The Blue Eyes vs Untrue Ideas: A Postcolonial Critique of Pecola’s Persistence to Fit in the White American Society in The Bluest Eye

Abstract

Set in Ohio, the north side of America, the tone in The Bluest Eye features post-colonial treatment to its central character, Pecola Breedlove. This paper discusses how she experiences a sense of being completely ruined after she is raped by her father, and her quest for the blue eyes meets merely untrue ideas. The plot, as described in the paper, provides a post-colonial background of two racial conflicts regarding the blackness, and the white beauty in America. This paper critically draws on the idea of physical whiteness as being the only American standard of beauty while Pecola’s physical ugliness draws on how black people get seriously marginalized for their blackness of their own bodies. The storyline progresses to show how Pecola‟s tragedy becomes the central theme regarding the issue of seeing, and of being seen. The paper presents a binary opposite through the portrayal of black Pecola on one side, and Mary Janes, or Shirley Temple on the other. Consequently, the conflicts meet hardly any positive solution. Pecola receives exactly the behavior that the black slaves were used to receive from the whites in the past. From the historical perspective, The United States experienced inequality between the whites, and the blacks at that time when Morrison wrote this novel. She saw that the black race got segregated from the whites in the case of superiority. Racial tension also influenced the children in the schools, where the black ones were ridiculed there. However, the acceptance of the fair skin, actually, tormented black people both psychologically, and left a scar on them like Pecola Breedlove experiences.