learning, 2015), 2.
2. Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye (New York City, NY: Random House, 2014), 3.
3. Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye (New York City, NY: Random House, 2014),
4. Sajal Sarkar, and Jahan Moshref, A Comparative Study of Pecola and Gyanoda: Sex, Violence and Beauty in the Bluest Eye and Arakshaniya, American International Journal of Social Science Research 3, no. 1 (2018): 23.
5. Michelle Hunt, Women as Commodities in Danticats Breath, Eyes, Memory and Morrisons The Bluest Eye, Pennsylvania Literary Journal 8, no. 2 (2016): 120.

Introduction

The influence of popular culture on the wide masses of population in different periods of time of every societys development has always been evident. Television and radio as the main mass media sources have created a new, distorted reality to which some people became sensitive and others ignored. It is widely known that the means of advertising, promotion, and distribution have always managed to represent innovative, non-existent images and to make them desirable, wanted, and longed to by the common public, even when people understood that artificial life differed from the everyday routine life and could never be like that.

The same situation of blind following the popular culture idols that were hand-made by the promoters and PR managers who created an ideal white culture in the USA and managed to persuade the nation in white superiority, beauty, and aesthetic propriety to the profile of the country, while black people were simply neglected and reduced in their social roles, were considered freaks who did not deserve an equal role in the American society. But what is more terrible is that the nature of that popular culture was so devilishly natural and systematic, so well-designed and over-grasping that it created such a distorted, stereotyped and discriminative vision of black and white people not only in white residents of the US but managed to convince vast groups of African Americans in their ugliness and uselessness.

People lived in the desperate wish to be like the Hollywood white stars, the girls hated themselves and knew nobody would feel pity with them, no one would hear them and they would never achieve any significant goals in their lives because they were ugly. The popular culture that propagated the beauty of light skin made even light-skinned African Americans avoid communication with dark-skinned ones, thus creating hostility and segregation even within their group. What was the most horrifying and destructive was that the people believed the idols created by the community and raised their kids with the feeling of being useless freaks who were unhappy initially to have been born with the black skin color.

Popular Culture Influence on the Minds of Heroes of The Bluest Eye

The work of Tony Morrison titled The Bluest Eye also investigates the roots of such problems that existed in the 1940s in the USA and which they witnessed when they were young girls. Their participation in the story is limited because the main character is Pecola Breedlove, the young black girl who got insane at the end of the story due to the set of events that will be described further. The girls who tell the story, Claudia and Frieda, are already adults when they recollect the events of their childhood, and finally, when many years passed, they understand the true causes of the tragedy that happened to Pecola. They analyze the whole story in great detail, following their own life and the life of the Breedlove family who crippled the poor daughter mentally and physically, making her unprotected and persecuted by the community that could not step over the prejudices they had been nurturing for centuries and to save the victim from her horror (Morrison).

They understand that the vision of the life they all had at that moment crippled their souls and influenced their lives so much that they were not able to perceive reality adequately. Such distorted reality made Pecola live in her imaginary world, made her mother Pauline who wanted to resemble the white people uglier than she was because of her ridiculous attempts, etc. Thus, at the end of the sad chain of events, Pecola became destroyed by her own family.

First of all, it is necessary to understand what kind of popular culture was created in the 1940s and what images of beauty, taste, and style were promoted. As it comes from the book, Frieda, Claudia and Pecola adore Shirley Temple who has become the true start of that period of time (Morrison). Films with her starring in the main roles were often shown, making all women want to be as beautiful as she was, and wanting blue eyes and blonde hair similar to those she had. Surely, everyone understood that it was impossible to resemble Shirley Temple fully, but the US women were ready to give everything to be even a bit similar to her.

Continuing the discussion of the role of popular culture, it is also necessary to mention that not only images of white, beautiful, and clever people were promoted on TV, but the images of black people were intentionally created in a negative form to promote segregation, destruction of self-esteem of African Americans living in the USA and the formation of their belief that they were doomed to failure in their life due to their origin. African Americans were allowed to play only minor roles of maids and servants in the white families  this way the popular culture fixed the subordinate vision of black people in the USA, both in the minds of white and black people. This intentional distortion of reality made a great negative contribution to the promotion of racial equality in the United States, making not only white people treat African Americans with arrogance and the innate feeling of dominance, but destroying and reducing the black peoples self-esteem and making them subdue to white people.

The white dreams can be seen in the passionate wish of Pecola to have blue eyes which she could not have because of her being black. Pecola was a miserable girl who lived in a dysfunctional family with a father who was a drunkard and a mother who did not attribute any attention to her children, so she created another reality that she liked more. She saw the solution to all her problems in having blue eyes because she was sure her beauty would bring her an absolutely different life. The naive idea of blue eyes solving all problems really causes sympathy and compassion because of the girls sacred belief in the beauty of popular movie idols who shaped the aesthetic vision of the whole nation for many years (Morrison). The ridicule and tragedy of her dream can be seen in the letter of Soaphead Church written to God when Pecola leaves:

She must have asked you for them for a very long time, and you hadnt replied&Thats why I changed the little black girls eyes for her, and I didnt touch her; not a finger did I lay on her. But I gave her those blue eyes she wanted. Not for pleasure, and not for money. I did what You did not, could not, would not do: I looked at that ugly little black girl, and I loved her. I played You. And it was a very good show&. (Morrison 143).

Speaking about the girls who are narrators of the story, they have also adopted a controversial attitude to the popular culture that shapes their lives as well. On the one hand, they like Shirley Temple who is on the mugs they have, and their dolls are made according to her image, so they have much to discuss with their favorite actress. But on the other hand, Claudia expresses real hatred towards her white dolls because of their beauty and non-resemblance to her mirror reflection, understanding that she will never become like them. For this reason, she hates her dolls, and together with loving Shirley Temple, she hates her understanding the huge gap they have and the failure their life has turned into because of their skin color.

Coming back to the Breedlove family, it is necessary to investigate the life way of Pauline Breedlove, Pecolas mother. When the girls recollect Pauline, they describe her passion for US television and the idols cultivated there. They tell that Pauline at once started to resemble these heroines of the US television blindly without understanding the simple fact that they were absolutely different and she could never become like them. Thus, Pauline freaked herself and became uglier and uglier because of her stupid attempts to become at least a bit similar to her white favorites. This physical ugliness separated her from her husband who started to treat her coldly after the birth of their children, and in addition, she started to become a moral freak when she became the servant in a white family (Morrison).

