Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye depicts a young colored girl, Pecola, who believes that she is not considered beautiful in other’s perspective. In the chapter about Autumn Pecola visits a candy store where she feels “shame” for having sweaty palms. She then leaves and comes across some dandelions that were growing out of the sidewalk cracks. Pecola refers to the dandelions as being “ugly” because they are weeds. Weeds are considered to be valueless and insignificant to the world. They are worthless in the eyes of people. Pecola felt anger as she went on. The “ugliness” of the weeds reminded Pecola of how she felt that she was ugly and worthless.
Pecola was told throughout the book that she was ugly by her mother. Neighbors and even in school she was told that she was ugly. Growing up she paired being ugly to the color of her eyes, skin and hair. She thought that having the bluest eyes would make her the most beautiful girl however like the dandelions Pecola was not considered one of a kind. She was not extraordinary nor was she a sight to gaze at. She was the sort of girl that people would view as low class and irrelevant. Just like dandelions were no flowers, Pecola was no flower.
“They are ugly. They are weeds.”(pg. 50) These were the words Morrison incorporated into the text where Pecola is confronted with the dandelions. Her play on words gives us that sense of meaning without actually having to say what is. With just these two lines, we can feel the pain that Pecola endures about her beauty. In this way she isn’t talking about the dandelions, she is talking about herself and the shame she feels. As we go on in the same text, she feels anger and that anger gives her an idea of self-worth which the dandelions didn’t do for her.
One thing that people will always feel that matters in life is a person’s physical traits. These physical traits can consist of a person’s hair, their eyes, their body type, their nose, or any of their facial features. Pecola always felt like she didn’t fit in or was out of place because of her physical features. But was it entirely her fault for feeling this way or the image created by society that is always honored and looked up to? Being a perfect girl meant that a female needed blonde hair and blue eyes and that was the only beauty that existed.
Pecola became infatuated with the idea of having blue eyes that she forgot to point out the other beautiful things about herself . The idea of fitting in, looking like the white woman and race that everyone admired began to take over her mentality and drove her crazy.
Referring to the dandelion and the weeds, a flower takes time to blossom and grow. Although their are parts of a flower that may not be as nice as other parts, their is still beauty held within. It is all about perspective and time. Pecola didn’t give her time to the correct things. She wasted her time focusing on a physical trait she never needed. Pecola allowed other people amongst her to control who she should be. It got to the point where she actually believed she had blue eyes. There was no living without them. The character found her satisfactions from pretending to have something she didn’t really have. She allowed her obsession with blue eyes and her imagination to control her reality.