Bluest Eye

The Bluest Eye In The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison shows that anger is healthy and that it is not something to be feared; those who are not able to get angry are the ones who suffer the most. She criticizes Cholly, Polly, Claudia, Soaphead Church, the Mobile Girls, and Pecola because these blacks in her story wrongly place their anger on themselves, their own race, their family, or even God, instead of being angry at those they should have been angry at: whites. Pecola Breedlove suffered the most because she was the result of having others’ anger dumped on her, and she herself was unable to get angry. When Geraldine yells at her to get out of her house, Pecola’s eyes were fixed on the “pretty” lady and her “pretty” house. Pecola does not stand up to Maureen Peal when she made fun of her for seeing her dad naked but instead lets Freida and Claudia fight for her. Instead of getting mad at Mr. Yacobowski for looking down on her, she directed her anger toward the dandelions she once thought were be! autiful. However, “the anger will not hold”, and the feelings soon gave way to shame. Pecola was the sad product of having others’ anger placed on her: “All of our waste we dumped on her and she absorbed. And

they clowned on the playgrounds, broke things in dime stores, ran in front of you on the street. Pecola"tms mother, Polly Breedlove, also wrongly placed her anger on her family. Later however, she realizes that this !change was "an adjustment without improvement", and that making herself love them only fooled herself and helped her cope. the dreadful funkiness of passion, the funkiness of nature, the funkiness of the wide range of human emotions," and most of all they tried to rid themselves of the funkiness of being black. They felt beautiful next to her ugliness, wholesome next to her uncleanness, her poverty made them generous, her weakness made them strong, and her pain made them happier. Claudia"tms anger towards dolls turns to hated of white girls. Polly "held Cholly as a mode on sin and failure, she bore him like a crown of thorns, and her children like a! cross". The blacks are not strong, only aggressive; they are not compassionate, only polite; they were not good, but well behave; they substituted good grammar for intellect, and rearranged lies to make them t!ruth. When Claudia and Freida taunted her as she ran down the street, they were happy to get a chance to express anger, and "we were still in love with ourselves then". To the blacks in The Bluest Eye, "Anger is better (than shame). Pecola"tms friend Claudia is angry at the beauty of whiteness and attempts to dismember white dolls to find where their beauty lies.