being in anger. A reality of presence. An awareness of worth."(50) This is how

many of the blacks in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye felt. They faked love when

they felt powerless to hate, and destroyed what love they did have with anger.

The Bluest Eye shows the way that the blacks were compelled to place their

anger on their own families and on their own blackness instead of on the white

people who were the cause of their misery. In this manner, they kept their anger

circulating among themselves, in effect oppressing themselves, at the same time

they were being oppressed by the white people. Pecola Breedlove was a young

black girl, growing up in Lorain, Ohio in the early 1940's. Her life was one of the

most difficult in the novel, for she was almost totally alone. She suffered the

most because she had to withstand having others' anger dumped on her,

internalized this hate, and was unable to get angry herself. Over the course of

the novel, this anger destroys her from the inside. When Geraldine yells at her

to get out of her house, Pecola's eyes were fixed on the "pretty" lady and her

"pretty" house. Pecola does not stand up to Maureen Peal wh

having to be "worthy" to play with the dolls. Later, when telling the story as a

a teenager in a field with Darlene by two white men, "never did he once consider

dandelions also represent her view of her blackness, once she may have

Claudia, Soaphead Church, the Mobile Girls, and Pecola because these blacks

people felt beautiful next to her ugliness, wholesome next to her uncleanness,

Claudia herself was happiest when she stood up to Maureen Peal, the beautiful

and her children like a cross"(126). Pecola's friend Claudia McTeer is angry at

thought that she was beautiful, but like the dandelions, she now follows the

Cholly, the hatred would consume her. Later however, she realizes that this

Some common words found in the essay are:
Pecola Despite, Polly Breedlove, Cholly Breedlove, Freida Claudia, Claudia Freida, Claudia McTeer, Bluest Eye, Lorain Ohio, Soaphead Church, Girls Pecola, blue eyes, white people, mobile girls, bluest eye, wrongly placed anger, maureen peal, anger own, placed anger, wrongly placed, tone voice, soaphead church,
Approximate Word count = 1303
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)