Push vs. The Bluest Eye

                                                                                                                                                       

The novel Push, by Sapphire, is about a black teenager named Precious Jones who lives in Harlem in the 1980's. In the novel, Precious faces some of the worst hardships of life, such as being beat by her mother and being raped by both parents. She ends up having two children by her father; one having down syndrome. Despite her despairing situation, Precious manages to somewhat overcome it by moving out of her home and getting an education at an alternative school, where she finds a new family among her teachers and peers. Precious's rape and home life are strikingly similar to Pecola's in the Bluest Eye. Like Precious, Pecola has a difficult home life, is raped by her father, and gets pregnant afterwards. However, these aren't the only two aspects that are shared by the books. Both books delve deep into the issues of racism and beauty.

In Push, racism is portrayed as an invisibility towards blacks and Precious describes the situation as a picture that comes back and she "doesn't exist. Don't nobody want me...ugly black grease to be wiped away...changed"(Sapphire 31). Her non existence in pictures exemplifies blacks invisibility as a race. Also, her description of herself as black grease to be wiped away and changed portrays the undesirability of blacks and the necessity to clean society of blackness.

In the Bluest Eye, blacks are also seen as invisible. When Pecola goes to the candy store, the clerk " doesn't see her because there is nothing to see...nothing in his life even suggested the feat was...desirable..."(Morrison 48).  Pecola, a black child, being described as "nothing to see" and the undesirability of seeing her is similar to Precious's non existence and feeling rejected. Also, similarly to blackness being described as dirty grease in Push, blackness in the Blues eye is seen as something undesirable that needs to be "...wiped away" and "...wherever it chips, flowers, or clings...they fight it..."(Morrison 83). The wiping away of something that chips, flowers, and clings is similar to trying to get rid of dirty grease, in this case black's grease in society. The changing of blackness described by Precious in Push is akin to the fight against blackness and its undesirability in the Bluest Eye.

To the characters in the Bluest Eye, beauty is seen as white's idealism of what beauty should be: blond hair, blue eyes, and white skin. This standard makes it difficult for black characters in the novel to be accepted into society. So, they try their hardest to conform. Black women that conform "...live in quiet black neighborhoods where everyone is gainfully employed..."  are described as "sweet and plain as butter cake" and "dust themselves with Cashmere Bouquet talc"(Morrison 82). Living in a quiet neighborhood and being gainfully employed are not only  symbols of economic stability, but also of what a typical white family is described as. Being plain as butter cake and using talc to cover blackness shows trying to blend in to white society and not standing out because of their blackness.

A character similar to the black conformists in the Bluest Eye is Precious's nurse when she is giving birth to her first baby. The nurse, called Miss Butter, is a "slim butter color woman...I know she is black...A lot of black people with nurse cap or big car or light skin same as me, but don't know it"(Sapphire 11). Referring to the nurse as Miss Butter gives her a resemblance to the "plain as butter cake" women from the Bluest Eye, who conform to white society. Also, blacks taking on white socioeconomic characteristics such as a stable job and nice car is similar to the blacks in the  Bluest Eye who have stable jobs and live in quiet neighborhoods. The forgetting of identity, described by Precious, is a common phenomenon in The Bluest Eye by blacks desperate to fit into white society.

Another example in Push of dominance of white idealism of beauty is when Precious laments that the only people that show up in pictures are "the real people...and they are pritty people, girls with little titties like buttons and legs like long white straws"(Sapphire 31). Precious seeing only white society's idealism of what a child should be as real people proves the dominance of white perspective when it comes to beauty. This dominance is also reiterated in the Bluest Eye by Pecola's adoration of Shirley Temple and her eagerness for blue eyes.

To Pecola, blue eyes weren't just a beauty status, but a way to escape her dire home life. Whenever something went wrong she imagined herself in a new life with "...big pretty blue eyes...story book eyes"(Morrison 46). Similarly, when Precious was faced with an awful situation, such as being raped by her dad, she would imagine herself changing "bodies, I be dancing in  videos! In movies! I be braking, fly, jus' a dancing!"(Sapphire 24). Precious and Pecola both share a desire for a physical change to escape their situation. Also, both their escapes involve things that have white idealisms of beauty: storybooks and movies, further proving the dominance of white's idealism of beauty in both novels.