As readers can tell, there is the significance of the “The Bluest Eye” that Toni Morrison wanted to stress to her readers. It is the symbol of beauty and perfection.  It was  something Pecola Breedlove, who is described to be this “ugly” and “black” girl, desired most of all,  believing it to be the one thing that could alter her life. As for Claudia, her feelings for these blue eyes are opposite. Instead, she despises the “Shirley Temple” images, yellow haired and blue eyes. In contrast, both these characters have their own ideas about these blue eyes. The image of beauty is different for these two girls.

Early on the reading, we learn that Claudia has a hatred for “little white girls”. (p.22) Her disdain is carried onto the dolls she’d been given on holidays like Christmas. “What I felt at that time was unsullied hatred. But before that I had felt a stranger, more frightening thing than hatred for all the Shirley Temples of the world.” (p.19) Claudia never understood why the grown ups believed that a doll was something she would ever want. What she truly wanted was to be surrounded by her family with love. She admits that there is an element of desire the dolls and “Shirley Temples” hold that she didn’t have. It was something missing within her that she can’t seem to acquire but it also was something she couldn’t fully grasp. At the end of it all, her dolls were always mutilated. “Remove the cold and stupid eye ball,…” (p.21)

For Pecola, the one thing that she believes to make her “ugly”, is her eyes. She thinks they are the very thing that makes her unbearable, the reason why people don’t look at her. When her father, Cholly and mother, Mrs. Breedlove would argue and get into a fight, she would pray to God to make her disappear. In her mind, that act of vanishing was never possible because her eyes would never disappear.  Her constant wish to get these blue eyes stems from her belief that they’re set her apart from her family. “It had occurred to Pecola some time ago that if her eyes, those eyes that held the pictures, and knew the sights-if those eyes of hers were different, that is to say, beautiful, she herself would be different.” (p.46) If she had them, Pecola thinks her family will love her and she would be beautiful.

The author wants very much for the readers to see what these “blue eyes” signified for each of these characters. What they mean for them are different but the mental affects of it shows how “blue eyes” are  and was deemed more beautiful and how young and black girls had to view their own beauty as secondary.