Carl Austin III
Racial Self-Loathing with The Bluest eye
In The Bluest Eye, the author Toni Morrison structures a story around the concept of
racial self-loathing, or hatred about ones self, and how it comes to
live in the mind of a young child and how it makes her think about her
self. Racial Self-Loathing is a big theme that is carried out throughout
the whole book. Racial self-loathing can lead to many dangerous things
and it can damage a person for life and ruin a persons life.
The
king of pop music, Michael Jackson is a prime example of racial
self-loathing. in Michael's early life he was a young black boy with
dark skin and black nappy, puffy hair.
Throughout young Michael's childhood he
was constantly getting made fun of or bullied by kids or his own family
about his black boy features, like his nose and hair. Michael eventually
gave in to society saying he was ugly and he tried to conform to be a
white person and have all white features. Michael, when he became old
enough and sick of the torture from society, got multiple plastic
surgeries and he deformed himself and and ruined his body that was
perfectly fine in the original form. These surgeries and self-loathing
made Michael Jackson go crazy.
In Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye,
Pecola, one of the main characters, wishes with all her heart to be
white and have white features, blonde hair, blue eyes, white skin, socks
that don't slide down, etc. The self-loathing that Pecola has gets
worse and worse as the novel goes on. Pecola first gets knowledge of her
blackness and how she wants to wash it away when she goes to the store
to buy three Mary Jane's and the store clerk completely ignores her.
Then, towards the end of the book, the new girl in the school that
everyone adores tells Pecola that shes ugly and black. After Pecola
heard that she broke down with her head in her hands and cried. At the
end of the novel Pecola begins to go crazy. She hears voices in her head
saying that she has the bluest eyes, but the voices in her head was
really just her talking to her self.
Michael Jackson and Pecola are similar in a way because they both want the same thing, and that thing is to change who they were originally were and conform to society to be accepted.