Paulines life was active and vivid in the family where she served, and she lived a full life there neglecting her family and kids for the sake of white people, the family of the Fishers, who treated her kindly but never considered her seriously. But Pauline seemed to not need anything but to be there, with them, to touch their normal white life and to obtain a feeling of being beautiful, normal, and adequate at least for a short period of time. Pauline did not understand that even living with a white family did not make her white or normal, and the problem was not in her color of skin, but in her mind and self-esteem. She treated the family of her masters more closely and kindly than her own closest people in the world  her husband and kids, and finally she allowed to destroy her daughter and did not do anything to save because the reality in which she lived was not appealing to her. Pauline was living in her dreams and was ready for everything for the sake of prosperity and welfare of the Fishers; she seemed to love the Fishers daughter more that she loved her own children, which was a real drama for her whole family.

Mrs. Breedlove appears a dreamer in the Bluest Eye  after losing her front tooth she refuses from all dreams about beauty and glamour she learned from the films she watched in childhood youth and falls into the dirt, chaos and despair of her ugly world in which she exists with her whole family. Pauline perceives her work as a salvation from the dirt and miserable existence and does not allow these two worlds to merge. She loves her white masters and hates her own family, passively giving up the life they have and not even trying to fix anything, to fight for some human conditions of life and raising self-esteem of her children. Pecola learns from the example of her mother and also dreams only about blue eyes as the only miracle that can change everything, without looking at the real life seriously, which finally brings her to insanity.

Cholly, Pecolas father who raped her in the drunken state and refused to take any responsibility for his actions, was also a moral cripple who Morrison does not protect but tries to explain the roots of his miserable life, self-perception and self-esteem. Being morally destroyed by the white hunters in his youth he has become a handicapped person and affects other members of his family as well. Geraldine is the woman who becomes a moral cripple for the sake of her false vision of happiness in stability, and becomes a victim of popular culture impact and ruins her life refusing from any emotions that make life vivid (Morrison). Every family shown in the book has its own tragedy that lasts for the whole life and does not let anyone escape.

Conclusion

The novel the Bluest Eyes really depict the tragedy of black people who had to live on the verge of ugliness and nobility, who had to seem invisible because of their incompliance with the vision of beauty created by the white promoters of aesthetics and who were deprived of all privileges, even the right to respect themselves. Black people were crippled inside and as a result crippled their children by raising them with the inner feeling of self-hatred, self-humiliation and self-destruction for the sake of the white dream. The case with the moral perversion of Cholly and his further perversion over his own daughter that ruined all familys lives shows the way the African American race was segregated, humiliated and mentally whipped.

The tragedy that had no solution and yielded more and more victims throughout the Depression Era was a real drama for many families who separated from the community because of the perception of their ugliness, who wanted to be invisible and to dive into the dreams offered by Hollywood and did not perceive the reality adequately. The popular culture distorted the reality in each separate mind, which brought about the large-scale, horrifying experience of self-destruction and self-hatred in the vast groups of African Americans without any reasons but the color of skin. The novel is really helpful in understanding the roots for discrimination and moral incompleteness from which African Americans suffered for many centuries, and is really thought-provoking about the influence of popular culture on human minds, about the real value of reality and self-esteem, and the role of the community in human destinies that is often decisive, as in case with Pecola.

Works Cited

Morrison, Tony. The Bluest Eye. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970.

As Flannery O’Connor says in her essay on The Nature and Aim of Fiction, “the novelist makes his statements by selection, and if he is any good, he selects every word for a reason, every detail for a reason , every incident for a reason, and arranges them in a certain time- sequence for a reason.” By this definition, Morrison and Johnson establish themselves as good writers from the very beginning. In both The Bluest Eye and Trian Dreams, authors, Toni Morrison and Denis Johnson establish not only setting and character, which a good beginning should do, but also a sense of conflict that is carried throughout the narrative. Both authors establish their stories in correlation to historical placement, through which, readers are then able to better understand the stories meaning.

In The Bluest Eye, the author doesn’t start with Pecola, who is arguably the main character of the story, rather, she opens by showing the conflict of race, especially around 1939. Claudia and Frieda, both main characters in their own right, are denied access based on the color of their skin. Claudia’s expresses a violent desire to “make red marks on her (Rosemary’s) white skin” which establishes race and violence in the conflict. Claudia imagines Rosemary will cry while offering to pull her pants down, this introduces the oppression of women through their sexuality, foreshadowing the connection between sexuality and violence. Thus, establishing the through line.

In Train Dreams, Johnson establishes the texts historical setting, starting with “In the Summer of 1917…” Readers are meant to understand this as a period marked by immense change throughout the West. Johnson places Robert Grainier right in the midst of the great Western industrialization, as a worker for the “Spokane International Railway”. Beyond the significance of this time period, the beginning also establishes the text as a tall-tale narrative. He opens with three lines of a matter of fact account of the attempt on a man’s life, which are then interrupted by “a rapid singsong streamed from the Chinaman voluminously.” This interruption takes us into the narrative and establishes both a factual and fantastical voice that carries throughout the text.

Both authors do a brilliant job of establishing character, setting and conflict within the first passage of the text. Their choice opening incidents set in motion the through line that unifies the texts. Morrison goes beyond and establishes a conflict that encompasses a larger message than that perceived by following a single character. A whole mood is established within the first paragraph of her text. It is dark and violent in response to issues of race and sex. In contrast, Johnson’s opening establishes his main character in correlation to the old virtues of the pre-industrialized American West. He uses a tall- tale narrative to associate his character to the everyday hardship of a changing American frontier.

In numerous cultures, there is an ideal beauty that most people attempt to acquire. However, imagine a scenario in which beauty were impossible to grasp and there were nothing one could do to be ‘beautiful’. In the novel the Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison recounts the story of a powerless girl struggling to prosper against the stereotypes and racism she is up against and growing up being convinced that she is unappealing, useless, and dirty. For Pecola Breedlove, this state of longing for beauty and hatred itself is reality. The definition of beauty in the society of the time involves, blue eyes, blonde hair, and pale white skin. The novel exhibits the stereotypes that Pecola struggles with each and every day. The novel focuses on the theme of how a single definition of beauty can damage an entire community.

The novel makes it clear that society and culture encourages the black children to worship ‘whiteness’. Through film, novels, food, magazines and advertisements, the characters are constantly exposed to pictures of representations of whiteness. Pecola the black protagonist completely accepts and embraces the white definition of beauty. From the moment Pecola enters the world she is exposed to the raw standard of beauty. Soon after giving birth to Pecola, Mrs. Breedlove defines her as ugly through the words, “[She had a] head of pretty hair, but the Lord was she ugly” (126). Throughout Mrs. Breedlove’s life she has been forced to acquire the standards of beauty, subjecting Pecola to a standard of beauty from the beginning of her life. While eating a ‘Mary Jane’ candy, “She remembers the Mary Janes. Each pale yellow wrapper had a picture on it. A picture of little Mary Jane, for whom the candy is named. Smiling white face. Blonde hair in gentle disarray, blue eyes looking at her out of a world of clean comfort. The eyes are petulant, mischievous. To Pecola they are simply pretty. She eats the candy, and its sweetness is good.” (50). The Mary Jane candy was revealed as a representation of white beauty by this quotation. In fact, as Pecola explains the ‘perfect’, sweet, easy and loving qualities that is identified with the Mary Jane candy, she is actually explaining the characteristics of the white culture. Pecola’s desire to be considered beautiful becomes an unhealthy obsession, and reveals her commitment to submit herself into ‘white beauty’. As Pecola ends her statement with “Be Mary Jane”, Pecola’s inclination to be white rather than black is revealed while also highlighting the beauty standards and how it negatively affects the young black girls. The horrific standard is maintained throughout Pecola’s life, and Pecola’s self hatred and doubt grows.

