Subversive Politics of Racism in Toni Morrison's the Bluest Eye (original) (raw)

Racial Conflicts in Tony Morrison's The Bluest Eye: A Literary Analysis

Sujana Suvin., Sch J Arts Humanit Soc Sci, Nov, 2020; 8(11): 553-559, 2020

Racism is a belief in the superiority of one race to another which results in discrimination and prejudice towards people based on their race or ethnicity. The life of African-American colored people has been affected by racism. For this purpose, the paper tries to focus on a system where chauvinism, malevolence, and domestically sexual harassments against Pecola Breedlove whose only target is to achieve beauty, which means happiness and survival. The novel portrays the effect of discrimination on a budding teenager's sexual being that put her in a gloomy and scary atmosphere from where the character was unable to leap out. The novel shows the prejudices that create a crater in the black man's psyche and his unexposed aggression on the white world led to his psychological repression. Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye presents black cultural heritage and solicits the African-American to be proud of female black identity. Thus, this paper would like to examine the nature of the black people's struggle for their race and endurance in a multicultural postcolonial white America.

Analysis of Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye from Black Feminist Perspective

Ars Artium, 2014

The Bluest Eye addresses the issue of self disapproval but in the broader black feminist perspective. More than any other human being, pain, disapproval and humiliation are an inseparable part of a black woman's life. Toni Morrison is a black woman and these are not foreign to her. She writes with a personal knowledge of the pain of the black women. In this novel she has depicted their isolation and hurdles in leading a fulfilling human life. Morrison chooses an eleven year old black girl-Pecola Breedlove-as the central character of her novel because she wants to bring forward the most neglected of human species. This novel addresses what can unquestionably be called a 'disease' in black women's psyche and analyses its root causes. This story of an ugly black girl also raises several sociological and psychological questions. The novel calls into question the contemporaneous slogan, "Black is Beautiful" and challenges readers to consider, the seeds of black hatred, the demons within black psyche, and the culprit or with the broader culture that contributes to black low self esteem.

CENSURING RACIAL SELF-LOATHING IN TONI MORRISON’S THE BLUEST EYE

Komi Begedou, 2015

At a time when white race and blue eyes are idolized by white and black people alike, the innocent Pecola Breedlove desperately, naively and vehemently seeks out beauty for herself. In order to attain beauty in her culture, she must do the undoable: have blue eyes, synonymous with white beauty. Toni Morrison denounces the disastrous effects that racial self-loathing can have on a whole culture in general and on African American culture in particular. Actually, the desire to be considered beautiful in a white dominated world was so compelling that many characters in The Bluest Eye loathe their own skin color and feel shame for their culture. These feelings of self-loathing and self-hatred are passed on from the adults to their children, creating therefore a continuous cycle of negativity and increased self-hate for one’s race. This paper explores the techniques used by Morrison to censure racial self-loathing in her masterpiece. Key words: Racial, censure, self-loathing, culture, beauty.

The Lack of Beauty and Identity in the Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

2012

Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye is a novel that contains many rhetorical arguments and logical fallacies. However, before going into detail about what they are, here is a brief synopsis of what The Bluest Eye is about. The Bluest Eye depicts the tragic life of a young black girl, Pecola Breedlove, who wants nothing more than to be loved by her family and her schoolmates. She surmises that the reason she is despised and ridiculed is that she is black and (actually, her skin is a lot darker than most other black people, which is the main reason that she gets ridiculed), therefore, ugly. Consequently, Pecola sublimates her desire to be loved into a desire to have blue eyes and blond hair; in other words, to basically look like Shirley Temple, who Pecola thinks is adored by all (Tate, C., Black Women Writers at Work, 1985). Pecola, soon after entering young womanhood, is raped and impregnated by her father, Cholly. Her mother, Pauline, finds haven, hope, life and meaning as a servant...

