Bluest Eye
In The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison shows that anger is healthy and that it is not something to be feared; those who are not able to get angry are the ones who suffer the most. She criticizes Cholly, Polly, Claudia, Soaphead Church, the Mobile Girls, and Pecola because these blacks in her story wrongly place their anger on themselves, their own race, their family, or even God, instead of being angry at those they should have been angry at: whites. Pecola Breedlove suffered the most because she was the result of having others' anger dumped on her, and she herself was unable to get angry. 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 when she made fun of her for seeing her dad naked but instead lets Freida and Claudia fight for her. Instead of getting mad at Mr. Yacobowski for looking down on her, she directed her anger toward the dandelions she once thought were be!autiful. However, "the anger will not hold", and the feelings soon gave way to shame. Pecola was the sad product of having others' anger placed on her: "All of our waste we dumped on her and she absorbed. And all of our beauty,
ruth. Most of all, they faked love where felt powerless to hate, and destroyed what love they did have with anger. Toni Morrison tells this story to show the sadness in the way that the blacks were compelled to place their anger on their own families and on their blackness instead of on whites who cause their misery. Although they didn't know this, "The Thing to fear(and thus hate) was the Thing that made her beautiful, and not us" fault, and looking in to Pecola's loving eyes angered him because her wondered, "What could her do for her - ever? What give her? What say to her?" Cholly's failures led him to hate those that he failed, most of all his family. Pecola's mother, Polly Breedlove, also wrongly placed her anger on her family. As a result of having a deformed foot, Polly had always had a feeling of unworthiness and separateness. With her own children, "sometimes I'd catch myself hollering at them and beating them, but I couldn't seem to stop". She stopped taking care of her own children and her home and took care of a white family and their home. She found praise, love, and acceptance with the Fisher family, and it is for these reasons that she stayed with them. She had been deprived of such feelings from her family when growing up and in turn deprived her own family of these same feelings. Polly "held Cholly as a mode on sin and failure, she bore him like a crown of thorns, and her children like a! change was "an adjustment without improvement", and that making herself love them only fooled herself and helped her cope. Soaphead Church wrongly places his anger on God and blamed him for "screwing-up" human nature. He asked God to explain how he could let Pecola's wish for blue eyes go
Some common words found in the essay are:
Pecola Despite, Polly Breedlove, Cholly Breedlove, Freida Claudia, Claudia Freida, Toni Morrison, Eye Anger, Pecola Breedlove, Soaphead Church, Girls Pecola, mobile girls, bluest eye, blue eyes, wrongly placed anger, soaphead church, own children, wrongly anger, own race, wrongly placed, others' anger, placed anger,
Approximate Word count = 1149
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)
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