The Bluest Eye Analysis

The Tragedy of Society: An interpretation of the Bluest Eye
Can you imagine being born into a world where everyone is different than you? That you look just the way you are right now, but the world says flat out that you are not beautiful. That silvery skin is beauty, and to have the purples eyes are beautiful. You are ugly! This is a world that where seemingly everyone hates you and uses you as an emotional punching bag for their own self-loathing. This is a world where to be different is to be ugly and rock bottom. This is a world that Pecola had to live in. This is a society that glorifies the whiteness of someone’s skin, and demonizes blackness. To have brown eye is to the ugly and disgusting like mud, to have blue eyes is to be beautiful. …show more content…
It here at this point of the Bluest Eye that we see society outright shame Pecola. She is considered ugly due to her skin, she had been raped by her own father, and just to rub salt on the emotional wounds, had the baby from said rape die prematurely. This all culminates in her reaching a mental breaking point and left possibly permanently mad. After all of this you would think the town will at least sympathize with her, nope! We see from Claudia’s viewpoint she has become an embarrassment at least and a laughing stock at worst. “We saw her sometimes. Frieda and I – after the baby came too soon and died. After the gossip and slow wagging of heads. She was so sad to see. Grown people looked away; children, those who were not frightened by her, laughed outright (p.204).” As Claudia states immediately afterwards, it is far too late. Pecola has gone off the deep end and has become the local deluded nut to be ignored or mocked. Pecola clearly needs psychiatric help, but society has turned their backs on her. Instead of helping her at all, the town sees her as an embarrassment, with the grownups refusing to even see out of a likely mix of sadness and shame that likely makes them refuse to try. As for the kids, they would have likely not at all understood the circumstances that led to her insanity, and would have likely either have been scared by her incoherence, or laughed from the nonsense of her babbling. She may in the end gained her “blue eye” but she has ended up losing what little respect she

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