Multiple Perspectives
Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye is a novel that captures
childhood, adulthood, reality, imagination, love, and hate all from various
perspectives. Two of the main characters, Claudia MacTeer and Pecola
Breedlove, become friends and learn to start facing the trials of life
together while at the same time from very different viewpoints. Claudia
comes from a family life that is tough, but at the same time, loving.
She has learned how to love and what it feels like to be loved. This
has given her confidence in both herself and her choices. In contrast
to this is Pecola. Pecola comes from a family that society deems
as “ugly” and the Breedlove’s choose to accept this and hide behind.
Thus, Pecola lacks the confidence and love that Claudia exhibits.
These different backgrounds help in explaining why Claudia and Pecola go
about living their lives in near opposites of each other and also give
Morrison the ability to allow the reader to have multiple interpretations
of the events in the novel. Morrison gives Pecola and Claudia in
The Bluest Eye vastly contrasted perspectives regarding themselves and
their influences on others so that readers can see how important one’s
actions and perspectives can be.
Claudia sees herself as a strong beautiful black girl throughout most of the novel. She rebels against what society deems appropriate and beautiful. One of the passages that represents this best is her extreme dislike for the white dolls that society deems perfect. Speaking about the dolls, Claudia explains, “I only had one desire: to dismember it. To see of what is was made, to discover the dearness, to find the beauty, the desirability that had escaped me, but apparently only me” (20). The way she sees it, the white doll is no more pretty than she is on the outside, so there had to be something different on the inside that made them special and the only way to discover that, was to rip them apart. Her perspective on beauty is seen throughout the novel. Claudia rarely sees herself as unequal to anyone she encounters. She can stand up for everything she believes and nothing will get in her way. Morrison uses Claudia as a stark contrast to Pecola to demonstrate the benefits of being confident with oneself.
In addition to Claudia’s confidence affecting herself, it also greatly affected Pecola. From the beginning of The Bluest Eye, Claudia is not particularly fond of Maureen Peal, a mulatto girl that is high on herself and admired from everyone else at her school. Claudia makes the mistake of beginning to accept her when she uses her respect from others to protect Pecola from the boys on the playground that are yelling, “Black e mo. Yadaddsleepsnekked” (65). At this point, Claudia still has confidence with herself and her judgments of people and trusts Maureen. Almost as soon as Maureen gains Claudia’s trust and respect, she destroys it by turning on Pecola and yells, “I am cute! And you ugly!” (73). This completely disrupts Claudia’s way of thinking. She begins to wonder what it is that makes Maureen beautiful and her not. For this first time she thinks, “We felt comfortable in our skins, enjoyed the news that our senses released to us, admired out dirt, cultivated our scars, and could not comprehend this unworthiness” (74). This new perspective to Claudia’s life leads to multiple implications. First, it diminishes Claudia’s confidence, especially in her definition of beauty. The one character throughout the novel that is not afraid to defy societal standards and stand up for what she believes in is beginning to see, understand, and even believe that she is not as wonderful as she originally thought. It is an extremely pivotal point in the novel because it shows that Claudia’s narration is subject to changes and new perspectives. This scene is also important because Pecola is able to see that she can no longer had a blind faith in Claudia and her ability to protect her from situations. Finally, it somewhat aligns Pecola and Claudia. Pecola is no longer the only girl that is dealing with the feelings of inadequacy due to the demoralizing stereotypes society put on beauty. The reader is able to see how the perspective of Claudia beginning to doubt her beauty and Pecola’s opinion of her ugliness being cemented affects the rest of the novel and the character’s decisions.
Pecola’s perception of herself is what leads to her inability to stand up for herself. She, like the rest of the Breedloves, accept when society says, “’You are ugly people’. They took the ugliness in their hands, threw it as a mantle over them, and went about the world with it” (39). Without a base or a reason too, Pecola just accepted her ugliness and used it as protection and an excuse for her unconfident nature. This perspective that Pecola has gives the reader insight as to how demeaning biased opinions towards others can be. Pecola uses her ugliness as an excuse as to why people are cruel to her and why they don’t really see her. When Pecola goes to the store to buy some Mary Jane candy, the store owner, a white immigrant, looks at Pecola with a “total absence of human recognition – the glazed separateness” (48). Pecola decides that this is caused by her ugly blackness. As an outsider reading this, Pecola’s perspective of people not recognizing her as human is extremely shocking, something that many people have probably not experienced. All of these factors lead into her decision that the only way she will be beautiful is if she gets blue eyes. In her perspective, this will define her as white and beautiful, not as ugly and black. “So it was. A little black girl yearns for the blue eyes of a little white girl, and the horror at the heart of her yearning is exceeded only by the evil of fulfillment” (204). Due to the societal influence, her lack of confidence, and the absence of love in her life, Pecola resorts to trying to change who she is and the beauty that she has for something that is impossible, intangible, and unneeded.
Pecola’s perception of herself affects the choices that Claudia makes. Throughout their childhood together, due to Pecola’s feelings of inadequacy, Claudia feels that she should be the one to take care of her. Claudia was the one that Pecola stayed with when her family life was bad. It was Claudia that always stuck up for her on the playground and tried to give her some confidence. Claudia was the one that tried to show Pecola that black was beautiful. It was Claudia that tried as hard as she could to love Pecola. Yet, despite all of this, Claudia could not protect Pecola from her father. Thus, Claudia perceives the rape as partly her fault. So after the rape, Claudia never saw her friend again. “Not because she was absurd, or repulsive, or because we were frightened, but because we had failed her” (204). Pecola’s inability to see herself as worthy of respect from herself, her father, and society led to her ultimate destruction.
Morrison uses the multiple perspectives of Claudia and Pecola to depict how influential actions and opinions can be towards people. These various viewpoints of the characters enable the reader to see more answers, feel more emotions, and question more decisions. It was the oppression of society that forced these girls to question themselves, their believes, and others. At the end, Claudia reflects upon how her community destroyed Pecola, “All of our waste which we dumped on her and which she absorbed. And all of our beauty, which was hers first ad which she gave to us. All of us – all who knew her – felt so wholesome after we cleaned ourselves on her” (205). It was not totally Pecola’s fault that she was reduced to “birdlike gestures”. The constant picking, prodding, judging, and demoralizing of the characters left those in adolescence unsure of where they stood and who they should be. Even Claudia, who throughout the novel appears to be strong and confident, falters slightly when encountering predetermined, unfair opinions. Morrison uses the technique of multiple perspectives to give the reader insights about the characters, their decisions, their rational, and to show how destructive stereotypes are.
