1. 1995. Writers often highlight the values of a culture or a society by using characters who are alienated from that culture or society because of gender, race, class, or creed. Choose a novel or a play in which such a character plays a significant role and show how that character's alienation reveals the surrounding society's assumptions or moral values.
Pecola Breedlove from Tony Morisson’s novel, The Bluest Eye, embodies one of the most heartbreaking stories of alienation in society due to one’s race. Due to the fact that Pecola is an African American living in the era of post Great Depression, she is raised under the idea that the most beautiful skin color belongs to the white race and begins to strive to become somebody she can’t be. Pecola’s alienation from the white society is a prime example of reflecting the ideals and skewed morals that existed during the time period. These distorted beliefs were one of the main factors that influenced people such as Pecola to do whatever it takes to achieve her goal of changing herself, even if it meant that she had to give up her own life.
Pecola's alienation stems from the very beginning of the novel after her father commits the most frowned upon case of attempting to kick his own family out of their home and she soon becomes the charity case of town. Pecola is then temporarily moved in to the MacTeer home where she realizes that her upsetting past along with her skin color separates herself from the life and image she longs to have. Unlike the fractured and dysfunctional family that Pecola came from, the MacTeer family is held together by an unconditional love for one another despite the fact that they only have very little to share. Along with her contrasting family background, it is at the MacTeer house where Pecola is first introduced to Shirley Temple and begins to fall in love with the beauty that she believes is contained within the image of the white person. The short time spent with the MacTeer family begins her lifelong desire to become the stereotypical image of the white society that surrounds her.
Pecola's struggle of recognizing her own beauty in the white dominated society continues as she returns to living her life at home. Morrison emphasizes the devastating conditions that Pecola has to endure through the everyday physical abuse and battles between her parents while also exposing the fact that her whole family has the idea that they are ugly engraved into their heads. The dysfunction that she has to live with further gouges at her skewed self identity and she begins to believe that all of the flaws within her life could be taken away once she grasps the one quality that is deemed beautiful by the white society: blue eyes.
Due to Pecola's poor conditions at home, she is alienated from seeing the true beauty in life. Pecola's thirst for having the eyes of the people who she believes are beautiful and perfect causes her to ultimately lose herself in insanity. Although she was raised in a black community, Pecola is influenced by the people around her and convinced that dark color of her skin is considered as ugly and the whiteness of the movie stars like Shirley Temple is perfect. As a result, Pecola loses herself to a world full of prejudice and she never realizes the beauty within herself.