Racism and Representation of Racialized Beauty in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye

SMART MOVES JOURNAL IJELLH

The American novelist Toni Morrison’s novel The Bluest Eye portrays black society and deals with the themes of black victimization and racial oppression. It presents a prolonged representation of the means in which the standards of internalized white beauty contort the life and existence of black women. This paper explores and elucidates the impact of race, racial oppression and representation in The Bluest Eye. And how racism also edifices the hatredness between Blackand White communities. This paper will discuss various issues and concepts such as Race, Race in the Colonial Period, Racializing the Other and Stereotyping. The paper also deals with understanding Representation through the ideas of Saussure, Barthes, Levi-Strauss, Foucault, Geertz, and Said. Racism is primarily a belief in the supremacy and dominance of one race upon another that consequences in the differences, discrimination and prejudice of people towards one another rooted and established on their race or ethnici...

THE ILLUSIONS OF 'WHITE BEAUTY' AND THE POLITICS OF COLOR: A STUDY OF THE BLUEST EYE

VEDA PUBLICATIONS, 2024

The Bluest Eye (1970) is an eye-opening novel that deals with the tremendous oppression of African-Americans. Toni Morrison brings out the conception that the appetence of having white skin devours the African-Americans and their self-esteem gradually becomes self-loathing. The illusions of white beauty and the politics of color are compatible. The keenness of having white skin originates from being a victim of the politics of color. Morrison traces Pecola, the protagonist of this novel, as the scapegoat of an inter-racial society. Her extreme struggle because of having a dark complexion ultimately drives her to be an insane psyche. All the individuals also endure the agitations and agony of the racial society. Pauline Breedlove, Cholly Breedlove, Geraldine, Frieda MacTeer and Claudia MacTeer-all of them become the victim of racism along with Pecola. This paper particularly focuses on the reprimand of the African-Americans for being black and their eagerness of having white skin for escaping those social stigmas in The Bluest Eye. The prejudice against western standards of beauty as well as the illusions of white beauty and its effects on the lives of African-Americans are thoroughly depicted here.

Hegemonic Domination of White over Black in “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison

sjesr

Every human being is beautiful with his own colour and appearance. No colour makes one beautiful but the white people of America have propagated the idea of white beauty as a tool of their politics to show themselves superior to the blacks. They focused on the colour because to be white for a black is unattainable as it is biological. They also tried to create self-hatred among the blacks by spreading the white ideology. They hegemonized the blacks to accept the concept of white beauty by using advertisements, media, actors and education. They also forced the blacks to be considered as ugly creating the least opportunities in the work places for the black community of America; alienating them from the society and torturing them both mentally and physically. As in The Bluest Eye, Pecola and her family are the worst victims of white men’s politics. Pecola together with her family members is both mentally and physically tortured and tormented to accept the white ideology. However, Peco...

Black empowerment and Afro-American values in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye

IIUC Studies

The Bluest Eye of Toni Morrison is extraordinarily significant, as it addresses the different sides of American literature, and the lives of the Afro-American people. Although the conventional theological aspects of white culture can negatively influence other characters of Morrison, it is Pecola whose life appears to be increasingly defenseless against the impulses of the individuals who have accepted the Western custom. In a democratic country, people generally have the same value, but there are still prejudices in the concepts of beauty and worthiness. The search for freedom, black identity, the nature of evil and the robust voices of African-Americans have become themes for African-American literature. Folklore covers the history of black and white interaction in the United States and also summarizes the feelings expressed in protest literature1. Morrison argues that the survival of the dark ladies in a white dominated society depends on loving their own way of life and dark rac...

Racism: Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye a Mouthpiece of Cloured People

2018

Racism is basically a belief in the superiority of one race to another which results in discrimination and prejudice towards people based on their race or ethnicity. The life of African-American cloured people have been affected by racism. These so-called systems of social and psychological restrictions make coloured people to feel inferiors. Toni Morrison has gained reputation internationally with the publication of her first novel The Bluest Eye. This novel mirroring us the terrible consequences for blacks personalizing the values of a white culture that rejects them both directly and indirectly. Even though slavery is abolished legally through the tough efforts of eminent leaders but still the African-Americans are not considered equal to the whites. The Black people are trying to identify themselves with the white and their cultural ways. Toni Morrison insists on Black cultural heritage and solicits the African-Americans to be proud of their Black identity. This paper presents t...