The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison - Research Paper Example

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison Introduction ‘Whiteness’, as the dominant standard of beauty, power, and prestige embraced by most characters in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, is the root of the unkindness and tragedy that takes place throughout the story. Without a doubt, this exclusive ‘white’ standard completely rejects the idea of ‘diversity’ or ‘individual difference’. The drive to embrace ‘whiteness’ is stimulated by the movies, where the outside appearance of white celebrities like Shirley Temple becomes strongly connected to their fortunate, comfortable lives on the screen. The White Standard of Beauty and the Destruction of Black Identity The three characters in the story that were strongly influenced by the white standard of beauty are Pauline Breedlove, Maureen Peal, and Geraldine. These three women completely embraced the stereotypical notion of beauty-- being ‘white’ or fair-skinned. However, instead of cultivating their personal growth, this adoption of the white standard of beauty made them indifferent, unkind, and dominating. One of them, Geraldine, succumbs to violence and apathy because of her disgust of black people. Pauline Breedlove is the character that is strongly bewitched by the movies. Unhappy and pregnant, she resorts to watching movies, where she is totally seduced by external beauty and romantic love. “She was never able, after her education in the movies, to look at a face and not assign it some category in the scale of absolute beauty, and the scale was one she absorbed in full from the silver screen” (Morrison 95). Sugiharti (n.d.), in his analysis of the character of Pauline, states that she is belittled by the “cultural icons portraying physical beauty: movies, billboards, magazines, books, newspapers, window signs, dolls, and drinking cups” (p. 2). Pauline starts to believe that beauty is a measure of a person’s overall quality. She starts to assess people in terms of appearance. However, when she lost her front tooth, forcing her to believe that she is ‘ugly’, she arranges an alternate life as the ‘perfect custodian’ of the Fisher family. In the Fisher’s home she feels beautiful and praiseworthy. She completely throws away her real life for this everyday daydream (Roshan & Gholipour 3). Pauline, in the process, sacrifices her genuine self-identity and own essence. Because in following the roles dictated by the society, Pauline deprives herself of any potential for self-development. She embodies those who, in embracing white ideals, weaken their genuine quality, replacing it with fake, even damaging, value (Kubitschek 38). This acceptance, or, as Claudia defines her own alienation, ‘adjustment without improvement’ (Morrison 16), causes different levels of destruction. Two of the greatest personification of such destruction takes place in the ‘Winter’ part of the novel. The first is Maureen Peal, a fair-skinned girl whose reputation and wealth verify the advantages or privileges of ‘whiteness’. Maureen, similar to Pauline, has been partly influenced by the movies. She immediately identifies Pecola’s name with that of the beautiful, light-skinned young woman in the movie Imitation of Life who “hates her mother ‘cause she is black and ugly’” (Morrison 52). Maureen, as reflected in her remark, has completely embraced the stereotypical notion of the similarity between ‘ugliness’ and being ‘black’ (Shmoop page 2-4). Maureen also came to believe that there is a connection between being ‘black’ and sexuality. Interested in knowing the true story behind the boys’ criticisms about the sexuality of Cholly Breedlove Maureen briefly makes friends with Pecola. Immediately after that, when Pecola refused to admit that she has seen her father naked, Maureen mocks her: “I am cute and you ugly. Black and ugly black e mos” (Morrison 56). Her insult deeply affected Pecola, Claudia, and Frieda. Claudia thinks about the clear certainty of Maureen’s insult (Roshan & Gholipour 1), assuming that “If she was cute--- and if anything could be believed, she was—then we were not. And what did that mean? We were lesser” (Morrison 57). But Geraldine is a more severe counterpart of Maureen, because her acceptance of white ideals brings about cruelty and hate. Geraldine, an embodiment of one type of middle-class woman, is educated in “thrift, patience, high morals, and good manners. In short how to get rid of the funkiness of passion, the funkiness of nature. The funkiness of the wide range of human emotions” (Morrison 64). By adopting an intolerant standards of behavior and values rather than creating her own, Geraldine becomes psychologically and emotionally empty, incapable of loving any living being, apart from her cat. Geraldine’s dull commitment to appropriate white conduct and orderliness unavoidably produces a brute, Louis Junior, whose emptiness finds delight in tormenting his mother’s cat. Interestingly, the cat is black and blue-eyed, symbolizing Junior’s extreme dislike toward whiteness and darkness— prohibited to mingle with black children, he is often ignored by white people (Bloom 177). Mistaking play for amusement, Junior plans to pick on Pecola