The Bluest Eye

The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison is about an 11 year old little girl named Pecola who is living with the MacTeer family at the end of the great depression. Pecola loves Shirley Temple, and the Little girls that she is living with because she thinks they are the most beautiful girls in the world because they are white girls with blonde hair and blue eyes. Pecola believes that because she is black she is ugly and she believes that the only people who are pretty are white people, so she prays every night that she will have blonde hair and blue eyes so she can be as beautiful as the girls she lives with. When pecola moves back in with her parents her live becomes harder, her mother is distant, and her dad drinks all the time. Her parents often beat eachother, and her Brother Sammy runs away all the time. All of these events push Pecola to wish that she had blonde hair and blue eyes so hat she would be happy and loved. When Pecola gets raped, and impregnated by her father her life goes down hill.

Morrison uses alot of imagery to make the theme of the story more dramatic. the theme of The bluset eye is the struggle of young black girls to get along in soceity. some symbols of this are Shirley Temple who Pecola idolizes and wants to be like her so that she is loved. Another symbol of this is the baby doll that is given to claudia that Pecola thinks is beautiful, and the beliefe that only white women are pretty.

Morrison also uses chatacterization to make the story more touching. she is very descriptive when talking about both the white girls and the black girls so that the reader can get a picture in their mind about the way that Pecola views the world, she uses this characterazation to make the reader feel pain for Pecola when everything is going on, the use of characterization in the blusest eye is to show the difference between the way black people are viewed, and the way black people view white people.