However, Claudia remains free. When she is young, Claudia does not understand why being white was so magnificent and rejects the white standard of beauty. When Claudia is given the gift of a doll with white characteristics, she states, “all the world had agreed that a blue-eyed, yellow-haired, pink-skinned doll was what every girl child treasured”(20). Rather then finding the doll beautiful, she wanted to “dismember it” (20). Claudia is resistant to the idea that blacks automatically adhere to the white beauty standards. Claudia’s youth prevents her from conforming to the white standard of beauty.

Not only are the black children affected by the racism and the power of whiteness, so are the adults. Pauline Breedlove, Pecola’s mother, strengthens the impression the girls have received of white superiority. Mrs. Breedlove becomes obsessed with “beauty, order, cleanliness, and praise” receives from her employers, the Fishers, house, and ultimately abandons her own house’s cleanliness (127). Mrs. Breedloves dirty and ugly world consists of Pecola and Sammy. She escapes her reality by going to work everyday where she can have order and control. Mrs. Breedlove distanced herself from her own reality as she found happiness in the Fishers home. The joy derived from the cleanliness, which resulted from the purity of whiteness. In addition, when Mrs. Breedlove is in the movie theater and loses her front tooth on a piece of candy, she is immediately brainwashed to think that she is ugly and worthless. Mrs. Breedlove, “just didn’t care no more after that. [She] let [her] hair go back, plaited it up, and settled down to just being ugly, [and] everything went then” (123). From going to the movies religiously, Mrs. Breedlove has developed the mindset that in order to be happy you have to dress a certain way. She believes that according to the standard of beauty with a missing tooth she is flawed, so she gives up on her life and lets herself go. Thus it is apparent that the theme of whiteness and beauty is present through each character.

The plot effectively conveys the theme of destructive stereotyping and discrimination. An African American woman, Geraldine, finds Pecola after being persuaded into the house by her son. Geraldine “looked at Pecola. Saw the dirty torn dress, the plaits sticking out on her head, hair matted where the plaits had come undone, the muddy shoes….’Get out’, she said, her voice quiet. “You nasty little black bitch. Get out of my house’” (92). This quotation unveils the painful truth of Geraldine’s entire first impressions and judgments of Pecola. Geraldine’s snap reaction to Pecola is solely based on her appearance without even considering her situation. This quotation conveys Morrison’s message of the severe stereotypes and the toxic nature of appearance-based judgment. The black characters are characterized by being disgusting. It is suggested that the Breedlove’s are stuck in poverty because of their ugliness, and their house is a clear representation of that. They “lived there because they were poor and black, and they stayed there because they believed they were ugly. Although their poverty was traditional and stultifying, it was not unique. But their ugliness was unique. No one could have convinced them that they were not relentlessly and aggressively ugly,” (38). Everything is definitely not what it seems. As a matter of fact, the Breedlove home is a place of pain and neglect with no happiness anywhere near.

It is essential for all races and individuals to fully comprehend how mass culture affects, influences and forms values and ideals for all cultures and for all individuals. In order for people aspire to fight and develop to their fullest potential, people need to realize it first. The Bluest Eye gives a vivid portrait of the subtle and powerful cultural influence and the impact it makes on the community. By explaining the impact of cultural ideas on black people, the racial oppression functions in the context of white-defined internalization of appearance and discussed its harmful effect on African-Ameicans as well as others within their community.

ABSTRACT

Any literature written in the United States or the original colonies is part of what is today considered American Literature. The variety of cultures that were welcomed into America gave way to a fantastic diversity in the types of literature it spawned. From the 1500s to today, America has delivered some of the finest writers of our time. The reason that American literature is unique is because America from it’s beginning had a special philosophy of life and freedom and reflected it in it’s writings.

The purpose of this paper is to study the quest for an ideal beauty in Toni Morrison’s famous work “The Bluest Eye”. She explores how Western standards for an ideal beauty are created and propagated among the black community. The novel not only portrays the lives of those who are dark skinned but it also shows how the standard of white beauty is imposed on black youth which drastically damage one’s self-love and esteem which in turn causes self-hatred. Morrison in this novel focuses on the damage that the black women suffer through the construction of femininity in a racial society where whiteness is used as a standard of beauty.

INTRODUCTION

Toni Morrison is a well-known African-American woman writer of modern age. She is a celebrated American writer who has won several literary awards like National Book Critics Award, The Pulitzer Prize and The Nobel Prize. She has written seven novels so far and widely read by people all over the world. The works of African – American woman writers focus their attention on black audience. Under the influence of racism of European white civilization the blacks could not attain their identity or personality. She believed that for establishing their identity the African American should look into the black past and heart for a new vision and future instead of following racist European symbols and culture. A black artist does not live in solitude. The best art is political , it must effect change and improvement. It should be responsible to society and enlighten people. In her novel she writes in style asking the reader to participate in her story and ideas. She narrows down her audience to women. In her first three novels “the Bluest Eye” , “Sula” and “Beloved”, Pecola , Clandia and Frieda , are all black women and occupies central position in the story. She also believes that women have special knowledge about certain things which comes to them from the way the look at the world also from their feelings and imagination.

In the novel, Toni Morrison addresses a timeless problem of white racial dominance in the United States and points to the impact it has on the life of black females growing up in the 1930’s. Morrison started writing the novel in the mid of 1960s, but the idea came twenty years earlier when one of her classmates revealed a sad secret that she had been praying to God to give her blue eyes for the past two years. Morrison wrote this novel when the ‘Black is beautiful’ slogan movement was at the peak. She started to think why such movement was needed, ‘why although reviled by others, could this beauty not be taken for granted within the community? Why did it need wide public articulation?’

