THE BLUEST EYE GERALDINE HOW TO BECOME BEAUTIFUL

вЂњвЂHow do you do that? I mean, how do you get somebody to love you?вЂ™ But Frieda was asleep. Implicit messages that whiteness is superior are everywhere, including the white baby doll given to Claudia, the idealization of Shirley Temple, the consensus that light. Prohibited once text, however, The Bluest Eye provides an extended depiction of the ways in which internalized white beauty standards deform the lives of black girls and women.

Each atrocious, brutal occurrence takes a little more of PecolaвЂ™s sanity away, resulting in the empty shell of a long-gone little girl that has lost everything, especially her lone shred of original вЂњbeautyвЂќ that is innocence.These lessons surface repeatedly in Morrisons first novel The Bluest Eye. However, while Pecola feels anxiety about finding someone that will love her, she doesnвЂ™t even realize how many horrible things have already happened to her and just how many more are going to occur. The innocent question posed by Pecola from Toni MorrisonвЂ™s The Bluest Eye is representative of a recurring theme in the novel: love.

The Bluest Eye Geraldine How To Become Beautiful

The first example of PecolaвЂ™s feeble attempt to gain the knowledge of how to become beautiful is the unnatural amount of milk she drinks just to see the bottom of the Shirley Temple glass. The primary victimization of Pecola is the constant berating of the fact that she is ugly by the white definition of beauty. She lives with her family: her husband, Louis her son, Junior and her cat, who, because Geraldine has apparently alienated. Geraldine is one such woman. Through Pecola Breedlove, Claudia MacTeer, and several other characters in the book, Morrison demonstrates the result of the WesternвЂ™s culture. In the book, The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison, writes about a young African American girl named Pecola Breedlove who is convinced she is ugly because she does not have blue eyes.

Yacobowski who, in refusing to even touch her, reinforced her thought that white people hated her ugliness. The second person to wound PecolaвЂ™s sense of beauty was Mr. MacTeer believes Pecola drank all the milk because she was selfish, although obviously Pecola learns nothing about beauty.

ChollyвЂ™s drunken stupors destroy the family from the inside out, resulting in the house fire that ruined their home and his lack of caring for Pauline and his own children. Although these passive situations negatively affected PecolaвЂ™s self-image, they did not directly damage her in the way that some characters damage her.A character that did openly injure Pecola is her own father, Cholly Breedlove. The total absence of human recognition- the glazed separatenessвЂ¦ It has an edge somewhere in the bottom lid is distasteвЂ¦ the distaste must be for her, her blacknessвЂќ (48).

Maureen is described as вЂњA high-yellow dream child with long brown hair braided into two lynch ropes that hung down her backвЂ¦ black girls stepped aside when she wanted to use the sink in the girlsвЂ™ toilet, and their eyes genuflected under sliding lidsвЂќ (62). ChollyвЂ™s act of love, although perverted, is the only example of anyone actually even attempting to love Pecola.In comparison to ChollyвЂ™s action, Maureen Peal tries to befriend Pecola in order to dig into PecolaвЂ™s brain. The feelings of love he exhibited in his acts of rape irreversibly damage PecolaвЂ™s mind in such a way that she is unable to ever regain her sanity. His revulsion was a reaction to her young, helpless, hopeless presenceвЂ¦ Why did she have to look so whipped? She was a child- unburdened- why wasnвЂ™t she happy?вЂќ The feelings of guilt and pity stemmed from his feeling that he could give her nothing and she needed to feel such love. Cholly even believes her to be ugly but he drunkenly believes that this rape is an act of showing love, his tangled mass of emotions exhibited in a quote from page 161, вЂњThe sequence of his emotions was revulsion, guilt, pity, and then love.

They wanted to find liquor because they thought it would make Frieda skinny, who had been вЂњruinedвЂќ by Mr. As Claudia and Frieda witness this, they realize that Pecola needs the attention of her mother.Claudia and Frieda were at the FishersвЂ™ house because of their own selfish reason. The cutting irony of the situation was that after she beat Pecola, Pauline or вЂњPolly,вЂќ as sheвЂ™s insolently called, soothed and mothered the crying Fisher girl. Pauline works hard in the FisherвЂ™s home, but when Pecola visits her and spills the berry cobbler, Pauline becomes so violently angry that she beats Pecola severely even after she had been burnt by the cobbler. Although she is physically and emotionally upset from her playground experience with Bay Boy, Woodrow Cain, and Junie Bug, this event is insignificant compared to the trauma associated with PecolaвЂ™s mother.

He then forces himself to try to be as truthful as possible and allow the Lord to take over the decision of her wish for blue eyes. From her request, Soaphead Church wishes he could actually help her, and is angry that he cannot. The selfishness of the MacTeer sisters is only paralleled in the agenda of Soaphead Church.Elihue Micah Whitcomb exploits PecolaвЂ™s innocent request for blue eyes. For these selfish reasons, even Claudia and Frieda werenвЂ™t truly PecolaвЂ™s friends. They figured that the only place they might be able to get whiskey was Pecola because Cholly was a drunk. They took their mothers words literally and thought that whiskey would eat the fat of FriedaвЂ™s ruined appearance.

When Pecola enters the house, Louis Junior throws the cat at her and then throws it against the window. Since his middle-class black mother doesnвЂ™t allow him to play with other black children, and he isnвЂ™t white, he expels his anger through abusing the cat. Geraldine loves the cat and because of this, Junior is jealous of the attention the cat receives. This is reinforcement to PecolaвЂ™s thought that she is ugly.Louis Junior also took advantage of Pecola by inviting her into the house to play with kittens. Also he isnвЂ™t sorry that Pecola thinks that sheвЂ™s ugly, but pities her because he actually believes she is ugly and will remain that way. Although Soaphead seems to be truly sorry for his lack of power, he doesnвЂ™t recognize that he lied about his exploitive occupation.

The sistersвЂ™ silent victimization is unbeknownst to Pecola but at this point of her declining sanity, it doesnвЂ™t make a difference. Claudia and Frieda didnвЂ™t care that Pecola was raped or that she was raped by her father. They wanted Pecola to have her baby just because they вЂњfelt a need for someone to want the baby to live- just to counteract the universal love of white baby dolls, Shirley Temples, and Maureen PealsвЂќ (190). The second part of the quote also sets up a contrast between the ugliness of Pecola against the beauty of Jesus.The last significant example of other characters taking advantage of Pecola is, again, Claudia and Frieda. Get out of my house.вЂќ This just causes Pecola to then see вЂњJesus looking down at her with sad and unsurprised eyes, his long brown hair parted in the middle, the gay paper flowers twisted around his faceвЂќ (93).

This leads her to feel insecure even about her imaginary blue eyes. She believes that she has the blue eyes that she wished for and, in conversing with her imaginary friend, realizes that someone may have bluer eyes. Pecola creates her own hallucination of an imaginary friend, since she has no one else to turn to.

As a result of all the abuse that she so willingly took, from her family, so-called friends, and even herself, the only truth that exists for Pecola was her own insanity. This leads to the explanation of the second part of the quote: that PecolaвЂ™s worst victimization exists in her delusion of satisfying her want of blue eyes, at least in her mind. Combined with the constant abuse Pecola feels because she believes herself to be ugly, the confusion eventually forces her to attempt to achieve perceived exterior beauty by gaining blue eyes. Each scathing instance of victimization serves to confuse the ideas of beauty and love within Pecola. This quote expresses the meaning that Pecola associates being black with being ugly. A little black girl yearns for the blue eyes of a little white girl, and the horror at the heart of her yearning is exceeded only by the evil of fulfillmentвЂќ (204).