The Ugly Duckling's Unbreakable Spell--On Pecola As A Traumatized Outcast In Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye

Inspired by the key concept of abandonment in trauma studies, this thesis attempts to unveil a trilogy of outcast that happens to the central character Pecola Breedlove in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye. Her unrepairable trauma, which finds its most exuberant expression in her madness, is caused by the white cultural dominance which injects her the inferiority complex (Frantz Fanon), catalyzed by the familial/communal victimization which adds to her self-negation, and deteriorated by her uncritical and retreating attitude which leads to her final self-mutilation. The mingle of forces push the girl to the despairing abyss of homelessness: without cultural/racial identity, without family bonds, and finally without self-esteem, taking away all the chances for self-realization.Pecola's trauma of inferiority and self-loathing takes its root in the white cultural dominance. After the whiteness has won its dominant position, the ubiquitous shaping and shaming power in racist stereotypes, discursive repertoires and fancy commodities is enacting the constant and panoptic gaze, which renders Pecola "knowing" herself as ugly and worthless. The long-lasting horror and anxiety derived from the surveillance and self-surveillance marks the beginning of her haunting self-negation.The permeating racial self-loathing later devours the parental love and communal support. Trapped in the weak-against-weaker power structure, Pecola acts as a scapegoat used to forge other blacks'superiority. The familial/communal victimization accelerates Pecola's internal self-negation, injecting into her mind even stronger convictions of her ugliness and deteriorated her isolation and helplessness.Furthermore, her shame-prone, retreating attitude inscribed in personality renders her easy to withdraw rather than to question and merge with fears as a way to restore herself, thus encouraging more profound self-blame to thrive in the passivity. Pecola's internal vulnerability then fuses with the external pressure to better consolidate the existing power structure, leaving the spell of her ugliness impossible to be broken. Her resort to insanity ultimately portrays her as a voluntary surrender, an outcast of her own. On the contrary, Claudia's daring search for her self-worth and the enduring maintenance of that, the love and nurturance her family provides as well as the energy she absorbs from African-American cultural traditions, breed effective therapies to heal the trauma. The portrait of Claudia, to some extent, indicates the genesis of Morrison's efforts to reconstruct the positive African-American cultural identity.