If an individual or group is constantly being put down, they themselves begin to believe it and consider themselves as inferior. She centers her story on an ordinary girl who is taught by her racial society that she is ugly to portray the cruel thoughts of society. For Pecola’s family, life was just one disappointment after another- Poor, black, and ugly and were left with no room for self-improvement. This ugliness that did not belong to them was always shadowing their lives; everywhere they looked the society shone back at them like a giant mirror portraying nothing but hideousness, a hideousness resulting from society’s prejudice and harsh standards against them. Morrison says that:

You looked at them and wondered why they were so ugly; you looked closely and could not find the source. Then you realized that it came from conviction, their conviction. It was as though some mysterious all-knowing master had given each one a cloak of ugliness to wear, and they had each accepted it without question. (p.39)

The Bluest Eye provides an depiction of the ways in which internalized white beauty standards distort the lives of black girls and women. The superiority of white and their whiteness is made implicit through images like the white baby doll given to Claudia, the glorification of Shirley Temple, the consensus that light-skinned Maureen is beautiful than the other black girls, the worship of white beauty in the movies.. Adult women and the little girls hate the blackness of their own bodies. Mrs. Breedlove feels that Pecola is ugly. But Claudia remains free from this worship of whiteness, for her imagining Pecola’s unborn baby is beautiful. But once Claudia reaches adolescence, she too will learn to hate herself, as if racial self-loathing were a necessary part of maturation. Pecola suffers most from white beauty standards. She believes that if she possesses blue eyes, the unkindness in her life will be replaced by affection and respect. This hopeless desire leads ultimately to madness and barren life.

The novel explores the disastrous consequence of western notion of physical beauty on a young poor impressionable black girl Pecola. The idea is essentially racist it is dangerous because it equates white skin with personal worth and implies that those who do not have these features are not beautiful are thus inferior. Toni Morrison goes to extent that equating of physical beauty with virtue is one of the dumbest and destructive idea of western world and physical beauty has nothing to do with our past, present and future. It can damage one’s self image , destroy happiness and kills one’s creativity. This idea is worked out in terms of its devastating effect on a poor, luckless, loveless , black family called Breedloves. It focus on how whites and blacks in different ways help to push Pecola over brink of sanity. It indicts whole culture that has popularized these oppressive white standards through every available medium- from Hollywood movies to elementary school primers , drinking cups .

Inevitably color consciousness is a constant presence in text and together with economic status has a determining influence on how the characters view themselves and relate to others. There is a caste system within black themselves depending on lightness of their skin and economic means.

Pecola’s tragedy begins much before we find her praying for blue eyes- which are for her a symbol of white beauty. She accepts the conventional standards that she has absorbed uncritically from consumer society that surrounds her. But a more direct source of her obsession with blue eyes is her mother Pauline who in her younger days had given herself up to dreams fed by movies.

She was never able after her education in the movies, to look at a face and not assign it some category in scale of her beauty and the scale was one she absorbed in full from silver screen.. (p. 122)

Pecola when born was a right smart baby with eyes all soft and wet and her head full of pretty hair but in her scale of absolute beauty she was ugly. Pauline transmits both self contem0pt and obsession with physical beauty to her daughter. Later she achieve acceptance and respectability in the only way possible for a black women of her class by being an ideal servant in a rich household. The groundwork of her tragedy is laid. Her journey brings in contact with different characters whose attitude towards her shows them up. Her fragmented narrative gives us an opportunity to study these attitudes by giving us close-ups of their meetings with Pecola.

The episode of Pecola’s visit to Mr. Yacobowski’s grocery store for Mary Jane candies illustrates the dynamics of color prejudice in the novel. For him, Pecola is metaphorically as well as literally beneath his notice. Because he sees blacks in mass , he does not see individual beneath the skin color. Maureen Peal , high yellow dream child is tolerant of her. But once her superiority is challenged she proves to be no less hostile and insulting to her than black boys who have been tormenting her. And after she has fallen out with Claudia and Frieda she runs away screaming : ‘ I am cute! And you ugly! Black and ugly, black e mos. I am cute.’ The violence of blacks against blacks is evident. Geraldine’s hostility towards Pecola is even more pronounced when there is someone like Pecola to remind her of her blackness. Her sadistic son Junior had invited her to play in their house and later tormented by throwing his cat at her. She outbursts : ‘you nastily little black bitch: Get out of my house.’

Even more tragic is Pecola’s humiliation at hands of her own mother in fisher kitchen. The kitchen is space that Pauline has made for herself in white household and represents her complete subservience to white masters. Pecola’s leg gets burnt by hot liquid but Pauline adds insult to injury by beating her and turning her out of her kitchen. Ironically this expulsion takes place in presence of fisher doll child who represents what Pecola has dreamt of becoming. Moreover , mother’s silence about Pecola ‘s identity amounts to a virtual disowning of her own daughter.

The biggest irony is that her own father and mother themselves the victim of racial society completes the process of her humiliation. The mother accomplish this by withholding her love while the father’s love- ‘horrific love’ as it has been called , proves even more disastrous and all but pushes her over into inanity.’ Having being failed by most people around her including her own parents for her ugliness, Pecola is more convinced than ever before of her dire need for the miraculous gift of blue eyes , a gift she believes Soaphead Church can bestowed. Soaphead Church is sympathetic towards Pecola. His letter to god implies the unavailability of divine help in sorting out the color problem. In that sense, it ironically articulates the need to come to terms with it purely human terms.

The situation is not completely hopeless. The prostitutes are sympathetic to Pecola. But since the prostitutes are social pariahs their support to Pecola is not enough to sustain her ego. In time, according to adult Claudia ,they all join the band that learned to worship Shirley temple. At the end Pecola is left to flounder all alone busily trying to seek assurance from an invented friend that the eyes that Soaphead Church has given her are the bluest of all.

In this novel, ugliness is attributed to poverty and blackness, as in the case of the Breedloves. The family features can be contrasted with the description of a doll to demonstrate the beauty scale. As a manifestation in Western thinking of an inner ugliness is a spiritual and moral failure and that which was ‘white’ (or Anglo, male ,Christian ,wealthy )was having connotations of benevolence and superiority. While that which was not white was debased and associated with malevolence and inferiority

They were poor and black […] their ugliness was unique. No one could have convinced them that they were not relentlessly and aggressively ugly.[…] Their eyes, the small eyes set closely together under narrow foreheads. The low irregular hairlines, […], heavy eyebrows which nearly met. Keen but crooked nosed, with insolent nostrils.(p.28)

The ‘ugly’ conviction directly affected Pecola. “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, but teachers and classmates alike” (p. 46). She reduced to believe that she was ugly because her family believed that they were all ugly. There is a scene in the story where some boys, who are black , in her school are making fun of her on the playground and talking about how her father sleeps naked. This shows that not all of the racist acts in the novel are by whites. This is one of the examples in the novel that involves racism among black characters as well. However, Pecola mistakes their teasing for something personal.

