The Theme of Survival in the Novel "The Bluest Eye" (Essay Sample)

Survival In the Novel’ The Bluest Eye
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"The Bluest Eye" was written by American novelist Toni Morrison in 1970, and it won the National Book Award for fiction in 1971. It tells a story about an African-American girl who has been socialized into Western culture despite being ethnically African rather than a European descended person. Throughout her life, she rejects traditional beauty standards by becoming obese or malnourished depending on her feelings of self-worth. She resorts to starving herself to lose weight, wanting to please the white people around her. This novel is about a girl named Pecola who her father rapes, wants to fit in with the other little girls at school, and strives for beauty so that someone will finally love her. Morrison's main message in this novel is that survival means accepting your appearance and being able to love yourself despite what others may say or do. She wants the reader to sympathize with Pecola's role in the novel and see how beauty standards have affected her life and how she is trying to find her happiness.
Pecola Breedlove, the main character of "The Bluest Eye," is an eleven-year-old African American girl mocked by her classmates and never has a friend. She goes through a series of traumatic events but remains hopeful until the end. In the beginning of the story, Pecola is shown dancing in a white dress. Her mother is trying to get her to go over to Missy's house because there is to be a party. However, Pecola is jumping rope, and she has no interest in going over to Missy's. Pauline reprimands her and gets her attention. Pecola then thinks about the mocking of her classmates and the way that they always feel that they have to look down on someone else (which she cannot understand just as much as she cannot understand their meanness). She does not want to go over because she thinks that "Missy has two blue eyes. Later in the story, Pecola is introduced to a new friend named Claudia. When they first meet, Pecola thinks that Claudia is the saddest girl in the world. She tries to love her but finds it hard because Claudia wants nothing to do with her. Then one day when they are playing together, Pecola finds a doll that she thinks looks like herself; it has light brown skin and kinky hair like her own. She feels as if she has finally found something beautiful for herself, so she begs Claudia to give it up for her when she does not need it anymore.
Throughout this book, Morrison gives the reader information about what happened to her in her childhood and what caused her to have such low self-esteem, but she still doesn't understand why people are so cruel and turns it around on herself. She sees herself as ugly and believes that what she thinks is true, namely that the white people would have been kinder to her if she had been more beautiful (Morrison, 1994). She attempts to make herself more beautiful but doesn't change the way people talk about her. This book is central to Morrison's theme of self-esteem because it is a story about how difficult it can be for someone to come to terms with the beauty standards others impose on them.
In "The Bluest Eye," Pecola lives in Lorain, Ohio, a depressed community full of poverty and unsteady jobs. Because of this, their family doesn't have very much money, and their house is usually pretty messy. Pecola's mother, Pauline, is a very strict alcoholic. She is the daughter of a miner who said he did not want her to have the same fate as him. Pauline's father was killed in a mining accident, and she brings this up whenever she gets mad at him or if Pecola tries to get her to let her go out with her friends or get new clothes. Then there is Cholly Breedlove, Pecola's father, an abusive alcoholic (Morrison, 1994). They live in an unhappy marriage with two other kids named Maureen and Sammy. Cholly takes his anger out on everyone else in the house because he didn't even send them Christmas presents one year because of how much work he had on that day. Pecola is in the middle of all of this and is often called names, but she doesn't know that it is because of how she looks.