Analysis of The Bluest Eye Essay

Life in the Bluest Eye

While most young African American girls are thriving and looking forward to being successful in life, there are still many young girls that are suffering from being physically, mentally, emotionally abused. I believe that the differences that they encounter in life are based off of their family disparities.

If every young African American girl can come forth and speak, and express what its like to be abused, we still wouldnt truly understand. In their eyes its more than just abuse, its a unsatisfied life without love, care, understanding, help, and no one to run to. A young girl named Pecola Breedlove is one girl that can describe what many abused girls are going through, and how they feel. Pecola Breedlove and her family live in a storefront because they labeled poor and unfortunate, also because they are ugly. She doesnt only think she is ugly but also believes it. Pecola doesnt only live with an abusive father but also a mother that has no say so on what her husband says. When Cholly, which is pecolas father was young he passed by a group a young white men having sexual intercourse with a girl. They forced him to join and proceed having sex with the her. From that point on because of that and other humiliations that took place during his life, Cholly is a cruel and violent man. To Pecola its nothing new when her mother and father get into violent fights. During these fights Pecola tries her best to distant herself away, she can imagine each body part dissolving except for her eyes. She hates her ugliness, which makes teachers and classmates ignore her. For a long time, she has hoped and prayed for blue eyes, which will make her beautiful and change all the evil in her life to good. There is nothing like having good understanding friends that mean so much when you have no one to look up too. To Pecola she had Claudia and Frieda which were around when they thought or felt that Pecola needed them. You never know what the next person is going through, and you helping them just might mean the world to them. Many young girls are lost, misunderstood, and judged by what they wear, where they live, how they live and what they have. There is not only Abuse; there are many types of abuse. In this case Pecola is being physically and mentally abused by not only her father but her mother. She not only feels that she in this alone but most of all feels that she is not only being judged by outcast, but also her parents and people that she thought cared and loved her. Unlike Pecola 15%-25% of young women are abused or neglected by their father. Abuse can result in short-term and long-term harm, resulting in psychopathology later in life. Physical and emotional effects include depression, stress disorder, eating disorders, anxiety, and many others. As many dont know, what is physical abuse? Physical abuse is abuse involving physical contact intended to cause feeling of intimidation, injury or harm. Physical abuse is described in so many ways, who really knows the true meaning of physical abuse to young girls. Every young girl thinks differently, depending on what abuse they are involved in. Like Pecola her family instilled in her that she was ugly and wasnt worth anything. Any type of abuse can damage you mind, your attitude, how you think about yourself, and how you react to certain situations. Apart of being abused is covering yourself from outcast being able to see your abuse. Pecola was physically abused by both her mother in father. She was beaten when it wasnt her fault, and at times she was beaten for things that happened to her due to Mother Nature. Who could ever imagine being beaten for simple reasons? Many young girls dont have an outlet that they can reach out o for help or advice. Pecola only had her two friends that barely understood what she was truly going through behind closed doors. Physical abuse can not only consist of injury, violence, or harm. It can also be describes had being molested, or forced to involve in sexual intercourse with a parent or family member. Pecola Breedlove was raped and impregnated by he own father. They think she should be taken out of school. The gossipers think that it would be best for the unborn baby to die. Claudia and Frieda are embarrassed and hurt for Pecola, and their sorrow is intensified by the fact that none of the adults seems to care. Claudia can picture the baby in the womb, with beautiful eyes, lips, and skin. She thinks that wanting Pecolas baby to live is a way to counteract everyone elses love of little white girls. She and Frieda are unconcerned with the incestuous component of the story they do not understand how babies are made in the first place. Claudia and Frieda decide to help Pecola by praying and by giving her a good luck sacrifice. They will give up their seed money and plant the rest of the marigold seeds. They will bury the money by Pecolas house and bury the seeds in their own yard so that they can watch over them. Her father was an drunk, and a cruel evil man. When Pecola confronted her mother about the situation and what her father had done she didnt believe her. That night Pecola was beaten almost to death for lying on her deceiving father. Its so many young African American girls that are going through exactly what Pecola Breedlove went through, and is afraid to show who she really is. Physical abuse that is perpetrated by spouses or intimate partners in order to gain power and control over the victim is described in the section on domestic violence. Perpetrators are likely to be unmarried, to live with their victims, and to be unemployed. Some perpetrators have alcohol or substance abuse problems. Some are caregivers for those they abuse. In Pecolas situation her father and mother were both perpetrators. She actually felt she was lost and didnt know who to run too. As many teased her in school, and on the streets she still remained to keep a positive attitude within herself. From time to time she Pecola did find her friends turning their backs on her based off her life disparities. As if everyone else knew she always had a feeling that Claudia and Frieda knew what she went through at home, but was afraid to admit it. Pecolas father always threaten that he was going to burn down the house, he finally came upon himself to do it and they were sent to a boarder home. Her father drinks her mom is distant, and often beat on one another. She always ask herself what kind of life is she living? She is not the only one thats asking herself that same question. From time to time abused girls run to people that can also harm them, satisfy them, or even do things just so they can feel like they mean something to somebody. These days this is the route that most girls go down. Its not so much why they do it, its that fact that it could or sometimes be their only way out. In their eyes its a different world, in Pecolas eyes, all she wished is that she had blue is. If she was like the white girls at her school, would she