Bluest Eye Toni Morrison, the Term Paper

Long hours she sat looking in the mirror, trying to discover the secret of the ugliness, the ugliness that made her ignored or despised at school, by teachers and classmates alike." pg. 45

Morrison does not explain what beauty should be associated with, but she clearly illustrates what it cannot be linked with. She wants readers to understand how psychologically damaging it can be for a person to be told repeatedly that she is ugly and hence not worth loving. In the Bluest eyes, the subject beauty has been discussed in-depth by studying it from the opposite angle. It is the ugliness of the child that leads to a tragic end and similarly this one factor is responsible for many problems in the novel. Colly, the father of Pecola is always physical abusive and it is hinted that his anger is rooted in his wife's ugliness. Even incest is shown to be directly related to father's visions of beauty.Since the mother and the child both do not fit that vision, he holds then responsible for their ugliness and avenges it by sexually and physically abusing them.

Morrison is considered master storyteller and The Bluest eye is a classic example of her genius. The author has gained the fame and recognition in this field that little girls like Pecola could have never even imagined possible. Michael Awkward, in his essay on The Bluest Eye in the book 'Toni Morrison: Critical Perspectives Past and Present' notes that the writer was extremely confident about the superiority of her work and views "comparisons of her work to that of white authors" as "offensive and irrelevant"(Pg. 180)

References

Toni Morrison: Critical Perspectives Past and Present. Edited by HenryLouis Gates Jr. And Anthony Appiah. New York: Amistad Press,….....