“That they themselves were black, or that their own father had similarly relaxed habits was irrelevant. It was their contempt for their own blackness that gave the first insult its teeth,” the text reads, and then goes on to describe how this behavior was fueled by their “cultivated ignorance” and “self-hatred”. But Pecola believes that her own ugliness was the cause of the teasing, she suffered from self-pity. She believes that

“if those eyes of hers were different, that is to say, beautiful, she herself would be different….If she looked different, beautiful, maybe Cholly, Pecola’s father, would be different, and Mrs. Breedlove, too” (p. 46).

Pecola’s desire for blue eyes is imaginative and is based on one insight into her world: she believes that the cruelty she witnesses is connected to how she is seen. If she had beautiful blue eyes, people would not want to do ugly things to her. The accuracy of this insight is affirmed by her experience of being teased by the boys—when Maureen comes to her rescue, it seems that they no longer want to behave badly under Maureen’s attractive gaze. Pecola and her family are mistreated because they have black skin. By wishing for blue eyes rather than white skin, Pecola indicates that she wishes to see things differently. By blinding herself she can only then receive this wish.. Pecola is able to see herself as beautiful only at the cost to see accurately both herself and the world around her.

The Bluest Eye ends with Claudia’s indictment of the society which that ‘this soil is bad for certain kinds of flowers. Certain seeds it will not nurture, certain fruit it will not bear, and when the land kills of its own volition, we acquiesce and say the victim had no right to live.’ (p.200 ) The novel thus comes full circle to the images of infertility with which it began, and this search for a whole self is finished. It seems through the action of the novel that Pecola’s doomed quest is but a heightened version of that of her parents, of Church, and of countless others in her world. Having inherited the feeling of inferiority from her parents and community, Pecola is brought up with “a fear of growing up, fear of other people, fear of life” (p. 100).

Bell Hooks also addresses this destructive opinion in black people’s minds that disconnects them from the reality: “Like Pecola, […], black folks turn away from reality because the pain of awareness is so great”

CONCLUSION

Throughout the entire novel, the theme of whiteness as a standard of beauty is reflected. The title itself is a window into the desire Pecola has, “A little black girl yearns for blue eyes of a little white girl, and the horror at the heart of her yearning is exceeded only by the evil of fulfillment.” (p. 204) . Pecola simply wish for blue eyes so that she too look beautiful, but at the end of the novel she sees through her blue eyes, that her wish has also caused her mental deterioration. Ignored by her teachers, other adults, classmates and ultimately raped by her father, Pecola experiences all forms of ugliness, retreating finally into her mad yearning to be the opposite of her self—that is, a white child, like the universally beloved Shirley Temple, with the blondest hair and the bluest eyes. Pecola’s death represents what happens when a society pushes its unachievable standards onto a miserable person. Pecola’s insanity was result of her father raping her, result of meeting Soaphead Church and result of the world telling her she was invisible and ugly. Pecola is a representation of desire to be beautiful, loved and respected by all. Perhaps this novel shows a dictum which is clearly expressed by Calvin Hernton: ‘if you are white you are all right; if you are brown you can stick around; but if you are black….get back’.

In the novel, The Bluest Eye , is about partiality, yet there are commonly a couple of case of mental maltreatment from relatives and the community. The characters in the novel are liable to a hidden game plan of characteristics which makes its own one of a kind cycle of abuse. It seems to demonstrate how the African American social measures are reliant on the shade of their skin to give some illumination. For all races and for all individuals, it is essential to totally perceive how society impacts our characteristics and feelings. By sketching out the effect of social objectives and advancing toward different psychical responses. It demonstrates how racial abuse works as white-portrayed magnificence camouflage and elucidates its hurting sway on African-Americans.

Morrison gives a clear understanding into the psychical procedure in light of direct racial segregation, by portraying the character of the young lady named, Claudia. Not affected by the white culture yet, little Claudia has not touched base at the defining moment in the improvement of her mind, which would enable her to cherish the blue-looked at, yellow-haired, and pink-cleaned dolls. What Claudia feels around then is oblivious contempt, which ranges from white dolls to all the white young ladies. The dark kids begin with a solid, direct scorn of white prevalence. Notwithstanding, when they get injured because of that disdain. For instance, Claudia gets admonished in the wake of dismantling the doll and get the support of the message that whiteness is wonderful and darkness is appalling. For instance, the light-skin dark young lady Maureen’s prevalence at school, they start to search for asylum. Also, another character Pecola, is deceived by a general public that conditions her to believe that her skin is not beautiful. She in fact doesn’t characterize white Western culture’s thoughts of magnificence. She describes how she wants to look, giving an example of the images of the prevailing white culture that gives the overall pictures of self-character. Morrison brings up forcefully that African-Americans’ love of white culture, alongside their sadness, similar to Pecola’s grotesqueness, is a condition of being that is both constrained upon and picked by them. To Morrison, just when individuals pick and acknowledge these white-characterized qualities, do they start to disguise them and view the world through the eyes of white culture. Popular culture can sometimes quicken this silent transformation, because the atmosphere it creates and racist messages are so prevalent that they are difficult to ignore. Therefore, African- Americans are especially vulnerable to the messages conveyed by popular culture that white beauty will inevitably dominate people’s life.

Another strong precedent is from Pauline’ mother, Mrs. Pauline Breedlove. Pecola’s very own mom strengthens the message the young ladies have been getting about the prevalence of whites. For Mrs. Pauline Breedlove, motion pictures are the essential vehicle for transmitting white pictures for open utilization. She ingests the arrangement of qualities from the cinema, at that point exacts a serious injury on her significant other and kids who bomb by the size of supreme excellence. Inevitably, Pauline abandons her very own family and takes shelter in the delicate magnificence encompassing the Fishers’ home. Her craving to deny her little girl is demonstrated when the white young lady asks who the dark kids are and Mrs. Breedlove abstains from noting her. She has repudiated her very own dark family for the group of her white business. It is never again the immediate mistreatment of dark by white, however persecution of a little girl by her mom who disguises the white standard of excellence and utilizations it as an instrument to hurt her very own little girl.

For all races, it is basic to completely see how mass culture contacts, impacts and shapes our qualities and convictions. Simply after completely understanding that, can individuals endeavor to battle and develop to their fullest potential. On account of Morrison’s striking representation of the unpretentious yet significant social impact, the book won extraordinary achievement, however the plot of The Bluest Eye isn’t so new or not quite the same as those of other African American books. Through her announcement on the harm that disguised prejudice can do to the most defenseless individual from a network. By representing the impact of social standards and moving toward dark individual’s’ distinctive physical reactions, this paper demonstrates how racial persecution functions as white-defi ned excellence disguise and clarifies its harming impact on African-Americans just as on others inside their families and the area.