still be teased, would she still get abused? Is it because what she has encountered in life? If she had different parents would her life be same? These are all the questions that are being asked, but have no answers to. Deep down this is called mental abuse. Mental abuse is also a form of emotional abuse. When a child is getting abused, it can cause irreversible damage as they grow into adults. Parents do not realize what mental abuse is, or that they are even at fault for such abuse. Emotional and mental abuse in children leaves a child open to become abusers themselves, because children are so impressionable at a young age. Ignoring your child or showing them no love, care, affection can also lead to mental abuse. In Pecolas situation she was never admired or received attention from anyone. To her it seemed like because of her family issues and how she lived people around her judged her. It is mandatory for a child and even young adults to feel like they have communication with not only their parents but with others. This problem seems to have a major effect on children and young adults. Problems such as these can come from situations resulting in them showing their own children the same behavior from their childhood. Specifically this is what took place in Pecolas family. Her parents have both had difficult lives. Pauline, her mother, has a disabled foot and has always felt isolated. She constantly loses herself in movies, which reaffirm her belief that she is ugly and that romantic love is reserved for the beautiful. She finds herself encouraging her husbands violent behavior in order to reinforce her own role as a martyr. She feels alive when she is at work, cleaning a white womans home. She admires her home and despises her own. Cholly was abandoned by his parents and raised by his great aunt, who died when he was a young teenager. Throughout both of her parents life Pecola seems to see how they were treated and why they treat their own children the same way. One hot day Cholly returns home and finds Pecola washing dishes. Receiving mixed motives of hatred that are fueled by guilt, he rapes her. When her mother finds her unconscious on the floor, she disbelieves Pecolas story and beats her. Cholly who finds his self raping Pecola a second time then runs away, dies in a workhouse. Pecola believes that her cherished wish has been fulfilled and that she has the bluest eyes. Pecola goes to Soaphead Church, and asks god for blue eyes. He is touched by her request; his own attraction to whiteness makes it easy to comprehend. Deep down he knows that he cannot help her, but he tells her to give meat to a poisoned dog that he know of. He tells her that if the dog reacts, her wish will eventually come true. The dog convulses and dies, and she runs away. Soaphead then writes a incoherent letter to God. He describes his love for the newly budding breasts of young girls, and how much he adores them. He remembers two girls, Doreen and Sugar Babe, who let him touch them in exchange for money and sweets. He tells God that he did not touch Pecola and brags that he has rivaled God by granting her the wish that she asked him for. She will not literally have blue eyes, but she will believe she does. Will she receive what she is asking for or will god leave her just as she is? At this point Pecola has been through so much within the time that she was in a boarder home from moving back in with her family. She is physically and mentally abused right now. When her father rapes her and no one believes her she finds herself entering the emotional abuse stage. There is no universal definition of emotional abuse. It is commonly defined as systematic attacks on a children or young adults that have emotional well-being and sense of self-worth. Emotional child abuse is a pattern of behaviors that attacks the individual emotional development and the way they act. This includes excessive, aggressive or unreasonable demands that place expectations beyond his or her capacity. Emotional abuse can also be a form of psychological abuse. Emotional/psychological abuse is the most common form of child and young adult abuse. Most children raised in homes where they are exposed to domestic violence between their parents experience the same emotional and behavior problems associated with emotional abuse; exposure to marital abuse is a form of psychological abuse of young girls. Behavior resulting in emotional abuse can vary, and can be shown in different ways, based off of the individual. Emotional abuse involves behavioral patterns that involve one or all of the following: Rejecting, Degrading, Terrorizing, Isolating, Corrupting, etc. Examples of these behaviors includes encouraging the individual to develop behavior that is self-destructive, that maybe threatening or is likely to place the person and loved ones in danger. Name calling, threatening to kill the victim's family; controlling access to finances; isolating the victim from family and friends. Perpetrators of emotional abuse often consciously employ a strategy called, gas lightingin which they present an alternative reality to their victims, police, and even therapists. It involves denying what occurred, offering untrue accounts of what really occurred, or suggested the victim is imagining things, or lying. Strategies leave victims doubting their own perceptions, maybe even resulting in sanity and serve to confuse police, judges and therapists into their unrealistic trap. Many things can result in emotional abuse, there is no certain way to explain what girls, children, young adults period are going through within these abusive relationships and households. Being in these type of family disparities takes a enormous toll on how you respect yourself, how you look at yourself. Pecola is just a pure example of how some girls everyday life is and what their thought process is. If you have no one to uplift you, the best bet is to uplift yourself and make yourself feel good. That is what she did, Pecola and her imaginary friend, whose voice is in special italics. Her friend criticizes Pecola for looking in the mirror constantly, but Pecola cannot stop admiring her new blue eyes. The imaginary friend wants to go out and play, and Pecola accuses her of being jealous. However, she finally agrees and brags to her that she can look at the sun without blinking. Pecola tells her friend that now that she has blue eyes, no one looks at her, not even her ignorant mother. She thinks they are jealous, Pecola wonders why her imaginary friend has not come before when she needed her most. The friend tells her that she did not need her before. Pecola explains that she no longer goes to school because people are prejudiced against her want to be blue eyes. She asks her friend if her eyes are the very bluest, and her friend reassures her that they are. She asks her imaginary friend where she lives, and the friend refuses to answer. Pecola worries that her mother does not see her new friend and hopes that she wont beat her if she do.