and the cat. Inviting Pecola to see his mother’s cat, Junior hurls the cat in Pecola’s face. Unfortunately, Junior accidentally killed the cat. When Geraldine appeared, Junior immediately blamed Pecola for the cat’s death. Geraldine instantly feels a surge of revulsion for Pecola. What she sees in Pecola is a revolting image of the lower class (186): “They were everywhere. They slept six in a bed… Grass wouldn’t grow where they lived. Flowers died Shades fell down. Tin cans and tires blossomed where they lived… Like flies they hovered; like flies they settled” (Morrison 72). Geraldine’s fear of being corrupted provokes a destructive anger reflecting Maureen’s association of being ‘black’ with sexuality: “Get out… You nasty little black bitch” (Morrison 72). It is apparent from the discussion that Pauline, Maureen, and Geraldine are very harsh and unsympathetic people. This is not because they were born that way; it is because they are raised in an environment where wealth, power, and beauty are associated with one’s color. They were brainwashed in believing that ‘black’ is wickedness and ‘white’ is goodness. The irony is that instead of promoting the positive features of whiteness, which are believed to be inherent to it, they displayed uncaring attitudes that resemble more of the believed ‘black’ wickedness. A White Crime: Destroying the Black Family and Community One of the greatest destructions that the white values inflicted on the black people is the destruction of their families and communities. The Breedlove family is painfully victimized by this white crime. The life of Cholly Breedlove becomes miserable because of the sexual humiliation he experienced in the presence of white men. Because of his fear of the power of being white, he chose not to defend himself. But this destroyed him and his family. Pauline Breedlove grew in a large family where she feels empty and worthless. Her emptiness finds respite in Hollywood movies, showcasing the beauty of white females. She desires to be ‘white’ which eventually contributed to the ruin of her own family. Pecola is the clearest proof of the consequence of this white crime. Rescued from a garbage pile by his Great Aunt Jimmy, Cholly Breedlove has been raised in an emotionally insufficient household. The greatest personal connection of Cholly’s childhood years is built with Blue Jack, a drunkard who amuses Cholly by narrating his life experiences and local history. However, the bond between Cholly and Blue is severed when Aunt Jimmy unexpectedly passed away. Cholly’s self-concept is destroyed after he is disgraced by white thugs during his very first sexual contact, and afterward Cholly is turned down by his own father. A narrator recounts the painful details of Cholly’s sexual disgrace, emphasizing that Cholly bents his fury at Darlene, his sexual partner—“He hated her. He almost wished he could do it—hard, long, and painfully, he hated her so much” (Morrison 116) -- not because he sees her as the reason for his disgrace, but because he knows that going against white men would be a grave mistake. Morrison depicts the deep wound his father’s abandonment wreaks on Cholly through his instant relapse to childish behavior, as he recoils to a fetal position. A renewed Cholly rises from the river, who turns out to be ‘dangerously free’ (Kubitschek 63) for he is deficient of the emotional values: “He was alone with his own perceptions and appetites, and they alone interested him” (Morrison 126). His marriage to Pauline fulfilled the course of emotional seclusion when he realizes that nothing is of importance to him now. Being a father pushes Cholly from the edge of apathy into complete deterioration because he becomes devoid of hopes and inspiration (Bloom 40). He responds only to sudden impulse. The story starts with the scene between Cholly and Pecola; it culminates with Cholly committing the most terrible crime imaginable. He rapes his own daughter. “The hatred would not let him pick her up” when he is done with his terrible deed, “the tenderness forced him to cover her” (Morrison 129). Even though Cholly is to be held accountable for his deeds, he only functions as an entity of a culture which only sees the worth of women in their beauty and values them in terms of racist principles (Kubitschek 46). Pauline, similar to her husband, is deficient of emotional values. It could be assumed that this is the immediate outcome of her physical and emotional ostracism in her relocation from the countryside to the city. However, Morrison explains that Pauline’s emotional alienation has in fact already arisen during her childhood— “Pauline Breedlove like, most of all, to arrange things,” (Morrison 86) but that desire failed to find a proper channel: “she missed—without knowing what she missed— paints and crayons” (Morrison 82). After her marriage and relocation, she encounters a growing unhappiness (Sugiharti 2-3). Her obsession in movies, and ‘white’ depictions of love and beauty, detaches Pauline, not only from her loved ones but from her weak sense of worth. Later on, Pauline can “display the style and imagination of what she believed to be her own true self” (Morrison 31) during her violent confrontations with Cholly. She has quite completely embraced ‘white’ values that during a major occurrence in the Fisher kitchen, when her daughter unintentionally drops the hot pie, Pauline ignores her daughter’s wound, and tends only to the mess it brought on her spotless floor. Why? Because “all the meaningfulness of her life was in her work… She was an active church woman… defender herself mightily against Cholly… and felt she was fulfilling a mother’s role conscientiously...” (Morrison 72). Both Pauline and Cholly are pathetic and hopeless parents, and their dysfunction is the outcome of underdeveloped selves not capable of creating their own identity outside the confines of the ‘white’ world (Bloom 187). Without a strong sense of identity and emotional outlet besides aggression or violence, Cholly does not have a way of balancing the disorder of his life and a sensible order. He allows her being ‘black’ to be a barrier to the fulfillment of his full potential and to being a good parent in a prevailing white world. “The Breedloves did not live in a storefront because they were having temporary difficulty adjusting to the cutbacks at the plant. They lived there because they were poor and black, and they stayed there because they believed they were ugly” (Morrison 28). According to the analysis of Sugiharti (n.d.), this destructive notion of being ‘black’ is the root cause of Cholly’s eventual demise. He was not able to recover from his sexual humiliation, perpetrated by the white people, and this determined his fate. On the contrary, Pauline tries very hard to fit her life into a confined system, but in this manner, she snuffs out her strength— mainly symbolized by the color and taste she relates to sensual stimulation. “She came into her own with the women who had despised her, by being more moral than they… She joined a church where shouting was frowned on… She stopped saying ‘chil’ren’ and said ‘childring’ instead. She let another tooth fall, and was outraged by painted ladies who thought only of clothes and men” (Morrison 25). The happiness which preoccupies her fantasy is sacrificed for spotlessly clean illusions which she afterward uses as excuse for her ‘moral’ conduct (Roshan & Gholipour 2). The consequences, symbolized by Pecola, are disastrous. The destruction of the Breedlove family is caused mainly by the self-concept of Cholly and Pauline. Cholly, abandoned by her father, thinks of himself as unworthy of love. He has an inferior image of his self. This inferiority stops him from confronting the white men who forced him to perform a sexual act in front of them. This sexual humiliation became Cholly’s lifelong wound. This, in turn, hurt his family, particularly Pecola. Pauline, on the other hand, fabricates an ideal life for herself—as a perfect servant of the Fisher family—in order to create some order in her chaotic life. She does not see herself as a black woman, but a member of the white community. As a result, she is unsympathetic to her own family. All of these resulted in the complete deterioration of the Breedlove family. The Ultimate Destruction: Pecola’s Victimization Pecola is the complete embodiment of the destruction caused by the total ruin of genuine self-identity, community, and family life. She is victimized by the very people who should have loved and cared for her. She is taken advantage by the people who should have been sympathetic enough to help and guide her. Her victimization is the direct outcome of the wholesale adoption of white standards of beauty and decency. Taught to dread and hate life, Pecola refuses to question or fight the harsh realities she faces, both the open acts which attacks her weak self-worth as well as the inherent racism embodied in white standards of beauty. Rather, similar to other children, she desires change. However, where the other children would desire to transform the outside forces, Pecola views herself as the source of difficulty: “If her eyes, those eyes that held the pictures [of her reality] and knew the sights—if those eyes were different… she herself would be different” (Morrison 34). Pecola constantly prays for these blue eyes for an entire year before shyly going to Soaphead Church, a mentor and a reader believed to have mystical abilities. Even though astonished by Pecola’s wish, “Of all the wishes people had brought him—money, love, revenge—this seemed to him the most poignant and the most deserving of fulfillment” (Morrison 136)—Soaphead still takes advantage of her by forcing her to unknowingly kill a dog he loathes. Morrison keeps the personal culpability of Soaphead for pushing Pecola into madness unclear, because he is only another one of Pecola’s offenders. Soaphead is associated with Pecola in other, similarly identical manners, because the features of Soaphead’s personality and environment are similar to those which have victimized Pecola (Bloom 192). Soaphead is a combination of English, African, and Asian heritage. However, he belongs to a family who believes that its intellectual dominance originates from its white heritage. The superiority complex of Soaphead and his disdain for others restrains his most elemental desires. This abnormal repression ultimately pushes him to sexual corruption (Bloom 192-193)—“His sexuality was anything but lewd; his patronage of little girls