According to Zlogar, “The Bluest Eye opens and closes with Claudia MacTeer’s reflection on the meaning and significance of a little girl’s suffering and her community’s responsibility and obligation to her” (“The Bluest Eye” 188). According to Zlogar, “Dark-skinned Claudia values herself more than the world does” (“The Bluest Eye” 188). According to Zlogar, “Using Marigold seeds as a metaphor for the affection that might have allowed her abused friend PecolaBreedlove to thrive, Claudia realizes that the failure of her seeds to sprout demonstrates that the soil of her community ‘is bad for certain kinds of flowers” (“The Bluest Eye” 188). According to Zlogar. “While Claudia MacTeer withstands that world’s harshness through the strength and love of her family, a fragile child such as Pecola has no chance’ (“The Bluest Eye 188).

The author of the “The Bluest Eye” is Toni Morrison. According to Bloom,” Novelist Toni Morrison was born Chloe Anthony Wofford, on February 18,1931, and grew up in Lorain, Ohio, the second of four children of George Wofford, a shipyard welder, and his wife Ramah Willis Wofford” (“Toni Morrison” 2762). According to Bloom, “After attending Lorain High School she went to Howard University Players, and in the summer toured the South with a student-faculty repertory troupe” (“Toni Morrison” 2762).

According to Bloom, “After earning her an M.A. at Cornell in 1955 Morrison taught for two years at Texas Southern University, and then in 1957 took a teaching position at Howard, where she married Harold Morrison, a Jamaican architect” (“Toni Morrison” 2762). According to Bloom, “In 1964, she divorced Morrison and returned with her two sons to Lorain; a year and a half later she became an editor for a textbook subsidiary of Random House in Syracuse” (“Toni Morrison” 2762). According to Bloom, “By 1970 she had moved to an editorial position at Random House in New York, where she eventually became a senior editor” (“Toni Morrison” 2762). According to Bloom, “In the early 1970s, she began to write a series of articles, most of which appeared in the New York Times Book review” (“Toni Morrison” 2762). According to Bloom, “She has taught Afro-American literature an creative writing at the State University of New York, Purchase, Yale University, and Bard College” (“Toni Morrison” 2762).

According to Bloom, ‘Toni Morrison began to write when she returned to Howard in 1957, and since then she has published several novels in which the problems of Black women in the north are a major theme” (“Toni Morrison” 2762). According to Bloom, “her books have a fabulistic quality, and she has at times been directly inspired by Afro-American folktales” (“Toni Morrison” 2762). According to Bloom, “Her novels are “The Bluest Eye (1970)”; “Sula (1974)”; “The Song of Soloman (1977)”; and “Tar Baby (1981)”” “(Toni Morrison 2762). According to Bloom, “Morrison, like many of the powerful women in her fiction, has capacities that strike her friends as other-worldy. According to Bloom, “To Toni Morrison, however, there is no magic in writing, editing, teaching, and raising two boys alone” (“Toni Morrison” 2762).

According to Bloom, ‘Toni Morrsion is an editor with a New York publishing firm, and (The Bluest Eye) is her first novel” (“Toni Morrison” 2763). According to Bloom, “The title pinpoints the focus of her book” (“Toni Morrison” 2763). According to Bloom, “Pecola Breedlove, in her first year of womanhood, is black, ugly, and poor living in a store front, sharing a bedroom with her brother, her father, she goes to Soaphead Church, a man who believes himself possessed of holy powers” (“Toni Morrison’ 2763). According to Bloom, “What she wants is blue eyes” (“Toni Morrison” 2763). According to Bloom, “In this scene, in which a young black on the verge of madness seeks beauty and happiness in a wish for white girl’s eyes, the author makes her most telling statement on the tragic effect of face prejudice on children” (“Toni Morrison” 2763). According to Bloom, “For most of way, Pecola knowing her, and perhaps offering contrast, by themselves being black and poor (though from a happier home), serve little purpose beyond distraction” (“Toni Morrison” 2763). According to Bloom, “Claudia tells the story part way into each of the four seasonal divisions of the book” (“Toni Morrrison” 2763). According to Bloom, “There are vivid scenes: Pecola’s first “ministratin”, a “pretty milk-brown lady” driving Pecola from her home for the killing of a cat, by the woman’s own son; the young Cholly Breddlove (later to be Pecola’s father0 caught during the sex act by white men and being forced to continue for their amusement” (“Toni Morrison” 2763).

“The Bluest Eye” symbolizes a lot of important themes society as dealt with and are still dealing with today. The novel revolves around themes such as race, beauty, innocence, and purity, which are such major and sensitive topic to talk about. Toni Morrison based the novel off of a true event in which she had a childhood conversation with a girl who wanted blue eyes. The novel is such a heartbreaking story because it deals with so much that society as dealing with back in the 1940s and 1950s and still in the present day. People often forget how hurtful racism was in the past. Black women and children were never at center stage and were always unimportant, for this reason Morrison wanted to focus on a young black girl being hurt.

The novel “The Bluest Eye” is about Claudia Macteer and her sister Fredia living with their parents. Their family decide to take in a boarder name Mr. hendryand they also decide to take in a young black girl named Pecola Breedlove who is experiencing phyical and sexual abuse and neglect. Society makes Pecola feel like she is ugly so she thinks in order to be beautiful she should be white and have blue eyes. Her parents are Cholly and Pauline bbeedlove. According to Zlogar, “Pecola’s mother, a maid and frustrated artist who abuses her children” (“The Bluest Eye” 188). According to Zlogar, “Pecola’s abusive father is Cholly Breedlove” (“The Bluest Eye” 188). Pecola is a quiet child and her home life is very difficult. Her father is an alcoholic and is constantly fighting with her mom. Pecola gets bullied by the boys at her school and the new light-skinned girl Maureen Peal. In the novel one day Cholly comes home drunk and finds Pecola in the kitchen washing dishes. He then rapes her and afterwards puts a quilt over her. Pecola tells her mother but her mother doesn’t believe her and hits her. Pecola is then impregnated with her father’s child, the child soon dies. According to Zlogar, “The narratives of Pauline and Cholly Breedlove help the reader at least to understand their characters, even if it is difficult to empathize with them” (“The Bluest Eye” 190).

Novelist Toni Morrison talks about serious subjects such as race and beauty to grab the reader’s attention because people often don’t talk about race and beauty especially when it comes to black women. Society back then and even now make black women feel as if they are ugly and not cared for. The point Most back girls’ mothers taught them that they were ugly and white was beautiful and more superior to them. Morrson writes about these types of things because it makes her writing more interesting and teaches people about African American history as well.

