TheBluestEye: CulturalMutilationandPecola

Toni Morrison’s novel, The Bluest Eye, focuses on the emphasis African Americans place on commodity culture and its emphasis on white standards of beauty and success. The characters in the novel are consumed by the desire to attain the same level of economic success as white America. In the novel’s time period, 1941, African Americans faced social barriers in their efforts to achieve class status beyond the working class. The social norms American cultures …

…invariably someone who has a bluer eye than another person. Society creates an atmosphere in which people compete to be the best. However the creation of the consumer culture fosters an environment in which someone has to be categorized as the worst. The scale of judgment has been modified to white standards, therefore forcing African Americans to be judged inadequate. However, African Americans will never be white, just as Pecola will never obtain blue eyes.