The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison Critique

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The culture of beauty will always influence the way we want to look, the way we dress, and how we present ourselves because that’s what is deemed as “beautiful”. Of course, there will always be people who don’t follow the social norm, but for the most part many people will desire or do whatever they can to achieve that beauty. We see beauty standards all around us all the time, whether its through media or advertisements around us. We will always be imprisoned by this idea, because no matter how much it is changing, we will always want to be beautiful in everyone’s eyes.

4. I can relate to Percola’s experience. Of course, my reasons and situations were not at adverse as hers, but regardless, I wished to find certain things and wanted to feel beautiful up to society’s standards. Beauty standards in today’s society and surrounding a lot of celebrities and pop icons today revolve around Eurocentric features. I do have European in my blood, but my Asian genes have always masked them over. I always longed to look more European than Asian just because it was generally looked upon by everyone, especially Asians, as something more beautiful. My complexion was always on the darker side, my eyes were smaller, and my facial structure and hair was primarily what you would see in Asian people. Nowadays, I’ve learned to accept myself and love myself the way I am. America’s icons and celebrities have all different kinds of shades of skin color, different body types and looks, and even personalities. It helped me become more accepting that I can be beautiful in my own way instead of always wishing that I looked like something else.

5. Percola believes that blue eyes will make her more liked and will help her be beautiful, since the typical white features of blonde hair and blue eyes was what was considered beautiful. I think her desire for blue eyes is fueled by the lack of love she receives from everyone. I feel like in order to attain it her family situation will have to be better, so it would start with her parents. But because her parents are the way they are, it corrupted her mind and led her to think that there was something wrong with her and that she was flawed. She can never really attain blue eyes of course, but she prays constantly for blue eyes all the time.

6. Percola idolizes Shirley Temple because she is what the ideal child looks like in this era – a blonde haired, blue eyed child. Percola desired to be like her. Claudia was the opposite and despises the doll because she is white. She refuses to idolize the white superiority instilled in the beauty standards of that time. Claudia searches deep (literally, she tears the doll apart to see what was so ‘beautiful’ about it) to find what was so great about it and couldn’t tell.

I feel like Percola and Claudia have different views about this because of their upbringing. Percola was always looked upon negatively due to her family, and her family had instilled the idea that white was beautiful early in her, especially due to the fact that her mother worked as a nanny in a white home and saw them as the ideal family. Percola doesn’t really possess as much of a love for her family because love was never really instilled in her, which caused her to always look for ways to be loved (which happened to be blue eyes).

Claudia, on the other hand, understood what love was and didn’t have issues in her family as Percola did, so she didn’t really have any issues with looking for love or understanding what it was to be loved.

I relate more to Percola just because of how I was raised and how my culture is. Being the first child of my family and the first person to reach adulthood in my generation, I’m always expected to be the best and excel at everything I do. I never receive much praise or encouragement just because I’m expected to be great already. I used to always have to find a way to impress my family and never understood what it was like to be encouraged to be great.

7. I thought of this kind of similar to the reference, “a picture is worth a thousand words.” Basically, the visual that she gave us has a deeper meaning than just what it might look like, which seemed to be the case in Morrison’s work. I think the use of seasons was to imply the changes going on in someone’s life or situation. Some of the seasons don’t make sense to me, such as the Spring season. Usually the spring represents newness or freshness and usually has a positive connotation to it, but Percola was raped by her father during this season. However, it makes sense to me that Percola’s child dies in the Autumn because that is the season where things begin to die.

Marigolds in this book held a great depth. Claudia speaks about how she wanted to plant marigolds for Percola’s baby and said if the seed grew, then the baby will live. Ironically, the seeds did not grow, and Percola’s baby dies. Claudia then conveys some sort of an image of the land being bad for certain plants. (Cannot find exactly quote because I returned my book), but I think it might have alluded to the fact that African Americans were not accepted or able to “grow” in a land where they are still unaccepted. The “seed” was willing to grow but the “land” did not allow it to.

8. Racial self-loathing existed through her desire to be accepted. It was evident in not only Percola, but also her parents. It seems to me that Percola’s parents have somehow instilled this idea into Percola because of their past experiences and their position in society during that era.

Percola’s father suffered from self-hate when he hated the girl he had sex with, instead of hating the white men who forced them to continue. Percola’s mother experiences this while working as a nanny for a white family, the Fishers. Pauline’s insecurities of self-loathing corrodes her life as she continues to work with the white family, seeing them as an ‘ideal’ family.

In Percola’s case, she is surrounded by white baby dolls, Shirley Temple, and the belief that blue eyes were considered ‘beautiful’ because it was just like a white child’s. Because of that, Percola didn’t believe she was beautiful and was constantly degrading herself because she wasn’t accepted because of her lack of that feature. This eventually corroded her so much to the point where it drove her to become mad and lonely.

In contrast, Maureen Peal, Geraldine, and Soaphead Church actually uplift themselves instead of degrading themselves. They use these stereotypes to their advantage.

9. I feel like racism was a pretty prevalent theme in this book. It was represented in the values that Percola’s family had instilled, through the desire to want blue eyes, and