The Breedlove's constant bickering and ever growing poverty contributes to the emotional downfall of this little girl. According to Heinze, "Pecolas's tragedy is the ultimate expression of an entire community infected with distorted notions of worth"( Heinze 4). Pecola's misery is obtained through the touch of her father's hand and the v

The "Dick and Jane" snippets show just how prevalent and important the images of white perfection are in Pecola's life; Morrison's strange typography illustrates how irrelevant and inappropriate these images actually are. Names play an important part in The Bluest Eye because they are often symbolic of conditions in society or in the context of the story. The name of the novel, "The Bluest Eye," is meant to get the reader thinking about how much value is placed on blue-eyed little girls. Pecola and her family are representative of the larger African-American community, and their name, "Breedlove," is ironic because they live in a society that does not "breed love." In fact, it breeds hate; hate of blackness, and thus hatred of oneself. The MacTeer girls are flattered when Mr. Henry said "Hello there. You must be Greta Garbo, and you must be Ginger Rogers", for the names ring of beauty that the girls feel they will never reach.

Pecola's experiences would have less meaning coming from Pecola herself because a total and complete victim would be an unreliable narrator, unwilling or unable to relay the actual circumstances of that year. Claudia, from her youthful innocence, is able to see and relay how the other characters, especially Pecola, idolize the "ideal" of beauty presented by white, blue-eyed movie stars like little Shirley Temple. In fact, according to Denise Heinze an author who's work is included in the American Novelists Since World War II, the third series, called The Bluest Eye "a wrenching account of how the western notion of idealized beauty and it's penchant for blue eyes and blond hair turn self esteem in the black community into self loathing"( Heinze 2). In addition to narrative structure, the structure and composition of the novel itself help to illustrate how much and for how long white ideas of family and home have been forced into black culture.

In The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison tells the story of a little black girl who thinks that if she can live up to the image of the blue-eyed Shirley Temple and Dick and Jane that she will have the perfect life that they have. The importance of this book goes beyond its value as a work of literature. Morrison speaks to the masses, both white and black, explaining how a racist social system wears down the minds and souls of people. She also expresses how dominate images of white heroes and heroines with blue eyes and wonderful lives, show young black children that to be white, means to be successful and happy. This can have a large negative affect on the youth, because they will look around at their own lives of poverty and oppression and learn to hate their black heritage for keeping them from the Dick and Jane world. Morrison does not s

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1850
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)