The Bluest Eye is a novel that is centrally anchored on the theme of race relations. It highlights the psychological and subconscious tensions that work through the lives of African Americans which create conflicts of identity that haunt them in their entire lives.
Although the desire to improve the African America’s life is a modest endeavor, the process often turns tragic and defeatist when racial self-abasement becomes the guiding principle that govern the effort of conversion.
The Bluest Eyes is a story that narrates the dilemma of black identity. It is centered on the identity crisis of a young girl Pecola who is caught up in the problematic definition of black identity that is ascribed to the black community into which she was born and brought up (Morrison, 2007). Pecola is raised up in a loveless world where black identity is seen as a foil against the white race. Pecola’s mother is a maid to a prosperous white family and her life is a daily nightmare due to her desire to conform wholly to the dictates of the white race. She aspires to the ways of white people and develops some inbuilt hatred of her children whom she thinks are responsible for her suffering.
The children seem to be a constant reminder of the things she has to endure on account of her black identity. Pecola on her side struggles to have her eyes converted into the idolized blue eyes that denote the Caucasian physical qualities. In this struggles she visits a spiritualist in her church who assures her that she can get her eyes converted into blue and therefore solve one of her enduring nightmares. The remedy of the spiritualist seems to work at the subconscious level of Pecola’s life so that in the end she is made to believe that her eyes have finally been converted into blue.
Spirituality in this regard is made to appear like an alternative form of reality, or a terrain that offers some reprieve on the desires path of conversion as represented in the mental processes of the main protagonists. According to Morrison, (2007), the conversion of an individual’s identity is a process that wracks the minds of the black community who have been made to fell inferior because of the way they are physically constructed. There is the theme of struggle that sweeps through this novella. The main protagonists are caught up in situations that demand willful use of force both physical and psychological to triumph over some of the situations that appear to trifle their livelihoods (Davis, 2006). The author employs various stylistic devices to narrate the story of The Bluest Eye which attempts to capture the rhythm of life that vibrates into the lives and times of a struggling black family.
There is the use of allegory, hyperbole, melodrama, satire, and inversion to achieve the desired effect. This is a story that attempts to critique the blind adoption of the ways of the white man by the black community and how these pursuits can end up ruining the lives of the characters that attempt it. The device of satire has been enlisted to present situations that mock this endeavor. One underlying theme is the worship of materialism and the white supremacy culture. Materialism in this novel is presented as a disease that pushes the characters into the extremities of creating their lives into the forms and images of the white society.
Materialism is often showed as one of the structures that support the Caucasian values which some members of the black community seem to pursue with extreme zeal (Lee, 2003). Symbolism in this novel has also been used extensively to bring out some of the salient messages and themes that dominate the novella. For example the doll of Shirley Temple is idolized by the characters like something that illustrates the subconscious desire of the black characters to conform to the desired goals of white identity. Shirley Temple in this novel is used like a signifier of whatever is sublime, pure, and progressive. The black characters look up at it to mock at their own presumed folly, weaknesses and failures both real and imagined.
The continued use of Shirley Temple throughout the novel illustrates a form of continuum that joins the struggle of the characters from the time of their childhood until the points in life where they seem to transcend into adulthood. It is a phenomenon that they live through and one that unites the characters to their misery at every turn of their lives. Still in another dimension the image of Shirley Temple might be considered as a metonym that depicts the quintessential American blonde. The image of a blonde with blue and beautiful eyes has traditionally been used in the America standardized beauty as some form of ideal feminine qualities which all women should aspire to be (Turner, 1969).
In this novel materialism has been portrayed negatively including through various forms of moral decadence. For instance the prostitutes who live in the neighborhood appear to possess some form of self righteousness as they go about their business. Through the various ways in which they portray their freedom they seem to suggest that they are basically victims of a system who deserve understanding. They are shown to be antithetical to the system of hate and tension which afflicts the black family. They are the only people who show their love for the distraught girl Pecola in ways that reassure her of meaning and acceptance. Through them the author uses the device of inversion to mock at the ideals of reality that appear to endorse the suffering and discrimination along the lines of race.
The world order in which the prostitutes live does not guarantee any forms of fairness and justice. Instead it is a system that has created a systematic suppression of the rights of the minorities and the marginalized. The marginalized in this sense are the groups that have been made voiceless on the account of their race, class, and gender (Conyers, 2002). In such a system it sometimes becomes necessary that the author invents an antithesis through the use character to dismantle the world order as it expresses itself through discrimination.
