The Bluest Eye Reflection

Reflection

Universality finds its hand spread throughout the book The Bluest Eye, touching on subjects such as beauty, and powerlessness. People today still find themselves questioning what constitutes as “beauty” and if they fit the description, as did some of the characters in the The Bluest Eye. In the novel, beauty is something that is associated with “whiteness,” a term that describes the features of people who hold Caucasian ancestry. The novel constantly refers to white icons of beauty and innocence, such as Greta Garbo, Ginger Rogers, and Shirley Temple. Today, the standard of beauty is not as warped as it once was, beauty is now seen as an individual trait that anyone can carry. These new views of beauty have resulted from the rejection of the belief that a person must look a certain way to be deemed good enough. Even though there people today who reject the certain standards of beauty, many people like the characters in the novel such as Geraldine and Pecola, continue to find their self-worth entangled with thoughts of whether or not they look good enough. For a year Pecola prayed for blue eyes, because she felt that if she had blue eyes, people would see her as beautiful, and then she would be able to see herself as beautiful too. Others in Pecola’s community found themselves battling with the concept of beauty, imprisoned by what they thought was beauty to the point where it dictated so much of their lives. Beauty is a universal concept that we all struggle whether we’re real or fictional, and it is a concept that we will always struggle with until we see there is beauty in who we are.

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