THE BLUEST EYE CHOLLY SKIN
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He is also capable of pleasure and even joy, in the experience of eating a watermelon or touching a girl for the first time. He has experienced much suffering, having been abandoned as a baby and having suffered humiliation at the hands of white men. But Morrison explains in her afterword that she did not want to destroy her characters, even those who destroy one another, and she succeeds in making Cholly a sympathetic figure. Cholly believes what all blacks think of race the whiter you are the more beautiful you are.Д«y all rights, we should hate him, given that he rapes his daughter. The men in the story react to the racial self-hatred in different ways. They should live and act how the characters of вЂњDick and JaneвЂќ do, but it is evidential that it is impossible. Morrison portrays this impossibility by adding the Dick and Jane passages showing what white people as well as black people should aspire to. White beauty, therefore, exists as an ideal and not a reality, a goal to which even white people can only hope. Of the few whites that appear in The Bluest Eye, none can even approach this idealized white beauty. Also, white beauty becomes parallel with purity, and PecolaвЂ™s father Cholly imagines God as вЂњa nice old white man, with long white hair, flowing white beard, and little blue eyesвЂќ (Morrison 134). In simplest terms, blackness is linked to ugliness and therefore inferiority, while beauty is seen as a characteristic found only in whites. They also come to symbolize her own blindness, for she gains blue eyes only at the cost of her sanity.Д«eauty and ugliness form the basis of black self-loathing. To Pecola, blue eyes symbolize the beauty and happiness that she associates with the white, middle-class world. She connects beauty with being loved and believes that if she possesses blue eyes, the cruelty in her life will be replaced by affection and respect. The person who suffers most from white beauty standards is, of course, Pecola. ItвЂ™s the light-skinned Maureen who reveals PecolaвЂ™s connection with the traditional self-hating black. Ensuring that we do not miss her point Morrison introduces вЂњa high-yellow dream childвЂќ named Maureen Peal (Morrison 52).

THE BLUEST EYE CHOLLY SKIN

Yet although Pecola hardly meets the physical qualifications of light skin and вЂњgoodвЂќ hair, she does possess the key emotional characteristics, which is a desire for white privilege and an increasing breakup from the black community but not from her family. Through the dark-skinned Pecola, Morrison constructs her as hiding her true feelings form everyone in the novel. But the book hints that once Claudia becomes older, she too will learn to hate herself, as if racial self-loathing was a necessity to be mature. This standard of beauty can be seen throughout the novel. Morrison describes ClaudiaвЂ™s rage against this belief, while at the same time, shows the other characters being enveloped by this nonsense.

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Claudia remains free from this worship of whiteness, but she does realize that society does, imagining PecolaвЂ™s unborn baby as beautiful in its blackness. The lighter-skinned Geraldine also curses PecolaвЂ™s blackness. Breedlove shares the conviction that Pecola is ugly. Adult women, having learned to hate the blackness of their own bodies, take this hatred out on their children Mrs. Obvious messages that whiteness is superior are everywhere, for example the white baby doll given to Claudia, the praising of Shirley Temple, the fact that the light-skinned Maureen is cuter than the other black girls, the idealization of white beauty in the movies, and Pauline BreedloveвЂ™s preference for the little white girl she works for over her daughter. вЂThe Bluest EyeвЂќ provides a description of the ways in which internalized white beauty standards disfigure the lives of black girls and women. The show of racism through white beauty, and the desires of the black society to acquire this beauty, led to the destruction of many characters in this book. This belief that white sets the standards for beauty is a major factor to the racial self-loathing, which occurred in America in the past as well as today. In her young mind, she needs a miracle she needs the bluest eyes.ДЄll of the tragedies in this novel can be directed back to one main issue, whiteness as a standard of beauty. So intense are PecolaвЂ™s feelings of self-loathing and inferiority that she would do anything to soothe them. вЂњThe Bluest EyeвЂќ deals directly with the individual psychology of the main character, Pecola Breedlove. RACIAL SELF LOATHING IN THE BLUEST EYE In вЂњThe Bluest EyeвЂќ, author Toni Morrison builds a story around the concept of racial self-hatred and how it comes to exist in the mind of a young child.

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