The imaginary friend begins talking about Cholly, which is Pecolas cruel father. She speculates that Mrs. Breedlove must miss him by the way that she has been acting lately. She observes that they had sex a lot, but Pecola counters that her mother was always forced. Her imaginary friend says that Cholly made Pecola do it as well, and Pecola denies the fact that she is telling the truth. The friend reminds Pecola that Cholly raped her again while she was reading on the couch (for the second time). Pecola explains that she did not tell her mother because her mother did not believe her when it happened the first time, and she had got beaten for lying on her father. Now both Cholly and Sammy are gone for good. The friend implies again that Pecola enjoyed Chollys sexual advances the second time and Pecola gets angry. They decide to return to the topic of her blue eyes. She worries that someone somewhere else may have better looking blue eyes than she does. She wonders if her eyes are blue enough but cannot say blue enough for what. The friend tells her she is being silly and temporarily departs. What will happen from here? Unfortunately Pecola is only obtaining her blue eyes because she is slowly losing her mind. Rather than granting Pecola insight into the world around her and providing a redeeming connection with other people, these eyes are a form of blindness. Pecola can no longer perceive the outside world, and she has become even more invisible to others. Her new friendship is only imagined and does not protect her from what she has been going through and from reality. She is terrified by the fact that others will not look at her the same , and she has not escaped her jealousy of what others posses her to be with her blue eyes that she had wished for. She worries that someone has bluer eyes than her, and may take the spotlight that she has never had. Her belief in her blue eyes is not enough, and she requires constant reassurance. As is made abundantly clear when the imaginary friend brings up the painful subject of Cholly, Pecola has not escaped her demons. She has merely recast them in a new form. Her friend Claudia does not permit herself any escape from her vivid and total criticism of the community. Claudia understands that Pecola has been a scapegoat throughout their friendship and someone the community could use to exorcise its own self-hatred. She explains that Pecolas ugliness gave the community, and herself, a false sense of beauty: We were so beautiful when we stood astride her ugliness. Pecolas suffering made the community feel comparatively happy, and her failure to speak for herself allowed them to feel articulate. Claudia and Frieda selflessly sacrifice their own desires to help Pecola, planting seeds to suggest that nature always promises rebirth, and singing to suggest that lyrical language can redeem a fractured life. Claudia too is capable of selfishly using Pecola to reinforce her own sense of worth, the earth is cruel, and, in any case, nature cannot redeem human failings. The friends that you think you have at the end you dont. Sometimes you have to stick with them through the end to really notice that what always seem friendly and considerate, may not be. Pecola experienced a lot, got abused in all three major ways, and still had no one there for her. In her eyes she is considered strong, but do looks make you as a person? Her final wish was to become like the little white girls and barbies that had blue eyes. Being a white girl with blue eyes make her life better, but to Pecola anything that got her away from her abusive, unloving, inconsiderate family was the life she wanted. Even though she had made this one wish were her problems still there? Like every young girl would think that is in violent and abusive unstable homes, she wanted to fit in and be the regular girl, have a regular life like others around her. Was she the only one that had a cruel family? Pecola thought that in the end Claudia and Frieda would save her, and help her turn into the person she never was. Little did she know she was also their outlet for their own self-worth and self- esteem. Pecola needed to receive love from somebody, but her parents andthe other members of her community were unable to love herbecause they have been damaged in their ownlives. Whiteness is the standard of beauty; seeing versus being seen; sexual initiation and abuse; satisfying appetites versus repressing them.