Ugliness and shame permeate Pecola Breedlove's being in every step she takes, every word she breathes, and every thought that her mind conceives. Pecola spends her life seeking acceptance in the eyes of those around her. She believes that if she can just possess the blue eyes that all those white, blond, blue-eyed, Shirley-Temple-looking-girls have, then she will also attain the love and happiness that seems to emanate from every aspect of their being. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison depicts Pecola's life as dark, dreary and as a desperate search for that small detail of beauty that will change the way others see her and grant her that integral spark of existence that incessantly eludes her. Through Pecola's interaction with the other characters in the novel, Morrison shows us the destructive force of valuing our self-worth by societal standards of beauty.

Morrison discloses victimization in many forms throughout The Bluest Eye. The prejudice that jumps out and victimizes Pecola seems to strengthen the idea that blue eyes will achieve for her the acceptance she seeks. As early as first grade we are conditioned to the ideal of American beauty. Samuels and H

The honey in her mother's words for the little girl in pink ripped Pecola's heart out along with her dignity, her pride and any shred of self-worth she might have had. Pecola realizes that she is ugly and unloved. Her mother is more concerned with the little girl in pink and lavishes all the attention that should rightfully be directed to Pecola on her: "Through her mother's blurred vision of the pink, white, and golden world of the Fishers, Pecola learns that she is ugly, unacceptable, and especially unloved." (Klotman 124).

So when Geraldine enters her home and finds Pecola, along with all her poverty, vulgarity and indigence, she spurns her and forces her out of her home. For Geraldine, Pecola is "an erupted ¥Funk' that must be wiped away" (Samuels, Hudson-Weems 13). Geraldine extinguishes Pecola--the funk--with venom in her words: "Get out...You nasty little black bitch. Get out of my house" (92). Pecola represents everything Geraldine denies in herself, all the imperfection, the blackness, the funk. Geraldine's struggle towards perfection within the standards of the white world scars Pecola and leaves her feeling worthless and insignificant.

Likewise, Pecola's father comes from a broken family with his own psychological issues. Cholly never receives the parenting of a mother and father. His mother abandons him at four days old and later, at the age of 14, his father rejects him for a crap game. The closest representation he had to a father figure is an old man named Blue Jack who fills his head with "old timey stories". But Blue doesn't have any children and is not married, so he cannot teach Cholly anything about fatherhood. Even though his great aunt, Jimmy, raises him with love and caring, the generation gap between them is so great that he is not able to receive the kind of nurturing and intellectual interaction a young boy needs to grow strong and self assured.

Victimization is also shown through characters like Maureen Peel, who is portrayed as "[a] high-yellow dream child with long brown hair braided into two lynch ropes that hung down her back." (62). Morrison illustrates that she is "lynched" by the American standards of beauty. Samuels and Hudson-Weems convey that she believes she is superior to Pecola, Claudia and Frieda because America embraces her light skin and sloe green eyes (12). In an encounter with them that ends in a disagreement she runs off but not before yelling out, "I am cute! And you ugly! Black and ugly black e mos. I am cute!" (73). She is also a victim of this conditioning and, in turn, becomes the victimizer of her own race. This is also apparent in the teasing of Pecola by the four boys (Bay Boy, Woodrow Cain, Buddy Wilson, and Junie Bug). They are also black, yet they demean Pecola by calling her a "black e mo" in order that they may feel superior to her and overcome their own self-hatred. The contempt they feel for their own blackness produces the hateful insults that pierce into Pecola's very sense of being.

Unfortunately, the underlining theme that our self worth is based on how others see us is the tie that binds all the primary characters of the story: "One might indeed argue that Pecola, Pauline, and Cholly Breedlove fall victim to their failure to transcend the imposing definition of "the Other's" look. Reduced to a state of "objectness" (thingness), each remains frozen in a world of being-for-the-other and consequently lives a life of shame, alienation, self-hatred, and inevitable destruction" (Samuels, Hudson-Weems 10). Pecola's failure to overcome the preconception imposed on her by others is shown in the novel when she contentedly walks to the small grocery store, which sells penny candy. She notices dandelions on her way to the store and wonders why people call them weeds. As Pecola gazes at the dandelions, she sees in them a simple beauty, which no one else seems to perceive. When the shopkeeper, Mr. Yakobowski, refuses to "see" her and ackn

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 3352
Approximate Pages = 13 (250 words per page double spaced)