The Bluest Eye
Quotation
As Claudia thinks about Shirley Temple, she thinks about her relationship with her “When I learned how repulsive this disinterested violence was, that it was repulsive because it was disinterested, my shame floundered about for refuge. The best hiding place was love. Thus, the conversion from pristine sadism to fabricated hatred, to fraudulent love. It was a small step to Shirley Temple. I learned much later to worship her, just as I learned to delight in cleanliness, knowing, even as I learned, that the change was adjustment without improvement.” (Morrisons 23)
Summary
Hate and resentment are baggage. Claudia realizes that the best remedy is love, and she went ahead to change her resentment towards Shirley Temple. Change is all about adjusting mentality.
Interpretation.
In this scene, Pecola and Frieda love Shirley Temple because of her beauty, which stems from her white features, but Claudia disagrees with them. Claudia noted, “Frieda and she had a loving conversation about how cu-ute Shirley Temple was. I couldn’t join them in their adoration because I hated Shirley.” (19) Claudia’s resentment grows, and she takes the frustration to white dolls. We go ahead to recall her literal deconstruction of a white, blue-eyed, yellow-haired doll. According to her, “the doll represented what they thought was my fondest wish.” (20). On learning that the dolls were supposed to contextualize her interaction with her peers, she decided that she “had only one desire: to dismember it. To see of what it was made, to discover the dearness, to find the beauty, the desirability that had escaped me, but apparently only me.” (21). She questioned why people approved white dolls and resented dolls that were black. “What made people look at them and say “Awwwww,” but not for me? The eye slide of black women as they approached them on the street, and the possessive gentleness of their touch as they handled them.” (22). She went ahead and “destroyed white baby dolls.” (22). Her antipathy towards white dolls and little white girls does not, as noted, last forever. She fantasizes about doing the same violence to little white girls that she does to her dolls, the closest she can come to revolt against a vicious value scheme that threatens her very being. She notes, “If I pinched them, their eyes—unlike the crazed glint of the baby doll’s eyes—would enfold the pain, and their cry would not be the sound of an icebox door, but a fascinating cry of pain. When I learned how repulsive this disinterested violence was, that it was repulsive because it was disinterested, my shame floundered about for refuge.” (23) Subsequently, her resentment towards Shirley Temple wanes, and she “learned much later to worship her, just as I learned to delight in cleanliness, knowing, even as I learned, that the change was adjustment without improvement.” (23). This is a crucial moment in the book because it shows that social values are socially derived and arbitrary. They are not inherently existent.
Works Cited
Morrison, Toni. “The Bluest Eye. 1970.” New York (1994): 751-59.