Introduction to Pecola’s World

The Bluest Eye begins with a brief story about Dick and Jane. The story repeated three times to make sure the readers aware that the line of the story will be the heading of every chapter. The Bluest Eye presents Claudia MacTeer is the narrator of the story. She and her sister, Frieda MacTeer, are lived in Lorain, Ohio, after The Great Depression. They lived with their parents, although their parents didn’t give them much attention, their life seems good. Claudia didn’t tell the story about herself. She mostly narrates about an African-American girl, Pecola Breedlove. She is the center of this story.

Pecola’s Struggles and Dreams

Pecola’s life was not easy. Her parents always fight each other. Her mom works while her dad gets drunk. She never got the attention she should have. In school, she also didn’t have friends. The other children always mock or teasing her like she is not a human being. She teased by Maureen Peal, a light-skinned girl. And also, by Junior, a boy who pretends to be kind to her but wants to trap Pecola. She started to think about how was her life if she has a pretty face, white skin, and blue eyes, just like people she met, maybe her life will be much better. Pecola stayed in MacTeer’s house when her father hits her mother and tried to burn their house. When she was there, she got her first menstruation. She was confused. She is very innocent to know about that thing. Mrs. MacTeer finally knew about it and tried to help her cleanse herself.

Besides of the sorrow she had, some women still be kind to her. They are Miss China, Miss Marie, and Miss Poland. They lived above Pecola’s house. They are prostitution women but still want to be friends with Pecola and like to talk about anything with her.

In the spring, Claudia found out Frieda was crying. She said that because Mr. Henry touched her private parts (her breast) and when she told her parents, her dad beats Mr. Henry and drove him out.

The Impact of Family and Community

There are parts of the story which describe Pecola’s parents and their past. Before they’re married, and all of the struggles they have in life until now. About how Pauline Breedlove, as Pecola’s mother, through her life before and after marriage. How she raised both of her children and how she deals with her life. She never sees her family as her family, as we know that Pecola calls her Mrs. Breedlove, while the child in her work calls her Polly. The story also tells about the past of Cholly Breedlove. As a man with two children, he never acts like a father. He ignored his family and going home drunk.

It relates to the present when Pecola washing dishes, he found her. He was drunk and thought that Pecola was Pauline, her wife. Then, he raped her. Pecola faints. She wakes up when Mrs. Breedlove looking at her, and when she told her about the raped thing, Mrs. Breedlove doesn’t believe her and hits her. Shortly after, Pecola realized that she was pregnant. It must be her father’s child. She feels depressed and goes to Soaphead Church and told him about her dreams. She wants to see the world with her beautiful blue eyes. At first, the Soaphead shocked. But then, he wants to grant Pecola’s dream. He gives Pecola meat to feed the dog. He said that if the dog died, she can get her dream. The Soaphead just hates the dog, but Pecola doesn’t know that the meat poisoned. So, when the dog died, she feels very happy and believes that she will get her blue eyes soon.

The Tragic Outcome of Pecola’s Wish

Claudia and Frieda know about the pregnant from the neighbors who talked about it. People want her child to die, but Claudia and Frieda don’t. They want to grow a marigold flower, which means that they want the baby alive as the flowers will blossom. But the baby died. Pecola has lost her mind because she believed that she has blue eyes. At the end of the story, Pecola talks to the mirror, which is herself, and admiring the blue eyes she had, that actually not.

Character Analysis and Their Roles

There are six main characters in The Bluest Eye, First, Claudia MacTeer. She is a nine-year-old African-American girl and has dark skin. She is the narrator of the story. Sometimes she felt insecure about herself, but she didn’t want it to stop her. So, she acts like normal and ignored any mockery that talked about her. She also has a sister, Frieda MacTeer. She is older and smarter than Claudia. She was also braver and more mature than her.

And then, Pecola Breedlove. Her life narrated by Claudia in this story. She is eleven years old African-American girl. She was born with black and dark skin, from an unhappy family, and poor. She never felt great, nor with herself. She thought that she is the unluckiest girl in the world. Every mistake or problem in her life, she always thought that is because she’s ugly. Her life was hard. Her mom and dad never gave her attention. One day, she raped by her dad, and when her mom knows, she didn’t believe her. After that, she goes to Soaphead Church. She told him that she wants to have blue eyes. But the Soaphead gave the meat that already poisoned, and told her to give it to the dog. He said if the dog acts strange, she will get the blue eyes. And then the dog coughed and died. She didn’t know that the meat poisoned, so she goes away, and thought that soon, she will get the blue eyes. She finally lost her mind and talked to the mirror, like she has the most beautiful blue eyes, which is not.

Another character is Cholly Breedlove. He is Pecola’s father. He ruined Pecola’s life. His life told as a flashback. In the story, when he was 4 days old, he almost dumped by his mother. He has unforgettable sexual experience. He finally met a woman in Kentucky, who later becomes his wife, Pauline Breedlove. She is Pecola’s mother. Though she never makes a ‘mother’ vibe in Breedlove’s family. Pecola calls her Mrs. Breedlove, while a child in a white family her works calls her Polly. He never sees love from her family, she found it in movies which told about romantic love and physical beauty.

The last is Soaphead Church or Elihue Micah Whitcomb. He is an advisor and a dream reader. In his letter, he said that he does the thing that God can’t. It because Pecola asks him about blue eyes. He wrote, ‘I did what You did not, could not, would not do: I looked at that ugly little black girl, and I loved her. I played You. And it was a very good show!’ (p.182). There are also some supporting characters, such as Mr. and Mrs. MacTeer, Miss Poland, Miss China, Miss Marie, Sammy Breedlove, Mr. Henry, Aunt Jimmy, Geraldine, Junior, and Maureen Peal.

The story took place in Loraine, Ohio, United States of America. This place is a place where Toni Morrison, the author, was born. She was born on 18th February 1931. The perspective that she used in The Bluest Eye was from a nine-year-old girl in 1941, the year when Morrison at the same age. She is an African-American writer who succeeded in her career. The Bluest Eye was the first novel that she wrote while she is the writer’s group at Howard University (Toni Morrison Biography). She got a lot of prizes because of her works, ‘Beloved’ is one of them. She also got the Noble Prizes in 1993 (Fox,2019). She was born in 1931 during The Great Depression. Her dad works in three different jobs to support the needs of the family during an economic crisis.

The Bluest Eye was written in the 1950s or 1960s when there was a Civil Rights movement in America. Many people supporting the rights of women and blacks. At that time, blacks with many whites rally for asked for equality for blacks in the United States. they demand equality under the law and eliminate discrimination against blacks. African-Americans had more than enough prejudice and violence against them. But Morrison wrote about an innocent little girl who suffers in the middle of dissimilitude that happened around her, including racism, discrimination, rape, and another mess (History, 2019)

Themes and Symbols: Beauty Standards and Racial Discrimination

The themes of the story are whiteness as beauty standards and racial discrimination. In this story, most of the characters are African-Americans who have dark skin thought about their lives if they have white skin they surrounded by happiness. At that time, women with white skin became respected by many people who flattered them. Surely this makes Africa-America jealous about have white skin as the beauty standards. For example, first, of course, Pecola Breedlove. She even wanted to change his eyeballs to blue because she thinks, beauty was in the color of his skin and blue eyeballs. Then, Pauline Breedlove who saw that white was like in movies, so she was seen by others. She also prefers his employer’s white child to her daughter, Pecola. Claudia has a doll with white skin and blue eyes, Shirley Temple as an idol at that time who has a perfect beauty standard, etc.

