The Bluest Eye novel concentrates on the life of three young girls: Pecola Breedlove, Claudia and Frieda MacTeer. The main character is Pecola. She is an 11-year old black girl who wants to have the eyes of a white girl, blue eyes. Pecola lives with her family in the town of Lorain, Ohio. The family consists of the mother Pauline, the father Cholly, the son Sammy, and the daughter Pecola. Every day she feels the impact of racism, not from white people, but from her own race. She doesn't like the color of her skin, because it is too dark. Pecola thinks that if she could change the color of her eyes from brown to blue, it would solve all her problems. Pecola is constantly abused by everyone in her life. She thinks that she is mistreated, because she does not have blue eyes and blond hair, which are valued by the society she grows in. In my opinion, Morrison uses white and blue colors to describe the beauty of people and black and brown colors to draw negative sides like hate and cruelty. The writer tries to portray oppression of the black population. Morrison shows us the truth about society at that time.
The story begins with the description of the difficult life of the Breedloves who are poor, unhappy, and troubled. When Pecola's mother Pauline was fifteen, she met Cholly. They married and moved to the north. Cholly, her father, is an alcoholic, an angry, reckless man, inhuman, forcible, and uncontrollable. He raped Pecola and got her pregnant. Her mother, Pauline is an unhappy woman who looks for comfort in the white family. She gives her love to the white family, for whom she works, while her family lives in squalor. Pauline prefers the fantasy world of the movie theater to the real world. The real world makes her feel ugly because of her African features and dark skin. Pauline and Cholly often fight. Sammy and Pecola deal with the fighting in different ways. Sammy often runs away because of them.
