The novel The Bluest Eye deals with the colour problem in America. Discuss.
would not interest himself ‘-in interpreting the beauty of his own people. He is never taught to see that beauty,. He is taught rather not to see it: or if he does, to be ashamed of it when it is not according to Caucasian patterns” (Norton: 1268). The idea-that black is beautiful-became a creed of the black nationalism of the 1960s and has been forcefully articulated by Hoyt Fuller (1 923-8 1) who in his “Towards a Black Aesthetic” (1 968).
Inevitably colour consciousness is a constant presence in the test and together With economic status has a determining influence on how the characters view themselves and relate to others. Apart from the broad colour divide between whites and blacks there is a caste system within the blacks themselves, depending on the lightness of their skin and the economic means. A colour profile of the town population as reflected in the novel will be of help here.
The episode of Pecola’s visit to Mr. Yambowski’s grocery store for Mary Jane candies illustrates the dynamics of the colour prejudice in the novel. Her efforts to communicate with him are evidence of the vast hiatus that exists between the world of the whites and the blacks caused by colour. For the immigrant Jew Pecola is metaphorically as well as literally beneath his notice. Because he sees the blacks in the mass, he does not see the individual beneath the skin colour. So even though