Kasamira Wojcik

Everyone wishes to be loved. Everyone wants people in their lives who will look at them and see someone they care about; who they will never mistreat or abandon. Everyone wants to be accepted, and sometimes people will go to great lengths in order for this to happen. The Bluest Eye tells the story of a little black girl named Pecola, whose deepest wish is to have blue eyes. The reason she wants blue eyes is because she thinks it will make her beautiful. She is considered ugly by all the people around her, and they make sure she knows it as well. Pecola believes this to be the reason people, her family included, mistreat and hate her so much. Toni Morrison, author of The Bluest Eye, explores the concepts and results of things like racism and hate and what they can do to someone, even to someone as small and innocent as a little girl who just wants to be loved.

This book takes place in 1941 during the Great Depression when racism is still at large and there are certain ideals and standards when it comes to beauty. In the words of Claudia, a nine-year-old little black girl, who is also one of the main characters, “Adults, older girls, shops, magazines, newspapers, window signs — all the world had agreed that a blue-eyed, yellow-haired, pink-skinned doll was what every girl child treasured.” The doll she was referring to was a white doll she received as a present. This doll, with the blue eyes, yellow hair, and pink skin was considered the standard of beauty whether people realized or not. Even black children had this view impressed upon them. So, according to those standards, both she and Pecola were considered ugly by the rest of society from the start. They were hated for their looks, Pecola especially because she was considered ugly even for a black girl.

It is very dangerous when someone is always told from when they were very young they are ugly. If that is the only thing they are ever told, then they will believe it, which often results in very destructive habits. This can be seen in the state of Pecola’s parents: “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.”

This is talking about the living conditions Pecola and her parents were in. They were poor, black, and lived in a run down, old house. Pecola’s parents believed the reason for this was because they were ugly. They were so dead-set in believing they were ugly because it was all they were ever told. Even if someone did try to convince them otherwise now, Pecola’s parents would never believe them.

This self hatred can lead to obsessions of other things such as physical beauty. This is what Pecola’s mother was obsessed with. “Along with the idea of romantic love, she was introduced to another — physical beauty. Probably the most destructive idea in the history of human thought. Both originated in envy, thrived in insecurity, and ended in disillusion.” This speaks truth about her relationship with physical beauty. Her obsession started with her greatly desiring to have physical beauty. It continued on with the insecurity she felt over how she viewed herself and how she believed others viewed her. It ended with her believing if she did certain things or treated people a certain way, she would gain physical beauty, even though this was not the case.

This self-degradation influenced by the treatment of others can also result in more serious outcomes: “They seemed to have taken all of their smoothly cultivated ignorance, their exquisitely learned self-hatred, their elaborately designed hopelessness and sucked it all up into a fiery cone of scorn that had burned for ages in the hollow of their minds — cooled — and spilled over lips of outrage, consuming whatever was in its path.”

One of the people this mainly refers to is Pecola’s father. He had so much self-loathing and hatred for others as a result of how he had been treated his entire life. He was a horrible person. His actions stemmed from all of those feelings he had pent up inside. He was a drunk, and he did terrible, unspeakable things to his daughter.

As for Pecola, she was a just a little girl who desperately wanted to be loved. “Here was an ugly little girl asking for beauty…. A little black girl who wanted to rise up out of the pit of her blackness and see the world with blue eyes.” She did not know what was wrong with her. She did not know why people would not love her. She thought it was because she was ugly, and so she wished to have blue eyes. She thought if she did, then people would see her differently, see her as beautiful and love her. In the end, Pecola lost her sanity over her desire to have blue eyes.

The wish to be loved is one of the strongest people will ever have. When people are not loved the way they ought to be, bad things like self-loathing and disillusionment can happen. People should never let things like looks or the color of someone’s skin get in the way of seeing a person as they truly are. If they do not, there is no telling to what lengths the other person will go to in order to be loved. It is one of the reasons people must go deeper and love beyond what is seen.