The use of characterization has therefore had the effect of correcting the social anomalies in the setting of this novel. It is through this characterization that the author creates irony and satire to effectively challenge some truths that stand opposed to the ideals of equity and freedoms. One other instance where the author uses characterization to make known his thematic intentions is portrayed through the rebellious nature of Claudia. Whereas everybody in the novel seems to adore the image of Shirley Temple, Claudia does not follow suit. In fact she is portrayed as cynical to this simulated beauty standards and seeks to create her own forms and values of beauty.
Claudia destroys and tears down the dolls that symbolize the white man’s qualities of beauty. She does this to the consternation of the adults who consider her as strange and idiosyncratic. Through this kind of rebellion Claudia wins her place in this fictionalized setting as a hero who seeks to restore a lost sense of reality. She goads the society into returning to the standards of beauty that celebrates the black qualities. In other forms she might be celebrated as a champion of negritude, black renaissance and the return of the native.
Shirley Temple in this novel must be understood as a formidable structure of westernization. The import of this doll is to reify the white man’s standards while at the same time destroying the black people’s pride. Accepting the image of Shirley Temple becomes an aspect of tragedy and surrender for the black community. It shows the extreme form of self abasement. The active refusal of the same image as represented by Claudia becomes a process of self discovery and which must be pursued by every black man in his or her journey of emancipation. The doll is a physical symbol of mental slavery. It must be destroyed, or at least rejected by the black community so that some form of parity might be achieved (Fischer, 2006).
The destruction of the doll symbolically shows that a terrain has been created where the inequalities of racial power might be transacted. Black women have always been shown as being thrust in double jeopardy. They are disadvantaged in two forms. First of all they are discriminated against along the lines of gender and secondly because of their color (Martinez, 2010). The destruction of the symbol of Shirley Temple becomes therefore a process through which they seek to recreate themselves in a manner that shall protect them against the discrimination of either race or gender.
The author has explored setting as a device through which he shifts through his thematic concerns to create meaning and movement. The shift in setting has been made through the change of physical locations and time locations. The historical aspects of this novel are successfully captured by the shift in time which also shows the physical growth of major characters (Holt, 2002). By changing the settings of time, the author helps the reader to come to terms with the forces of time and phenomena in the lives of the black community and how they have transformed their perceptions, relations with the predominant white race.
This shift in time also helps the reader understand the decay that has developed over time and the forces that have governed this change. The change in perceptions of the life of Claudia and Pecola are for instance represented as historical transformations that disrupted their childhood of innocence into their problematic adulthood. The suspicions that seem to torment Pecola can for instance be understood from the rape ordeal she endured in the hands of her father. Through this change in time setting the hopes, fears and aspirations of the main characters are captured in ways that shed light on the race relations in the white and black communities which live side by side.
The novel The Bluest Eye illustrates the problematic relations that affect the black community and how failure to recognize this often ends up in tragedy. Through the devices of characterization, satire, hyperbole, and irony the author captures the sense of near-tragedy that afflicts one black family whose members seem to have varied reactions to the racial tensions that define livelihoods around their neighborhood. The domineering power of the white race seems to disrupt at the individual level the lives and fate of the black community. From the conflicting ends of the characters in The Bluest Eye, it seems apparent that the fate of the black community is dependent on how the characters align themselves verses the dominant ideologies.
Characters that conform to the standards of reality seem to live in a delusion that sometimes turns tragic. The characters that excel in the system are those that strike a delicate balance between their ideals, heritage, and the atmosphere of white supremacy which shape the dominant views of the American society. The dilemma of Pecola one of the lead characters is symptomatic of the vanity that disturbs the young African Americans in the quest to reconcile with the racial realities around them. The process of maladjustment in this process is portrayed as one that begins from the subconscious mind but eventually reflects into the physical being of the victims.
The term bluest is therefore a connotation of hyperbole which reflects on the extreme forms of the unsettling truths of transformation that disrupts young African American people. This is a novel that decries the process of maladjustment and the emptiness that the African American must content with in their process of finding the metaphorical and physical homes in a land of problematic heritage.
References
Conyers, L. J. (2002). Black cultures and race relations. New York: Rowman & Littlefield.
Davis, J. T. (2006). Race relations in America: a reference guide with primary documents. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press.
Fischer, P. K. (2006).America in White, Black, and gray: the stormy 1960s. New York: International Publishing Group.
Holt, C. T. (2002). The Problem of Race in the Twenty-First Century. Harvard University Press, 2002.
Lee, R. A. (2003).Multicultural American literature: comparative Black, Native, Latino/a and Asian American fictions. New York: University Press of Mississippi.
Martinez, R. (2010). On race and racism in America: confessions in philosophy. New York: Penn State Press.
Morrison, T., (2007). The Bluest Eye. New York: Vintage International.
Turner, T. D. (1969). Black American Literature: Fiction. New York: C. E. Merrill Pub. Co.