The Misshapen Flower Of The Contaminated Earth

In Toni Morrison's novel The Bluest Eye,she created a black character,the 11-year-old Pecola,who wishes to get a pair of blue eyes to transform her miserable life. But in the end of the story,the girl,after numerous insults and discriminations,is raped by her father and goes mad.Pecola is at the crucial period of her life—to transit from child to adolescent.To grow up entails painful experiences as in Bildungsroman.Pecola has to cope with the physiological changes that occur to her.When she is physically mature,more dangers in life are lurking for her.Yet she is not well prepared for them.Besides,she also has to undergo painful psychological changes.The powerful social values take effect on her. She becomes socialized while inevitably losing herself.The society Pecola lives in is dysfunctional.The pervasive white beauty knocks out the self-pride of the black.They have learnt to hate themselves and not to love.A community lack of love is thus full of spite.The stuffy life calls for a scapegoat to relieve its people.Pecola is mad not only due to her frail will.She can not keep living a life full of uneasiness and hurts.So she collapses.But there is also external cause for her madness. The black people exile her because of her "otherness"—darker skin and from a corrupted family.Moreover,she dares to wish a pair of blue eyes—the distinctive feature of the "superior" white.Furthermore,only by going mad can Pecola acquire the blue eyes—the symbol of the white beauty.In the story Pecola is not mad alone.Madness is a social and cultural symptom as well as a medical one defined by the alleged "normal" people.When we examine the black characters in the novel,we will find that they are all somehow crazy.Then the verdict of Pecola's madness is not valid in the first place.Meanwhile,the author's purpose to tell the story of Pecola is to warn the black the influences of enthrallment of the white culture.So Pecola's madness is the magnified abnormality in all the black.Compared with the classical madwomen in literary works,Pecola is more vulnerable.She is not only much younger,but she is also more passive.Those madwomen,victims of the patriarchal society,at least have a chance to live if they give up their will and their pursuits.But Pecola,who only has the miserable wish to live the oppressive life as others,is also cornered to tragedy.The misshapen flower—Pecola's madness—in the spiteful environment demonstrates that such a community is determined to stifle the living chance of the youngsters,which means to erase a distinctive race -the black—from the earth.