The Bluest Eye

Themes

Congratulations, this is the last PowerPoint you have to endure..........

It is also 100% error free....

Probably not....

Beauty

Beauty
The Bluest Eye examines how whiteness is the standard for beauty. This done explicitly through the plot and implicitly through the placement of objects and popular culture references that reinforce this idea. These include: The white doll given to Claudia, the Shirley Temple cup, the consensus that Maureen is the more beautiful, the white starlets at the movies, Mrs Breedloves preference for the white girl over her own daughter, the white girls on the candy, etc...

Beauty

Morrison shows that this beauty standard manifests itself in both self-hatred and externalized hate or indifference of black people on other black people. This includes in the extreme cases children.

Coming of Age

Coming of Age
As a bildungsroman, The Bluest Eye examines the transition between childhood and adulthood. Morrison explores this focusing the intersection between sexual experience, racial experience, and selfimage. The reader is presented with two different characters coming to age, Pecola and Claudia. For Pecola this starts with menstruation. It is poignant that when she is physically able to reproduce she becomes aware of the lack of love in her life, How do you make someone love you? Coming of age can be seen through Pecola to be both emotionally and physically destroying. The fragility of childhood and the dangers of transition are clear. Through Claudia we are offer an alternative. With the support of people we see that a person can survive and even thrive in similar conditions. Morrison offers a clear dichotomy, separated by partially personality but mainly family.

Race and Racism

Race and Racism

Morrison explores racism in a multi-faceted way. She shows the traditional white on black racism through the shop owner, and more shockingly, the men Cholly encounters as a boy. More revealingly we see black on black racism. This can be paralleled to the women on women oppression in Atwoods, The Handmaids Tale.

Morrison offers several explanations for this phenomenon. For Cholly, we see how his hate of the black girl comes from a displaced hatred of the white men. Accepting the inherent injustice of his experience would annihilate the self.

Race and Racism

The scene between Claudia, Frieda, and Maureen show that this racism is manifested through the complicated standards of society in which people live. Frieda tries to find Maureen ugly even though she is black. She does not want to allow another black girl beauty because it further undermines the self. When Maureen an the girls fight, she says I am cute! And you ugly! Black and ugly black e mos. I am cute. Through this she reverts to the dominant rhetoric prescribed by the society in which she lives. Through Geraldine we can see racism as a result of a desire to assimilate and improve her life. While her intentions are not inherently bad, the manifestation is a hatred and judgement of those around her and a detachment from her kin.

Seeing Vs Being Seen

Seeing Vs Being Seen

Through Pecola, Morrison explores the idea that people often see the world and themselves in way they are seen. If someone is seen as smart or beautiful, they will see themselves that way (think about how a teachers expectations of you affect your outcomes and achievement).
This paradigm is internalized by Pecola. She believes if she has blue eyes she will be seen as beautiful and therefore lovable. This would allow her to herself that way.

Sexual Initiation and Abuse

Sexual Initiation and Abuse

The story is full of unpleasant if not violent and abusive initiations into sexuality. Morrison highlights the perils of this transition. Through this she highlights the vulnerability of children and reinforces the perils associate with coming of age. This challenges the reader to consider their responsibility in guiding and protecting children through this process.

Satisfying Appetites Versus Suppressing Them

Satisfying Appetites Versus Suppressing Them

A number of characters in The Bluest Eye define their lives through a denial of their bodily needs. Geraldine prefers cleanliness and order to the messiness of sex, and she is emotionally frigid as a result. Similarly, Pauline prefers cleaning and organizing the home of her white employers to expressing physical affection toward her family. Soaphead Church finds physicality distasteful, and this peculiarity leads to his preference for objects over humans and to his perverse attraction to little girls. In contrast, when characters experience happiness, it is generally in viscerally physical terms. Claudia prefers to have her senses indulged by wonderful scents, sounds, and tastes than to be given a hard white doll. Chollys greatest moments of happinesses are eating the best part of a watermelon and touching a girl for the first time. Paulines happiest memory is of sexual fulfillment with her husband. The novel suggests that, no matter how messy and sometimes violent human desire is, it is also the source of happiness: denial of the body begets hatred and violence, not redemption.

Jealousy

Jealousy
Feelings of jealousy and envy permeate The Bluest Eye. From Claudia and Frieda's jealousy of Maureen Peal to Pauline envying the uppity women of Lorain, Ohio, women seem to experience envy all day, every day.
In some instances, jealousy can bring women closer together, as when the MacTeer sisters bond over their mutual hatred of Maureen. At other times, jealousy keeps girls and women from being friends with one another. It is portrayed mainly as a destructive force

Innocence

Innocence
Innocence is a quality that is primarily associated with whiteness in The Bluest Eye. From the beginning, we see that the lives of working-class African-American children were far from innocent and free. Claudia and Frieda spend their free time picking coal with their families, while Pecola's innocence is violated soon after she begins menstruating. The novel seems to suggest that innocence is a privilege, not a given.

The Power of Stories

The Power of Stories

The Bluest Eye is not one story, but multiple, sometimes contradictory, interlocking stories. Characters tell stories to make sense of their lives, and these stories have tremendous power for both good and evil. Claudias stories, in particular, stand out for their affirmative power. First and foremost, she tells Pecolas story, and though she questions the accuracy and meaning of her version, to some degree her attention and care redeem the ugliness of Pecolas life. Furthermore, when the adults describe Pecolas pregnancy and hope that the baby dies, Claudia and Frieda attempt to rewrite this story as a hopeful one, casting themselves as saviors. Finally, Claudia resists the premise of white superiority, writing her own story about the beauty of blackness.

The Power of Stories

Stories by other characters are often destructive to themselves and others. The story Pauline Breedlove tells herself about her own ugliness reinforces her self-hatred, and the story she tells herself about her own martyrdom reinforces her cruelty toward her family. Soaphead Churchs personal narratives about his good intentions and his special relationship with God are pure hypocrisy. Stories are as likely to distort the truth as they are to reveal it. While Morrison apparently believes that stories can be redeeming, she is no blind optimist and refuses to let us rest comfortably in any one version of what happens.

Motifs

Dick and Jane Seasons Cleanness and Dirtiness

Eyes and Vision

Symbols
Houses
Shirley Temple Cup Mary Jane's Marigold Dandelions Blue Eyes