The main social issues in The Bluest Eye, the third book of Toni Morrison’s that I have read, is respect and beauty. This book is very similar to Love in the fact that there were two eleven-year-old black girls who were violated or disrespected by men. In Love, it was the grandfather of her best friend, but in The Bluest Eye, it was her father who raped her and impregnated her.
In all three of Morrison’s books that I have studied, the main social issues have circled around unhealthy and inappropriate relationships and lack of respect for women. In The Bluest Eye, Pecola is haunted by her parents’ abusive relationship and has always thought that they would love her more if she was pretty and had blue eyes, she believes that whiteness is beautiful and being black makes her ugly. Throughout the book the men have absolutely no respect for the girls or even for adult women, and then the eleven-year-old Pecola is raped and impregnated by her own father. Her mother did not believe her when she told her what happened and the town look down on her in shame. The baby ended up dying in a premature death, and her father then rapes her again before running away and dying in a workhouse. The issue in this books was in no way resolved because then Pecola went crazy because of everything she had experienced. This issue is critical to the theme because it shows how black women were treated and how even when events like this happened, there were no repercussions and no way to prevent the men
from doing the same thing to another woman or child. In this novel, the issue of respect and rape is not resolved, and Cholly got away with raping his own
daughter twice.
In all three of Morrison’s books that I have studied, the main social issues have circled around unhealthy and inappropriate relationships and lack of respect for women. In The Bluest Eye, Pecola is haunted by her parents’ abusive relationship and has always thought that they would love her more if she was pretty and had blue eyes, she believes that whiteness is beautiful and being black makes her ugly. Throughout the book the men have absolutely no respect for the girls or even for adult women, and then the eleven-year-old Pecola is raped and impregnated by her own father. Her mother did not believe her when she told her what happened and the town look down on her in shame. The baby ended up dying in a premature death, and her father then rapes her again before running away and dying in a workhouse. The issue in this books was in no way resolved because then Pecola went crazy because of everything she had experienced. This issue is critical to the theme because it shows how black women were treated and how even when events like this happened, there were no repercussions and no way to prevent the men
from doing the same thing to another woman or child. In this novel, the issue of respect and rape is not resolved, and Cholly got away with raping his own
daughter twice.
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