Name: Shifat Naima Ferdousi

Id : 15216901
Title: American Literature 2

THE BLUEST EYE- CHARACTERS

& THEMES
Author

 The Author of “ The Bluest Eyes” is Toni

Morrison.
 Toni Morrison was an African- American
novelist, editor, and professor.
 Born in Lorain, Ohio.
 The first, The Bluest Eye was published in
1970.
 He has received the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Characters

 In “ The Bluest Eye”, there are twenty-one

characters .
 Major characters of them are basically two
characters. They are :
1. Pecola Breedlove
2. Claudia MacTeer
Pecola Breedlove

 The protagonist of the novel. She is an eleven

year old black girl.
 She believes that she is ugly, and that having
blue eyes would make her beautiful.
 She is sensitive and delicate.
 She passively suffers the abuse of her
parents, teachers and friends.
 She is the central role and remains a
mysterious character.
Claudia MacTeer

 The narrator of parts of the novel.

 She is an independent and strong-minded
nine-year old. She is a fighter and rebels
against adults’ tyranny over children and
against the black community.
 She has not yet learned the self-hatred that
plagues her peers.
 Like Pecola, Claudia suffers from racist beauty
standards and material insecurity.
Themes of “ The Bluest Eyes”

 Whiteness as the Standard of Beauty

 This is one of the first themes of the novel.
The theme justified an extended depiction of
the ways in which internalized white beauty
standards which deforming the lives of black
girls and women.
 Pecola suffers most form the white beauty
standards.
 She connects beauty with being loved and
believes that if she possesses blue eyes, the
cruelty in her life will be replaced by affection
and respect.
 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. These stories have tremendous power
for both good and evil.
 Claudia’s and Pecola’s stories are contradict
but stand out for their affirmative power.
 Sexual Initiation and Abuse
 “The Bluest Eye” is about both the pleasures
and the perils of sexual initiation.
 In the early of the story, Pecola then Frieda
and Henry Washington all of them has
suffered from sexual experience in many
contexts.
 Thus, the fact that all of these experiences
are
humiliating and hurtful indicates that sexual
coming-of-age is fraught with peril, especially
in an abusive environment.
Conclusion

 So, the novel ends with these characters and

themes.
Reference

 Sparknotes
 cliffnotes