The purpose of this paper is to introduce, discuss, and analyze the novel "The Bluest Eye" by Toni Morrison. Specifically it will discuss beauty and race, two very prominent themes in the novel, and how the author portrays them. As many people know, beauty is not how a person looks on the outside, but it is what they are on the inside. The girls in Morrison's novel are too young to comprehend that, but as they grow, they learn about real beauty and the very "ugly" truth of race and race relations in the rural South of the 1940s. White people may be "beautiful" on the outside as Pecola believes, but many of them are ugly and hateful on the inside as Morrison clearly illustrates, and that is one of most important lessons this novel has to offer. Anyone can be beautiful on the outside, but it is the interior of a person – their soul and heart – that really matter as Morrison shows in "The Bluest Eye."
             .This paper will look at race relations in the South in the 1940s, and Pecola's idea that if she were white, she would somehow be "better" or "beautiful." At the heart of this novel is Pecola's self-esteem and how race relations erase self-esteem and empowerment, and how the blacks of the story allow white ideas to color their very existence. Toward the opening of the novel, Morrison writes of the Breedlove's "home," a miserable storefront, "They lived there because they were poor and black, and they stayed there because they believed they were ugly" (Morrison 38). Later, Morrison writes, "Long hours she sat looking in the mirror, trying to discover the secret of the ugliness, the ugliness that made her ignored or despised at school, by teachers and classmates alike. She was the only member of her class who sat alone at a double desk" (Morrison 45). Already the theme of ugliness is apparent, and Morrison explores this throughout the novel, finally allowing the three girl protagonists to fully understand what is really...