The Bluest Eye :: essays research papers

&9Misdirection of Anger "Anger is transgress than shame. There is a sense ofbeing in offense. A honesty of presence. An awareness of worth."(50) This is howmany of the blacks in Toni Morrisons The Bluest Eye felt. They faked love whenthey felt nerveless to hate, and destroyed what love they did have with ira.The Bluest Eye shows the way that the blacks were compelled to place theiranger on their own families and on their own blackness instead of on the blankpeople who were the cause of their misery. In this manner, they kept their anger travel among themselves, in effect oppressing themselves, at the same timethey were being suppress by the white people. Pecola Breedlove was a youngblack girl, growing up in Lorain, Ohio in the early 1940s. Her life was one of themost hard-fought in the novel, for she was almost tot tout ensembley alone. She suffered themost because she had to withstand having others anger dumped on her,internalized this hate, and was unable to get angry herself. Over the course ofthe novel, this anger destroys her from the inside. When Geraldine yells at herto get out of her house, Pecolas eyes were fixed on the "pretty" lady and her"pretty" house. Pecola does not stand up to Maureen Peal when she do romp ofher for seeing her dad naked but instead lets Freida and Claudia fight for her. preferably of getting mad at Mr. Yacobowski for looking down on her, she tellher anger toward the dandelions that she one time thought were handsome. Thedandelions also represent her view of her blackness, once she may havethought that she was beautiful, but like the dandelions, she now follows themajorities view. However, "the anger will not hold"(50), and the feelings soongave way to shame. Pecola was the sad harvest of having others anger placedon her "All of our waste we dumped on her and she absorbed. And all of ourbeauty, which was hers first and which she gave to us"(205). The other blackpeople felt beautiful next to her ugliness, wholesome next to her uncleanness,her poverty made them generous, her weakness made them strong, and her painmade them happier. In effect, they were oppressing her the same way the whiteswere oppressing them. When Pecolas father, Cholly Breedlove, was caught asa teenager in a field with Darlene by two white men, "never did he once considerdirecting his hatred toward the hunters"(150), earlier her directed his hatredtowards the girl because hating the white men would "consume" him.