Beauty standards actually not always have white skin and blue eyes. A person’s beauty cannot be judged only by their appearance. When someone makes a standard of beauty, they make it for themselves. Every human being has its beauty and uniqueness. If you want to make a beauty standard for everyone, then it will not be owned by anyone. In this story, African-Americans who have dark skin, are not included in the standard of beauty. They are never satisfied with what they already have. It makes them lose their confidence.

If we take a look at the story, African-Americans often became a joke by their friends or are the talk of society. In this story, Pecola Breedlove often experienced racial discrimination. She was ridiculed by some boys in her school, Maureen, and by Junior, who accused her of killing his mother’s cat. All that makes Pecola feel that having dark skin and not blue eyes makes her always live in misery and sadness. She thought that if she had white skin and blue eyes like Mary Jane, other people would respect and be nice to her. If that happens, then all she feels is happiness and calmness. And finally, these feelings make her lost her mind. Worse than his previous African-American life.

The Point of View of the story is a bit tricky. Claudia, as the narrator, told the story about her past using the present tense. She mostly told about Pecola’s life than herself. She tried to understand Pecola’s feelings so she can describe Pecola well. The reader could easily understand when she describes herself or when she describes Pecola. And in the other part, there were told the past of some characters such as Pauline Breedlove, Cholly Breedlove, Soaphead Church, etc. This Point of View uses a third person to tell their stories. The third person knows everything about the person, like what they feel and think. We can say that the third person is omniscient. According to the Cambridge Dictionary, Omniscient is having or seeming to have unlimited knowledge. So, that’s why the third person is Omniscient.

The tone used by the narrator in this story is sympathy but still neutral. At first, when Claudia tells about herself and the people around her, she tends to use language that is easy to understand and still in her establishment. When she told about Pecola, it appeared that he was very sympathetic to Pecola. She tried her best to describe how Pecola’s feelings and what she does in a day. Though she doesn’t have a connection with the characters she told, she pretty well to explain their story. This story using Claudia’s perspective when she was a child, so the language Morrison used could be easily understood. It tends to be descriptive and metaphorical. She is also detailed in, but because of the children’s point of view, the details she keeps remain simple.

The Bluest Eye, as the story’s title, becomes the main symbol in this story. It represents a beauty standard in that era. People who didn’t have blue eyes thought that they’re ugly. They felt like they don’t deserve to be happy and respect from other people. Beauty standards in that era had white skin and blue eyes. The Bluest Eye means that everybody will get their happiness if they have bluest eyes from other people. This beauty standards also became a standard for other people to get a better life. To African-American people like the characters of this story, lived in a place where beauty can affect their life, is not easy. They should face the fact that they will be disrespectful people. The Eye also becomes a symbol because eyes are a place where we can see the world and reality. When the eyes are closed, it’s the same as closing yourself to see the world and reality. When Pecola didn’t want her eyes because she thought it’s ugly, it means that she ignores the fact and reality. She blinds because of her fault that she didn’t want to accept her life.

The other symbol of this story is the marigold. This flower symbolizes the growth of Pecola’s baby. Marigold is the plant that easies to grow, which means that when Claudia and Frieda plant this flower, they hope that the baby will flourish like how marigold grows. Only Claudia and Frieda that still wants the baby alive. They bury their desire to buy a bicycle to plant the marigold. They pray to God to save the baby, and they said they promise to be a good person for a whole month (p. 191). But unfortunately, the baby was dead, and the marigold didn’t grow. Their expectations shattered.

Foreshadowing in this story is in the prologue that told about a family, the Mother, Father, Dick, and Jane. The prologue describes the house and the family briefly. It was in 1941, the year after The Great Depression. Jane wants to play. She asks the cats, dogs, Mother, Father, and Dick to play, but they refused her. And then comes a friend, they play together.

This prologue divided into several sentences for the heading in each chapter. And these headings become a foreshadowing for each chapter. For example, ‘HEREISTHEFAMILYMOTHERFATHERDICKANDJANETHEYLIVEINTHEGREENANDWHITEHOUSETHEYAREVERYH’ (p.38). It was the heading of the chapter told about the Pecola family. Or ‘SEETHECATITGOESMEOWMEOWCOMEANDPLAYCOMEPLAYWITHJANETHEKITTENWILLNOTPLAYPLAYPLAYPL’ (p.81). It was the heading of the chapter told about Junior, Geraldine, and their cats. When Pecola went to Junior’s house to see a cat, something terrible happened. Junior kills the cat. He accuses Pecola, so Geraldine was angry at her.

Then, in the next paragraph, there is also foreshadowing. When Claudia told about her past in 1941, and how marigolds didn’t grow that year. Morrison told this as a clue to the ending of The Bluest Eye. Anything that happened in Pecola’s life after the great depression, and also about marigolds, which symbolize the destruction of Claudia and Frieda’s hopes of wishing that the baby Pecola survived.

Besides its popularity and meaningful story, ‘The Bluest Eye’ (1970) was ranked as the second most banned book in the United States by the American Library Association (When Murakami, Toni Morrison, J D Salinger’s Books Were Banned, 2018). From 1994 until 2015, noted that about 15 countries have already banned this book (Banned Library, 2016). The reason why those countries banned the book is that it’s contained violent content, a lot of sexual scenes, racism, and some bad words which inappropriate to taught at school. Some parents also complain to the school about the book the school gives to their child.

References

1. Fox, M. (2019, August 6). Toni Morrison, Towering Novelist of the Black Experience, dies at 88. nytimes. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/06/books/toni-morrison-dead.html
2. Toni Morrison Biography. Notablebiographies. https://www.notablebiographies.com/Mo-Ni/Morrison-Toni.html
3. History. (2019, August 28). Civil Rights Movement. History. https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/civil-rights-movement
4. When Murakami, Toni Morrison, J D Salinger’s Books Were Banned. (2018, August 7). Economictimes.indiatimes. https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/magazines/panache/when-murakami-toni-morrison-j-d-salingers-books-were-banned/women-in-love-by-dh-lawrence/slideshow/65303739.cms
5. Banned. (2016, July 3). Banned Library. http://www.bannedlibrary.com/podcast/2016/6/23/banned-62-the-bluest-eye-by-toni-morrison