Have you ever wished to fit into society so badly, that you would do anything to change your entire appearance? A widely known fictional novel, The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, traces a storyline of a young African-American girl named Pecola Breedlove, who never felt like she could fit in with the other children around her. The reasoning for her inability to fit in was because she didn’t possess the same characteristics they had. Every day she prayed to God for white skin, blonde hair and most importantly, beautiful blue eyes, keeping this hope alive throughout the entire novel.
Pecola was an insecure, bullied and neglected girl who resided with her alcoholic and abusive father, and mother who was barely interested in anything, aside from her job. Although her home life was difficult due to indiscretion imposed by her father, Pecola thought she could find happiness by possessing characteristics such as blonde hair and blue eyes. Throughout the book Pecola’s dreams of attaining blue eyes fervently increase and her dreams do eventually come true, but unfortunately only in Pecola’s own disoriented mind.
The main theme of this novel is the importance of appearances in our society, and that every person should be complacent in their own skin. The character’s in The Bluest Eye, associated beauty with race. For that reason, many African-American females during the end of the Great Depression, when this story took place, yearned to be white. They had grown up in a society that didn’t find them even worthy of being looked at just because of their skin pigmentation. The main character, Pecola, was fixated in wanting what nearly every female wished she was born with; blue eyes. “Adults, older girls, shops, magazines, newspapers,
window signs – all the world had agreed that a blue-eyed, yellow-haired, pink-skinned doll was what every girl child treasured.” (Claudia MacTeer, page 39). This theme applies to our lives greatly because many people in today’s society are still immensely insecure about things such as ethnicity, body weight, abnormal physical features, identity, acceptance, etc. Very few people can say that they are completely confident in their own skin even in today’s society.
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison contains powerful concepts of identity, but the novel is quite inappropriate in multiple sections. Considering that the novel contains a significant amount of mature content, I would recommend only to older teenagers or adults who appreciate compelling and explicit novels.

Word Count: 400