Toni Morrison delivered this powerful novel in a slight sensitive manner, the use of symbolism to convey a delicate message whilst using various simple themes and a fluent switch of tense.

Simple in the sense of the symbolism relating to the Dick and Jane examples which were very apparent of her idealized world, Pecola’s last name, and certainly relating to the title of the novel, the color blue which Pecola is obsessed with, as she aims to have the bluest eyes anyone has ever had. Toni Morrison cleverly writes about the psychological and visible effects of acceptance, the need to conform to the thriving standard of beauty and the myth that surrounds the social system of beauty. Pecola for instance is portrayed as a young black girl that believes that having blue eyes and the more she looks like a white girl the more beautiful she would be and that is her route to acceptance. Digging deep into Pecola’s life, her troubles can be associated with her father’s Cholly Breedlove who feels weakened by his traumatic experience whilst growing up transfers his shame and pain to his daughter Pecola, as expected this led to Pecola’s pain of not wanting to be seen and her imagination of disappearing. It hit deep to finally have the courage to speak up about the pain and not having anyone to believe the story or being told it’s all a lie… Crushing! By the end of the novel she seems to have lost the plot which I would believe is kind of to be expected as it would have been extremely difficult to be completely ignored by everyone especially those you call family, particularly her mother, her intra family dynamics were off which then led to her having to exist in a complex fantasy where she feels hopeless but aches to feel appreciated and wanted. The novel is really a sad reality that often affects individuals, yes, it’s from an eleven-year old’s narrative however it dwells on the depth and trauma relating to the failures of recognition and acceptance. Pecola was completely damaged and stuck on the standard of the white world, for instance the acceptance in the narration of the land by implying that the soil itself might have been barren and linking that to Pecola’s struggle further suggesting that since the land made it impossible for anything to grow, so did the social and circumstantial result make Pecola’s growth impractical.

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