Bluest Eye example essay topic
In order to dramatize the destructive effects of this kind of dependency, she intentionally exaggerates to find the limits. In The Bluest Eye, Claudia MacT eer provides a child's point of view-sometimes from an adult perspective-while an omniscient voice relates information unknown by Claudia. There are also passages shifting between third person omniscient and first person stream of consciousness. Morrison uses these combined voices to give varied perspectives without resorting to authorial intrusion or preaching. She wants her readers to participate fully in her fiction, to go with her to examine the often painful circumstances of her characters' lives.
Survival, a theme running throughout Morrison's fiction, is difficult for the strongest of her characters. For eleven year old Pecola Breedlove, the focal character of The Bluest Eye, discovering a means to affirm her own identity is thwarted at every turn. Morrison's first novel takes place in 1941, when Pecola, an innocent and convenient victim of her community's frustration, anger, ignorance, and shame, becomes a woman. Raped by her father, she gives birth to a stillborn child and the escapes her sense of ugliness into madness, convinced that she has magically been given blue eyes. The Bluest Eye illustrates the possible consequences of entirely depending on external conditions for self-image, for in attempting to satisfy a paradigm that differs so radically from reality, African-Americans may destroy their essential nature. And in denying their natural gifts (or, as Morrison calls it, their "funkiness") in order to placate white expectations, African-Americans accelerate their self-destruction.