Key Themes and Symbols in The Bluest Eye

Theme Explanation

Girlhood

In The Bluest Eye, girlhood is a common theme throughout the book. The main characters, Pecola Breedlove, Freida MacTeer, and Claudia MacTeer, all experience girlhood throughout “Autumn.” The Oxford English Dictionary defines girlhood “as the state or time of being a girl.” Pecola Breedlove experiences a transition from girlhood to womanhood. She starts her menstrual cycle. In a woman’s life, when one starts their period, it means you have transitioned into womanhood and puberty begins. It also means you can bear children. In the text it states, ““That’s minstratin’.” “What’s that?” “You know.” “Am I going to die?” “Noooo. You wont die. It just means you can have a baby!””  (Morrison 27,28). In this scene, we see that Pecola’s period has started because her dress is stained with blood. This scene shows a very important piece of information. She has transitioned from girlhood to woman hood. She can now have children.

~Alyssa

Beauty Standards

A beauty standard is the idea of having the socially constructed notion that physical attractiveness is one of women's most important assets and something all women should strive to achieve and maintain. The narrative element of beauty standards in The Bluest Eye is that if you live up to society’s idea of what being pretty and beautiful looks like, then you get treated the right way. One of the main characters, Pecola Breedlove, has trouble realizing her beauty and thinks that her appearance is the root to all her problems including her family problems. “If she looked different, beautiful, maybe Cholly would be different, and Mrs. Breedlove too. Maybe they’d say,” Why look at pretty-eyed Pecola. We mustn’t do bad things in front of those pretty eyes.”” (Morrison Pg.46). Pecola feels that the reason she gets treated the way she does is because of the way she looks. She feels that people who are beautiful, don’t get treated the way she gets treated.

            ~A’Maya

Family

“Geraldine did not allow her baby, Junior, to cry. As long as his needs were physical, she could meet them—comfort and satiety. Geraldine did not talk to him, coo to him, or indulge him in kissing bouts, but she saw that every other desire was fulfilled” (Morrison 86).

The theme of family is significant because it shows that growing up with a strong or weak family dynamic effects how you treat people outside your household and how you expect to be treated. For example, Geraldine raises Junior in a manner that results in him being cruel to others. He shows no empathy to others’ pain and lacks a sense of caring for certain relationships between people. His family background not only affects him, but it also affects how Pecola is treated when she visits his house. Pecola, comes from a weak family dynamic as well, but unlike Junior she does not seek to hurt other people. She wishes to disappear.

~Yama

Symbol Explanation

Dolls

“It had begun with Christmas and the gift of dolls. The big, the special, the loving gift was always a big, blue eyed Baby Doll. From the clucking sounds of adults I knew that the doll represented what they thought was my fondest wish. I was bemused with the thing itself, and the way it looked. What was I supposed to do with it? Pretend I was its mother? I had no interest in babies or the concept of motherhood. I was interested only in humans my own age and size, and could not generate any enthusiasm at the prospect of being a mother” (Morrison 20-21).

From the time Claudia is very young, she notices a pattern. She often receives white baby dolls as gifts. She does not like them and often destroys them. Her family observes this behavior and admonishes her. Yet, Claudia’s behavior is quite logical. She doesn’t like the doll, and she wants to know if there is anything inside the doll that makes is loveable. For Claudia, the doll represents socialization. It is meant to teach her how to behave in the future as a mother and wife, but Claudia doesn’t want to do those things. She just wants to play. Morrison is cleverly teaching the reader about socialization. How are children taught to accept specific social roles in the community such as mother and wife? What happens when children reject those roles?

~Dr. H

Blue Eyes

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison focuses on its main character Pecola Breedlove who is a young girl living in Lorain, Ohio. In Morrison’s preface, the reader seems to be thrown in medias res -the middle of things- as Morrison starts Pecola’s story with her pregnancy. Pecola’s pregnancy is the result of ongoing abuse and neglect from her father Cholly and her mother Mrs. Breedlove. With this, Morrison seems to be giving her readers a forewarning; daring them to either close the book or keep reading. Due to her abuse and the level of racism and anti-blackness in the period in which Pecola lives she is forced to come up with coping mechanisms to help her get through the day. 

One of these coping mechanisms that is vitally important to central themes of the book is Pecola’s gravitation to blue eyes. Wanting blue eyes is her response to the internalized racism within her family and her community. At Pecola’s young age she sees the privileges and standards of beauty that come with being white. “Each night, without fail, she prayed for blue eyes.” (Morrison, 46). Although readers may think Pecola’s desire for blue eyes may be a wish to be white, it is not. She knows that white people are portrayed in the media as having perfect loving families and that they are the standard for what is pretty.

