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Surname 1
In What Way is Toni Morrison “The Bluest Eye” Novel Linked to Martin Luther King’s
1963 Political Speech?
Introduction
“The Bluest Eye” is a 1970 novel authored by American author, Toni Morrison
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In a small mill town known as Lorain, Ohio, Claudia MacTeer, a young black girl is
growing up under difficult circumstances surrounded by parents who are too busy to show her
loving compassion
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A lot of Claudia’s anger and aggression directed
towards the little white dolls that she has received as presents
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Claudia and Frieda, her sister, have their lives
take a different and interesting turn when county officials temporarily place Pecola Breedlove in
their home
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The MacTeer girls
immediately take to Pecola due to her quiet and shy nature
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Later, the Breedlove family gets back together and lives in a different home at the corner
of some forgotten street
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The family has got serious self esteem issues, and
each of the members goes through life believing in their ugliness
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Pauline Breedlove is

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always fighting with her husband, Cholly, who spends his time out drinking
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The children, Sammy and Pecola, are either neglected or abused,
with each of them coping with the abuse in a special manner
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She prays for blue eyes to
make her beautiful because she believes that is she were beautiful, she would at least receive
better treatment from everyone in her town
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On
one of the days, a group of boys brutally tease her but she is saved by Claudia, Frieda, and
Maureen Peal, a beautiful light skinned new girl
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The
abuse reaches climax when her own father rapes her, leaving her pregnant
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The excessive abuse has left her
insane and she is always looking in the mirror as she talks to an imaginary friend about her blue
eyes
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The march successfully pressured the
John F
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During the event, Martin
Luther King delivered his memorable “I Have a Dream” speech
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The speech was
made in the attempt to push for equal rights for the black American population who were
oppressed by the whites at the time
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Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye” Novel Link to Martin Luther King’s 1963 Political
Speech
Despite the fact that “The Bluest Eye” has been set in the post depression era of the 1940s, the
thoughts behind the novel were centered on the Civil Rights Movement
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A lot of the historians mark 1963 as the peak as
the peak of the Civil Rights Movement owing to the fact that many pivotal events occurred in
that year
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Other events that happened in
the year included mass demonstrations led by Dr
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, in Alabama,
Birmingham, the Alabama Governor George Wallace attempt at stopping the integration of
Alabama schools, and the March on Washington marked by Dr
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In a number of instances, Morrison has openly criticized various aspects of the 1960s
Civil Rights Movement, stating that her primary drive for The Bluest Eye was the “Black is
Beautiful” slogan of the movement
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As stated earlier, the setting of The Bluest Eye is the 1940s
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In the novel, this is especially felt by Pecola and her mother, Pauline, who are
excessively obsessed with beauty, which in this case refers to being white and having blue eyes
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As the title
indicates, Pecola’s primary desire is to have blue eyes which she believes would be the answer to

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her beauty, a factor that would perhaps change the behavior of her family while also changing
the town people’s perspective of her
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Call-and-response is an oral device that is commonly used by the Black community
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This oral device is
defined by Geneva Smitherman (104) as an African derived process of communication
comprising spontaneous verbal and non-verbal communication between the speaker(s) and their
listener (s), where all the statements or calls of the speaker are punctuated by expressions, also
known as responses from the listener (s)
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This depicts that she squarely falls in the era of the “black is
beautiful” movement
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The “black is beautiful movement” called on the entire Black American fraternity to
reconsider their relation their relations with the white culture and the Black Aesthetic movement
of the 1960s that made a call for a typically black voice as well as a black nationalist identity
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She specifically honors call-and-response, regarding it as critical to the life of the
Black community
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The procedure involves the speaker presenting their message, and receiving a
spontaneous reciprocal response from their audience, or one speaker affirming/ agreeing with
another
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The traditional use of call-and-response has been evidenced in
The Bluest Eye by the manner in which black women in Pecola, Claudia and Frieda’s community
chat (Awkward, 49)
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What she die from?
Essie‘s pie
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She was doing fine, I saw her the very day before
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I should of known just from her wanting black
thread that was a sign
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Just like Emma
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Dropped dead that very evening
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Well, she was determined to have it
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I told her I had some to home,
but naw, she wanted it new
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I was just fixing to bring it over, ‘long with a piece of sweet bread
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Sure did
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She was a good friend to you
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Well, I had no more got my clothes on when Sally bust in the door hollering about
how Cholly here had been over to Miss Alice saying she was dead
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Guess Essie feels might bad
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But I told her the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away
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She makes good peach pies
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This has also been reinforced by Morrison herself, who in an interview states that in order
for an individual to get a real response, black speakers do not expect their listeners to listen
silently like the westerners
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Both parties exert themselves in
their due roles, where the speaker informs their audience, and the listener actively responds
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“I have a dream” by Martin Luther King depicted this by issuing a
call to respond to the previous speech by another minister
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Race and racism are two aspects that have been clearly brought out in The Bluest Eye as
well as in Martin Luther King’s I have a Dream
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Martin Luther King, Jr
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Dr
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Dr
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His life was devoted to challenging this nation to live out a more
consistent obedience to the moral absolutes of the Bible
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Before the Civil Rights Movements came into force in the 1960s, the racism situation in
the United States was dire
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This was the kind of racism where
the white community hated the black community, and did anything within their power to oppress
all aspects of their lives
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These are the issues which prompted the March on Washington where Dr
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The Bluest Eye also depicts race and racism issues
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King’s speech, which are just typical portrayals of racism that involves
hatred of whites against blacks
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The novel conspicuously lacks major white
characters, with only a few white minor characters being featured, though racism remains at the
center of the text
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In this case, race is defined not by the color of the skin, the shape of people’s
features or their hair texture, but also by their places of origin as well as their socioeconomic
class or educational background
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These racial ideologies that have to do with virtue, cleanliness and value are
internalized by the different characters in varying degrees, a factor that leads to racial self-hatred
amongst the novel’s characters
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Macteer gets unusually harsh with
her, simply because sickness is a sign of uncleanliness which is often associated with being
black
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Works cited
Wu, Hong and Yang, Liping
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Theory and Practice in
Language Studies
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3, no
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Pp
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Awkward, Michael
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New York: Columbia University Press
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The Bluest Eye
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Smitherman, Geneva
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Detroit: Wayne
State UP
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’s “I Have a Dream” Speech
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http://www
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org/documents/i-have-a-dream
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Web
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litcharts
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11th
December 2014

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