The Bluest Eye-Theme of Vision

Toni Morrisons highly acclaimed debut work, The Bluest nitty-gritty, is sensation of unquestionable looker and intricately woven prose. As a fictional writer, Morrison avails herself of her literary faculties, using her asc deathency of description in order to convey an unusually lucid examine to the reader. The five senses encounterm to envelop a great deal of description in the fable, most nonably that of hand. As has been discovered by fair play of studying the brains neural and cognitive machinery, vision occupies sizeable regions of the brain.Although in a more abstract sense, visions disproportional influence on the narrative and the storys characters is greatly manifested in The Bluest Eye. One powerful mode in which vision dictates many aspects of the novel is through the concept of aesthetic beauty. Through by the novel, Morrison paints a detailed picture of how Afri bed-Americans, especially young, amenable female childs, are subject to the conventional indo ctrination of beauty.Society has taught them to equate sinlessness with scenic, and to go to considerable lengths to cleann themselves, such(prenominal) as in the crusade of women the likes of Geraldine, who is described as sugar-brown in peel off tone they neer cover the entire mouth for fear of lips too thick, and they worry, worry, worry nearly the edges of their hair (83). Geraldine even goes as far as to inculcate this carnal selfloathing in her own son, Junior his hair was cut as fold up to his scalp as possible to avoid any suggestion of wool, the quit was etched into his hair by the barber (87).Any manifestations of stereotypical racial features, such as full lips and wool-textured hair are carefully concealed in an effort to adhere to the flannel ideal of what is beautiful. In the town of Lorain, Ohio, unperceivable and implicit messages emphasizing colorness as superior are undercoat everywhere, and seemingly impossible to ignore. The quint requisite white m uck up doll wedded to Claudia as a present, romanticism of Shirley Temple, the exaltation of the light-skinned Maureen, idealization of white female actresses in movies, and Paulines nurturing of the half-size white girl are a few examples of the ways in which hese hyp nonic images lodge in the vulnerable consciousness of the African-American women and young girls in the story. Adult women, having grow into consummate self-loathers, detesting the bodies in which they were born, sway their hatred by taking it out on their own children Mrs. Breedlove adopts the conviction that her daughter is ugly, and Geraldine curses Pecolas blackness. The idea that darkness is in fact a state of mind is presented early on in the book when illustrating the Breedlove family Mrs. Breedlove, Sammy Breedlove, and Pecola Breedlovewore their iniquity (38).This sentence provides an implication that the Breedloves ugliness was a result of deliberate choice. The narrator then continues on, observing, Y ou looked at them and wondered why they were so ugly you looked closely and could not find the source (39). In saying this, one can elicit that the members of the Breedlove family are not inherently ugly, rather they are driven to believe that they are and that they deserve to be, win over those that look upon them that they are ugly. The Breedloves sense of physical insecurity emanates outwardly, and causes others to see them in the way they want to be seen.For one reason or another, being viewed with contempt for their appearance benefits them in some way. For Mrs. Breedlove, her ugliness is utilise for purposes of martyrdom, for Sammy, it is used to inflict pain, and for Pecola, it is used as a mask to cover up behind. In the vein of vision, a recurring motif that is discernable in The Bluest Eye is seeing versus being seen. Many characters in the novel, most frequently, Pecola, express feelings of being disregarded and invisible when interacting or in the vicinity of white pe ople.In the passage about the Breedloves living situation, they are described as living in anonymous misery. The fact that they paradoxically live in anonymity despite being exposed to passersby on the street, introduces this prevailing theme. conceivably one of the most memorable scenes that addresses this subject is when Mrs. Breedlove recounts giving birth. In referring to the doctors, she says, They never said nothing to me. Only one looked at me. Looked at my face, I mean. I looked right back at him. He dropped his eyes and turned red. He knowed, I reckon, that maybe I werent no cavalry foaling (125).By refusing to make eye contact with her and acknowledge her, the doctors, in a way, put down her. She sees them, but they do not see her. They treat her as though she is an animal, rather than a sentient human being, and although uneducated, Mrs. Breedlove is perceptive enough to circular this. She believes that if they were to lock eyes with her, they would realize something unpleasant that she is no different from the white patients. With regard to invisibility, the early scene with Pecola in the candy shop in addition seems to be particularly telling.In speaking of Mr. Yacobowski, it says, he senses that he need not waste the effort of a glance. He does not see her, because for him in that location is nothing to see. How can a fifty-two-year-old white immigrant store-keeper see a little black girl? (48). What can be gathered from this is that the man, to some degree, has do a conscious choice not to look at her, not because he is physically incapable of doing so, but because he considers someone of her skin color insignificant, and not worth the energy necessary for acknowledgment.This theme underscores the contravention between how one sees and how one is seen, also differentiates between superficial sight and real insight. Pecolas desire for red-hot eyes is undoubtedly essential to examine when considering the power and impact of vision in the novel. Pecola is consumed with the thought of having blue eyes because she believes that they would be the simple panacea for everything that is unpleasant in her life. She is win over that they will alter the way she is seen by others, and therefore the way that she sees the initiation around her.To Pecola, blue eyes and happiness, are inextricably linked. In a way, too, they represent her own blindness, since she attains them at the expense of her sanity. In addition, she has the understanding that if she had beautiful eyes, people would not think it right to do ugly things in front of her or to her Maybe theyd say, Why, look at pretty-eyed Pecola. We mustnt do bad things in front of those pretty eyes (46). She believes that the roughness she is exposed to is somehow intertwined with how she is seen.Her insight is confirmed when Maureen steps in season being teased by the boys at school. Upon arrival, it seems that Maureens beautiful watch causes the boys not to want to act b adly. One character in The Bluest Eye that stands out against the rest as being one of the few individuals who can see clearly, and through an unadulterated lens is Claudia. Her clarity of vision is in part due to the fact that it is not marred by pain, like Pecolas is. In the beginning of her narrative, she talks about how she has not insofar reached the stage in adolescence where love turns to self-hatred.She is different from others girls her age because she does not distort to emulate them, at the loss of her well-being. When she receives the doll, she describes her impulse to dismember it I had scarcely one desire to dismember it. To see what it was made, to discover the dearness, to find the beauty, the desirability that had escaped me, but apparently only me (20). In her childlike naiveness, she does not realize that the beauty everyone praises the dolls for does not come from within, but instead, is on the surface. She wants to grow apart the doll in the hopes that she will unearth the inner secluded to its beauty.At least at this point, she is unaware of what ships company has narrow-mindedly deemed beautiful. Near the end of the story, when she and her sister are talking about Pecolas pregnancy, she imagines the unborn baby as beautiful in its blackness, indicating that she does not embody the impressionable brainpower typical of other women in the book. The Bluest Eye is one of the most heavy(p) examples in modern literature that attests to the ability of vision in impacting the way in which people perceive the world and are perceived by others.The novel repeatedly brings to attention the malleability of human sight, and its vulnerability to aberration through the lens of hatred, love, bigotry, and racism. Even in the rubric of Morrisons work, one can learn a substantial amount about the immanent role vision plays in the story. The word eye in the title is singular rather than plural, suggesting the negative implications on the individua l by societys white tunnel vision in relation to concepts of beauty and approval. In addition, the double meaning of eye and I strongly emphasizes the consequence of vision in the grand scheme of the novel.