Bluest Eye Book Review

The bluest Eye is a book centered around Pecola’s Breedlove’s struggle with her identity, where she figures that by being white she can be loved and amass a better life. The central story begins when Pecola moves back with her family during the time after the great depression. Her father is an alcoholic her mother is distant and often the two beats one another. Frequently her brother Sammy runs away from lack of love in the family. Pecola believes if she had the bluest eyes, she would be loved and her life would be altered.  Pecola’s parent both lived difficult lives. Pauline her mother has a lame foot so she always feels isolated. She loses herself in movies and her job where she cleans a white women’s house. This is symbolic since she loves the white women’s home and not her own. Her father Cholly, was abandoned as a child and was once humiliated when two white men found him having sex for the first time and made him continue while they watched.  He feels trapped in his marriage and lost interest in life. One day Cholly returns home and finds Pecola washing the dishes and with mix motives of tenderness and hatred rapes her. Pecola mother finds her unconscious on the floor and beats her despite confessing what actually happened. Later Pecola gets impregnated by her father that later miscarried. Cholly rapes Pecola a second time then he runs away and later dies in a workhouse. Pecola sadly became mentally insane believing that she was granted her bluest eyes and moves to the edge of town. 

This book tackled the problem with beauty standards and their effect on the world.  This book provided a story where the main character internalized white beauty standards which deformed her life.  In the world around Pecola, whiteness is superior hence her white baby doll given to her as a child. The idealization of Shirley Temple strikes her mentally as she notices that light-skinned Maureen is cuter then the other black girls. The idealization of white movies psychologically has her mother Pauline loving the white girl at her job then her daughter at home. Her mother learned to hate her blackness and passes down that hate to her child.  With this standard of beauty she is left loving whiteness and in turn devaluing herself to the point of insanity. 

Even though Pecola becomes insane it is still gives us the reader insight into her world. She sees through her eyes the difference in treatment to lighter skinned people. It is even relevant today; lighter skinned people statistically are better off. She is mistreated by the boys in her community and down to her own mom who sees no value because she has black skinned. The connection between how one is seen and what one sees has a unique tragic outcome for her.  In the Girl Studies book it sights that a girl’s body is a battle grown. (Lipkin 48) Odor must be banned, underarm hair removed, breast have to be perky, hair looking flawless, and so on. Their awareness is more focused on the exterior which lives them empty on the inside. They also tune in daily to MTV which I pronounce “EmpTyV” that leaves them superficially hooked to glitzy shows like the Hill. This book more specifically focuses on black beauty where black women go through great lengths to chemically process their hair to compete with the straightness of white women’s hair. They also constantly put chemicals to brighten their complexion which sometime leaves their skin batched with discoloration sometimes permanently.