smacked of innocence and was associated in his mind with cleanliness. He was what one might call a very clean old man” (Morrison 95). Morrison’s idea is not only confined to the black people, even though Pecola obviously symbolizes the political, economic, and social status of the African-American community. Morrison also shows how the characters’ personality influences their attitude toward love. “Love is never any better than the lover. Wicked people love wickedly, violent people love violently, weak people love weakly, stupid people love stupidly, but the love of a free man is never safe” Morrison 118). As shown by the various characters in the story, their perception of the world affects how they treat other people. For instance, as mentioned previously, Geraldine is disgusted with the black people and she looks at them with contempt because she believes that they are lowly and of no worth. But eventually, this attitude led to her own tragedy (Kubitschek 46). Morrison organizes the path of her story in line with the four seasons, starting with autumn, when Pecola, like a leaf, drops to the ground of society. Throughout the winter, Pecola encounters her bleakest period of torment by other students and victimization by grownups. During the spring, she bears a child, and in the summer, she gives birth to a lifeless baby (Kubitschek 32). These four seasons in the life of Pecola summarizes her life’s tragedy and how the society is responsible for it. “Her simplicity decorated us, her guilt sanctified us, her pain made us glow with health” (Morrison 163)— which implies that Pecola’s misery and sufferings are taken advantage by the people around to her to affirm their supposed superior position. Morrison’s comparison between Pecola’s child and marigolds is important in numerous ways, because this tough flower is abundant and easy to cultivate. Marigolds usually survive in low quality soil and, after attaining its full growth, can produce seeds for the next period (Shmoop page 3). Frieda and Claudia bought marigold seeds to pay for a bike, but after knowing the negative opinion of the people in the community about Pecola’s pregnancy, they decide to let go of the money they have produced and sow the marigold seeds as a symbol of their solemn prayers for the healthy birth of Pecola’s baby. For Claudia, this baby with “clean black eyes… flared nose, kissing thick lips, and the living breathing silk of black skin” (Morrison 149) is much attractive than a synthetic doll. Being interested in Pecola’s child is also a way to “counteract the universal love of white baby dolls, Shirley Temples, and Maureen Peals,” (Bloom 213) in short, a way of establishing the child’s individual quality and worth. Sowing their marigolds in ‘black dirt,’ symbolizing its evident wealth, Frieda and Claudia hopes that the marigold seeds will grow in hopes that the child will survive. Nevertheless, nothing sprouts (Morrison 3): “Quiet as it’s kept, there were no marigolds in the fall of 1941. We thought, at the time, that it was because Pecola was having her father’s baby that the marigolds did not grow. A little examination and much less melancholy would have proved to us that our seeds were not the only ones that did not sprout; nobody’s did.” This, according to Bloom (1999), is the ultimate destruction. Pecola is repeatedly victimized by her father, mother, and the people in her community. All of these people who treated her cruelly and indifferently are followers of the ideologies of the white society. Sadly, both the black and white people are the perpetrators of her unending misery. Pecola is a powerful proof that one’s self-concept should be strongly rooted in one’s own humane and sensible understanding. Otherwise, individuals and the larger society will continuously to suffer the negative consequences of imposed ‘whiteness’. Conclusion Embracing individual difference and cultural diversity is perhaps the best way to preserve one’s genuine self-identity. As proven by the fate of the characters in the novel The Bluest Eye, embracing something for the sake of fitting in can only lead to one outcome: the destruction of the self, the family, and the community. Pauline Breedlove, Maureen Peal, and Geraldine are the epitome of a broken identity; a representation of the power of the society, the mass media, and other established institutions over the individual, family, and community. Works Cited Bloom, Harold. Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye. Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 1999. Print. Kubitschek, Missy Dehn. Toni Morrison: A Critical Companion. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1998. Print. Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. UK: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2007. Print. Roshan, Mohammad & Mojtaba Gholipour, “The Lack of Beauty and Identity in the Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison.” International Conference on History, Literature, and Management, 6-7 October 2012. Web. 30 January 2013. Shmoop, “The Bluest Eye.” Shmoop, 2013. Web. 31 January 2013. Sugiharti, Esti, “Racialized Beauty: Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye.” Department of Women’s Studies, n.d. Web. 30 January 2013. Read More