Hating Yourself Through Others

As I read The Bluest Eyes, I really got thinking about the narrator in it. It is the view from the girls point of view, more specifically Claudia. Sometimes it does switch to an omniscient narrator though.It does not feel like it is an adult saying his view on a discriminatory world. There is the essence of the innocence of the girl because she doesn't fully understand what it is that makes her "ugly" or what makes her world so dark. Yes. Somehow Morrison manages to turn the innocent experience that is childhood into a dark abyss.

I used to have an arch enemy when I was in pre-k. I know what you are thinking. How can a sweet, blonde, three year old have an arch enemy before her fourth birthday? Well, when I try to make sense of my three year old memories, all I can think of is that I would just pick fights with this girl called Susana. To this day, even though I don't know why I didn't like her, I still get a surge of annoyance thinking about her. Maybe there really is a kid inside all of us.

The girls in this story also seem to have their own version of a Susana. Except her name is Maureen Peal. One would think with this story being highlighting racism as a central topic, that Maureen would be white, but she is actually light skinned African American girl. In the story, the girls say that everyone likes her and praises her. She seems like this sweet nice girl and for lack of a better example, she sounds like a total teachers pet and people pleaser.

The interesting thing is when Maureen appears in the story. She appears right before one of the harshest parts I have read up to now. Some boys were harassing Pecola and screaming bad things at her. Claudia, Maureen, and Freida were walking by and spoke up against the boys causing trouble. Since maureen is such a people pleaser and all the boys like her, she didn't really speak up. There was a part though when Claudia as the narrator mentions the following that really stood out to me:

"That they themselves were black, or that their own fathers had similarly relaxed habits was irrelevant. It was their contempt for their own blackness that gave that first insult its teeth. They seemed to take all of their... exquisitely learned self-hatred, their elaborately designed hopelessness and sucked it all up into a fiery cone of scorn that burned for ages in the hollow of their minds...They danced a macabre ballet around the victim, whom, for their own sake, they were prepared to sacrifice  to the flaming pit." (pg 65)

It is powerful to think like this keeping in mind that the narrator is a child. And those committing this act are children who are basically insulting themselves. The insults being thrown at Pecola are personal and probably part of the boys everyday lives which really makes you think who the real victim is. I think it is also very powerful that they only seem to really stop when Maureen approaches them. It is not the black girls like them that appeases them but the light skinned girl. They acknowledge the hierarchy in their society but instead of ignoring it with themselves, put a special influence on it to harass themselves. It is all about power and control.