Xuedi Yang

Prof. Barham

English 2

May 4, 2021

The Bluest Eye

The success of "The Bluest Eye" is largely due to the use of symbolic art.

Different from the perspective of other black writers revealing the direct conflict

between blacks and whites, Tony Morrison explores the tragedy of a black girl who

finally becomes insane due to a pair of blue eyes. In 1941, in a small town in Ohio,

the black girl Pecora went through a tragic experience in pursuit of a pair of blue eyes.

Pecora, an eleven-year-old black girl, deeply hates her black identity and longs for

blue eyes. She thinks this is totally prejudiced. This idea is deeply rooted in her heart.

However, unfortunately, transforming the distortion and alienation of her

transformation, she became insane in the fantasy of having blue eyes and went to

destruction. Through this novel, Tony Morrison shows her sympathy for the tragic life

of blacks, her worries about the gradual disappearance of black culture under the

erosion of white culture, and her reflection on the difficulty in cognition of black

identity. "The Bluest Eye" discusses an unique theme: under the strong white culture,

the more practical and liberating way of survival for blacks is to identify and retain

their own excellent cultural traditions, thereby eliminating the internalization of white

values.
 Symbolism runs through the structure, scenes and characters of the novel. In

particular, the most important symbol in the work is the "bluest eye" used in the

naming of the novel, which plays a vital role in the work. The characters in the novel

are roughly divided into two categories: one type represents the power to resist the

internalization of the strong white culture; the other is the people who worship and

completely follow the white values as a guide. The diversity of characters shows the

complexity of reality. Most importantly, the name of the novel "The Bluest Eye" has

multiple symbolic meanings. For Pecola, the symbolic meaning of the "bluest eye" is

constantly changing with the development of the plot. At first, it symbolizes beautiful

things; then, it symbolizes the values of white beauty; finally, it symbolizes the

destructive power that causes a devastating blow to Pecola's spirit and body. For

Claudia, the symbolic meaning of "the bluest eye" is not "eyes" but "blues." The

“blues” first symbolizes the mother's catharsis of life; then it symbolizes the

traditional black culture and history; finally, the “blues” symbolizes the spiritual

support that supports Claudia in finding a way out in the harsh environment of racism.

Pecora's self-discrimination and low self-esteem living mentality stems from a

living environment where values and aesthetics have been distorted. In the dominant

white society that is culturally dominant, the prejudice that equates black with

ugliness permeates every corner of life. Newspapers, advertisements, books, movies

and other popular cultural media promote the aesthetic values of "white is beauty, and

black is ugly". "Because of being in such a confined belief, only a miracle can free

her. She will never be able to understand her own beauty. She can only see what she
can see, the eyes of others." American cultural values are the direct cause of the

distortion of Pecora's human nature and the repression of life. The poverty of the

family, the quarrel of her parents, the contempt of classmates, and the indifference of

white people caused her to lose herself and lose her place in this world. This survival

mentality reveals that the mainstream cultural influence of institutionalization and

legalization dominates the self-definition and identity of blacks. "The protagonist in

the traditional growth novel will make some unwise moral choices in the early stages

of growth. These choices increase the existing social barriers on the path of self-

growth. The protagonist completes the process of self-growth through continuous

corrections, and for Pecola, the opportunity to make choices is denied.

The notion of white supremacy manipulated the value orientation of blacks and

distorted the hearts of blacks. The culture Pecola is living in has been infused with

specific cultural connotations. Her desire and pursuit of blue eyes is a sign of her

internalization and assimilation of white culture. In fact, Pecora "recreated an enemy

in the barriers of her own heart prison. This enemy was dormant in the depths of her

consciousness, becoming one of the most important words in her inner heart, and a

marrow tumor inside her body. It continues to grow and permeates her blood,

devouring her fresh life". Pecora drifted outside the encirclement of prejudice and

hostility, shrouded in her own imaginary world, devouring her own sense of

humiliation by herself, and gradually lost the ability to communicate with the

community, and even gave up the right to reflect on reality and dilemmas. Pecola

rejected the traditional black culture, yearned for and absorbed white culture
completely, and finally lost herself. This immature seedling withered and died in the

barren cultural soil of racial discrimination and prejudice, and the wings of growth

were broken.

Morrison broke the traditional novel's single growth subject. As the first

narrator, Claudia is another growth subject parallel to Pecora. In “the Bluest Eye,” on

the surface, each of her narrations is a reminiscence of the childhood life of herself

and her sister, with an accompanying narrative of what happened to Pecola who was

boarding at her home. The author's true purpose is to compare this narrative of the

growth experience of the two girls. Although living in the same hostile and racially

discriminatory environment, Claudia is active in thinking, rebellious, good at

reflection, self-esteem and self-love, which is in stark contrast with the inferiority,

cowardly and helpless Pecola.