 Pecola’s wish for blue eyes can be equated to her same wish for a “normal” family. The heartbreaking side to this wish is that “She [will] only see what there [is] to see: the eyes of other people.” (Morrison, 47). What Morrison is trying to teach her readers is that if a person focuses on other people’s perceptions of them, they will never see themselves for who they are; they will always have dreams of things that are unattainable.

~Zaria

Other Themes to Consider

Ugliness, Self-Hatred, Love, Race, The Great Migration, Poverty

Other Symbols to Consider

Gardens, Flowers (Marigolds and Dandelions), Nu Nile hair oil, Mary Jane (candy), Mr. Bojangles, Shirley Temple vs. Jane Withers (old Hollywood stars), Greta Garbo and Ginger Rogers (old Hollywood stars), outdoors

Key Characters in The Bluest Eye

Breedloves

The Breedloves are a family who aren’t like your traditional family. The family live in this abandoned store, they fight and argue with each other, and they are mean to each other. They don’t treat each other with respect. The children Pecola and Sammy don’t refer to their parents as Mom and Dad they call them Mrs. Breedlove and Cholly. This was one ugly poor family as Morrison said, “They lived there because they were poor and black, and they stayed there because they believed they were ugly” (Morrison 38). Mrs. Breedlove controlled her ugliness like an actor would do. Sammy used his ugliness to frighten people and hurt them. Pecola hid behind hers like a curtain. The meaning of their ugliness wasn’t that they were ugly to the eye. They were ugly because of their personalities. “It was as though some mysterious all-knowing master had given each one a cloak of ugliness to wear, and they had each accepted it without question” (Morrison 39).

~Sade

MacTeers

            Morrison includes multiple families throughout the story to offer complex representations of familial life. While the Breedloves are grotesque, the MacTeers are loving. There are four members of the MacTeer family: Mama, Daddy, Frieda, and Claudia. Claudia serves as the narrator in some sections of the novel. We learn about the community and the setting from her. Her perspective as a young black girl who comes from a supportive family contrasts greatly with Pecola who comes from an unloving family.

            ~Dr. H

Mr. Henry

            The reader is introduced to Mr. Henry in the “Autumn” section. When Mr. Henry was introduced in the novel, he seemed nice, friendly, and like an outgoing type of guy. He was very friendly with Frieda and Claudia. They liked him. “He smelled wonderful……. He smiled a lot, showing small even teeth with a friendly gap in the middle” (Morrison 15). “We loved him, even after what came later, there was no bitterness in our memory of him” (Morrison 15).  Their Dad even cracked a smile when he was playing with the girls. It seems as if he’s going to have a pretty close connection with the girls. Especially with him moving into the house. He now lives with the MacTeers and rents a room from them. However, the novel foreshadows that he will create some problem in the future with the family.

            ~Stephen

China, Poland, and Ms. Marie

Three prostitutes live above the Breedloves’ storefront home. The three women China, Poland, and Miss Marie are the first people in the community to be nice to Pecola. Most people are cruel to her, so that’s why she sticks around them. Pecola and the ladies discuss various topics she is curious about such as love, sexuality, beauty, and race. These women are probably not the best people to receive advice from, but she still likes them. Their poor advice often includes lies and misinformation which contribute to her state of misunderstanding.

            ~Luc

Organization of The Bluest Eye

The Bluest Eye is organized into 4 sections connected to the seasons of the year. The novel starts in autumn. Before the first section, Morrison includes a preface of sorts with two key components. The first part of the preface includes an excerpt from a school reader. A school reader is a child’s textbook that presents them with key phrases and narratives to help them attain literacy. The excerpt Morrison includes focuses on a traditional representation of family. This family contains a father, mother, daughter (Jane), and son (Dickànickname for Richard). It describes a beautiful house and a loving relationship between the members of the family.

Throughout the novel, Morrison uses excerpts from this school reader to frame the story. For example, there is mention of the mother in the excerpt, and later in the novel a section on a key mother figure follows. Morrison uses these excerpts to juxtapose the ideals represented with the fantasy family to the reality of the Breedlove family.

Following the school reader excerpt, she includes a two page explanation of the outcome of the story. In other words, Morrison tells the reader what happens to a central character, Pecola Breedlove. Pecola is raped by her father and becomes pregnant.

Purpose of Site

Dear Readers,

In my Composition class, I am teaching Toni Morrison novel The Bluest Eye. This was Morrison's first novel, and she published it in 1970. The text is set in 1941. Contemporary readers might find  some of Morrison's references hard to place. Misunderstandings can undercut the power of this important work. Consequently, I have created a project for my freshman students to help create a reading guide that explains some of the introductory ideas to help people new to the work. The following entry topics were chosen by students to reflect key ideas in the first section of the book "Autumn." This introduction is not meant to be exhaustive. Instead, view it as a getting started guide to help new readers understand foundational topics with the work.

Happy Reading!

~Dr. H