The Bluest Eye :: essays research papers

&9Misdirection of Anger "Anger is better than shame. thither is a sense ofbeing in anger. A reality of presence. An awareness of worth."(50) This is howmany of the blacks in Toni Morrisons The Bluest Eye felt. They faked honey whenthey felt powerless to hate, and destroyed what love they did have with anger.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 whitepeople who were the source of their misery. In this manner, they kept their angercirculating among themselves, in effect oppressing themselves, at the same timethey were being oppressed by the white people. Pecola Breedlove was a unseasonedblack girl, growing up in Lorain, Ohio in the early 1940s. Her life was one of themost difficult in the novel, for she was almost totally alone. She suffered themost because she had to dare having others anger dumped on her,internalized this hate, and was unable to get angry herse lf. 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 " delightful" lady and her"pretty" house. Pecola does not stand up to Maureen Peal when she made fun ofher 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 directedher anger toward the dandelions that she once thought were beautiful. 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 product of having others anger set(p)on 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 si de by side(p) 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 bowl with Darlene by two white custody, "never did he once considerdirecting his hatred toward the hunters"(150), rather her directed his hatredtowards the girl because hating the white men would "consume" him.