A Traumatic Study Of The Bluest Eye

Toni Morrison, the most representative African-American writer during the third “Black Waves” in American literature, was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1993. She was the only American woman who won the Nobel Prize in American history. Sula, Song of Solomon, and Beloved are her main representatives. The Bluest Eye, her first work, published in 1970, has gotten high compliments since then. In this novel, Morrison shows her attitude towards white cultural hegemony. And she tells us only by reserving the black culture and appreciating the black tradition can the black women get over the trauma. However most Domestic scholars focused on the Beloved and other masterpieces, few of them paid attention to The Bluest Eye. Trauma theory was first proposed by Casey Carus. Trauma theory has already developed hundreds of years in the West. For this novel is filled with various traumata, it can be more thoroughly understood from the view of trauma theory. This thesis will discuss the novel based on the trauma theory.Pecola, as the protagonist of the story, suffered from three kinds of traumata: trauma from racism; trauma from family violence and trauma from religion. Each of them traumatizes her so much. The process of pursuing the bluest eye is the process of the recovery from trauma and the reconstruction of self-identity. She once had the opportunity to get over the trauma, but ultimately failed. Unfortunately she had a pair of bluest eyes in her mad world.