Essay about Beauty in The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

Throughout all of history there has been an ideal beauty that most have tried to obtain. But what if that beauty was impossible to grasp because something was holding one back. There was nothing one could do to be ‘beautiful’. Growing up and being convinced that one was ugly, useless, and dirty. For Pecola Breedlove, this state of longing was reality. Blue eyes, blonde hair, and pale white skin was the definition of beauty. Pecola was a black girl with the dream to be beautiful. Toni Morrison takes the reader into the life of a young girl through Morrison’s exceptional novel, The Bluest Eye. The novel displays the battles that Pecola struggles with each and every day. Morrison takes the reader through the themes of whiteness and beauty,†¦show more content†¦The affiliation between beauty and whiteness limits the concept of beauty only to the person’s exterior. The characters are constantly subjected to images and symbols of whiteness through movies , books, candy, magazines, baby dolls and advertisements. Another example of the images and symbols in the novel is when the black protagonist, Pecola, feasts on a ‘Mary Jane’ candy. â€Å"She remembers the Mary Janes. Each pale yellow rapper has a picture on it. A picture of little Mary Jane, for whom the candy is named. Smiling white face. Blonde hair in gentle disarray, blue eyes looking at her out of a world of clean comfort. The eyes are petulant, mischievous. To Pecola they are simply pretty. She eats the candy, and its sweetness is good. To eat the candy is somehow to eat the eyes, eat Mary Jane. Love Mary Jane. Be Mary Jane,† (Morrison, 50). In this quotation, Morrison uses the Mary Jane candy to represent white beauty. When Pecola explains the sweetness, simplicity, and love that is identified with the Mary Jane candy, she is actually explaining the attributes of the white culture. The quotation also emphasizes Pecola’s desire to be white rather than black when she ends with, â€Å"Be Mary Jane†, which highlights the theme of beauty and how it affects the young black girls. Along with whiteness being associated with beauty, blackness is associated with ugliness. As mentioned before, it may be trueShow MoreRelatedBeauty in The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison Essay613 Words   |  3 PagesBeauty in The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison Some people will argue with you that there is always an ugly duckling somewhere in a family. I see it different, I see these people as unique. In Toni Morrisons book, The Bluest Eye there is the issue of being beautiful and ugly. In this essay I will discuss how Toni Morrison book The Bluest Eye initiates that during 1941 white was beautiful and black was ugly in the surrounding of two families. 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