Themes in the Novel, The Bluest Eye

In her novel The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison explores the themes of racism and capitalism, specifically from the perspective of the black experience in the United States. In general, the view of the characters in the novel is that the world is run by and for white people, especially white people with power and property, and that black people, particularly poor black people, are hurt in many ways by this racist, capitalist system.

One of the most destructive results of this racist, capitalist system is that black people come to feel so negatively about themselves and their race that they long to be white. The character of Pecola portrays this self-hatred and its destructive effects.

Morrison clearly believes every aspect of racism to be destructive to the victim of racism, but she does not argue that everything about capitalism is destructive. What is destructive is the difficulty faced by blacks who want to share in any meaningful way in that capitalist system:

Being a minority in both caste and class, we moved about

. . . on the hem of life, struggling to consolidate our weaknesses and hang on, or to creep singly up into the major folds of the garment. Our peripheral existence . . . was something we had learned to deal with. . . . Knowing that there was such a thing as outdoors bred in us a hunger for property, for ownership. The firm possession of a yard, a porch, a grape arbor. . . . Rented blacks cast furtive glances at these owned yards. . . . (18).

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hich eats away at the mind and heart and soul, and this is especially true of poor blacks, who suffer double discrimination in capitalist society. Morrison focuses on poor, black female characters for the most part, which means characters who suffer on the third level of sexism. Morrison ties the destructive effects of racism and capitalism together in numerous ways. For example, she writes that the Breedloves "lived [in a storefront] because they were poor and black, and they stayed there because they believed they were ugly" (34). Here again we find Morrison emphasizing the damage that racism and capitalism cause the poor black person to do to himself or herself: Although their poverty was traditional and stultifying, it was not unique. But their ugliness was unique. . . . You looked at them and wondered why they were so ugly. . . . Then you realized that it came from conviction, their conviction. 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 (34). The white-run, capitalist society is built and perpetuated on the idea of selling images of what it means to be happy and successful, and those images have to do with being white a

Category: Literature - T