Pecola's development was hampered by a lack of fatherly and maternal

affection in her family. Father Jolly "knows nothing about how to raise children, and

he can't even understand what kind of relationship this should be." Mother Paulin did

her best to look after the white employer's blond little girl, but she constantly scolded

and dismissed her own child. And "although Claudia often suffers from mother's

censure and embarrassment caused by family constraints, she also internalizes the

whites' contempt for blacks, but she can still enjoy the feeling of being cared for and

protected." Claudia was born into a poor black family, but she grew up in a home

where there was always peace and love. They not only warmed each other, but they

also helped other blacks generously. Only their family took pity on Pecola when she
was deserted by her family and mocked and insulted by others in the black

community; only their family cared about her and shed tears of sympathy for her. In

such a family, although the children would be beaten and scolded by their parents

when they made mistakes, when Claudia was sick, her mother would massage her

with ointment, and in the middle of the night "wrap me with a warm flannel blanket,"

and “wrap up her neck and chest with the heavy quilt" The children can see their

father's happy face in this house and hear their mother’s sweet singing. Pecola, on the

other hand, is battered and scolded by his mother and raped by her father.

Claudia differs from Pecora in that she refuses to embrace white culture's

beauty expectations and dares to use her own actions to resist the power of white

cultural concepts. Pecola prayed for a pair of blue eyes, but she had a "more terrible

hatred for all Shirley Temples in the world". She tore a Christmas gift from her

parents—a blond, talking doll, to pieces, because she was disgusted and terrified of

the dumb eyes, big flat face, and orange-red hair." When the self-proclaimed

Caucasian mixed-race Maureen insulted Pecora, "Pecora curled her neck-funny,

pitiful, and helpless", but Claudia "threw a book to her." Pecora is accustomed to

venting all her anger on herself, while "Claudia sprinkles her anger outwards to

protect herself", she would complain everything that annoys her to vent the anger in

her heart, and more importantly, she takes active actions, even if some of the

behaviors are still naive.

Claudia's narrative has a kind of simplicity, without losing the awakening and

profound insight that comes from maturity. Claudia used to think that "the marigold
didn't sprout because Pecola was pregnant with her father's child" when she was a kid.

The novel returns to the calendula and soil problems described in the introduction

chapter when Claudia reminisces about the past as an adult. Claudia looks back on her

naive upbringing as an adult and blames herself for not being able to see the issue

from a social and environmental standpoint, she "even thought that the soil throughout

the country was hostile to marigolds. Some flowers are not suitable for growth on this

land, and some flower seeds cannot get the nutrients of the soil. " Pecola's soil, which

includes her home, education, and community, is deficient in nutrients. At the

conclusion of the book, the author uses this to reveal the deeper theme of the novel: in

the American society where the orthodox white culture is supreme, Pecola is not

different from thousands of African Americans. The chance of success is limited,

because they live in a social soil that hides racial discrimination, and this soil will not

help them. Morrison's novels did not conform to conventional novel stereotypes. Her

goal is to use the development processes of two black girls to address the fundamental

question of how black people can live.

"The Bluest Eye" is undoubtedly a shocking and heavy work. Morrison

penetrated the brushwork into the black community. She revealed this reality: the

aesthetic dislocation has caused the American blacks to fall into a kind of inextricable

sorrow. There are actually two themes in "The Bluest Eye", "one is the despair and

numbness that are permeating black society, and the other is the social soil that

produces this despair and numbness. In other words, by narrating the destruction of

Pecola and the growth of Claudia, Morrison intended to arouse black self-reflection
and the courage to change their own destiny, and the other is to arouse the whole

society to think about improving the black environment. Through Claudia's growth

path, people saw the courage and hope of black little girls to change their destiny.

Works Cited
Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Plume Book, 1994. Print.

Salvatore A. Toni Morrison's new bildungsromane: paired characters and

antithetical form in The Bluest Eye, Sula, and Beloved [J]. Journal of Narrative
Theory,2002,32(2):158-159.

Taylor G, Kathleen D. Conversations with Toni Morrison [M]. Jackson:

University Press of Mississippi,1994:104-163.

Bouson B. Quiet as it's kept: shame trauma and race in the novels of Toni
Morrison [M]. Albany: State University of New York,2000:33.

Matus J. Toni Morrison[M].New York: St.Marti's Press,1998:39.