Toni Morrisons The Bluest Eye - Pecolas Mother is to Blame Essay

Toni Morrisons The Bluest Eye- Pecolas Mother is to BlameA black child is born and twelve years later that same child asks, How do you pee-pee someone to love you? The answer cant be found in Mrs. MacTeers songs or in the Maginot Lines description of eating fish together, and even Claudia doesnt know because that question had never entered her mind. If Claudia had thought about it, she would have been able to explain to Pecola that although she didnt know exactly how you made someone love you that somehow she knew that she was loved. That love was expressed on those frozen autumn nights when Claudia was sick and loving detention would gently touch her forehead and readjust her quilt. Those were the same loving hands that told Claudia that they did not want her to die, and those were the loving hands of her contract, Mrs. MacTeer. Unfortunately, Pecola had no loving hands to comfort her. In America, in the 1940s, white supremacy reigned and the values of the white dominant group w ere internalized by the black company in Toni Morrisons The Bluest Eye. These images were reinforced in childrens literature, on billboards and even on the giant theater screens. Although the effects of this propaganda rippled throughout the black community, its most devastating consequences were inflicted by Pauline Williams. Perhaps it was because she had always been a dreamer and she had to fantasize in order to escape her daily grind that the silver screen was able to charm her. Once her education was complete, and she had been indoctrinated by the standards of this medium, she could never look at the world the same way again. Everything was now assigned a category there was reliable and evil, white and black, beauty and ugliness, a... ..., she became Mrs. Breedlove in name only. She did not breed love instead she procreated shame, guilt, and ugliness. Although it is true that Chollys behavior was ugly, and he was dangerously free to gorge his witness appetite, I believe th at it was Pauline who forced the family to wear their ugliness. Pauline cultivated her child, Pecola, with ridicule and shame, and so she ripened, and felt unworthy. Pauline, more than anyone else, knew Chollys character, yet she refused to believe, and protect her child from his lustful advances. As a consequence, Pecola turned to Soaphead Church for her protection, and his path led her into insanity. However, Soaphead Church was just her guide, Pecolas road to madness had already been paved the day she was born, by her mother Works CitedMorrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. Afterward by Toni Morrison. New York Penguin, 1994.