This week we discussed different characters in The Bluest Eye. We analyzed several black characters whose age wealth varied. Throughout the novel, blacks encounter racial prejudice and other hardships that target them because of their race.

One of these characters is Pecola. She is teased at school and, being a black girl, is at the bottom of the demographic hierarchy. Her family is poor and her parents often neglect her. In contrast, we also are introduced to the character of Geraldine, who comes from a community where black women strive to manifest an identity epitomized by white standards. She constantly worries "about the edges of [her] hair" and is taught about the "careful development of thrift, patience, high morals, and good manners";however, she is incapable of experiencing love in her life with her husband and even her own son. Her life, like Pecola's, is filled with rejection and inability to fit the standards of society. 

However, Pecola and Geraldine are very different in the sense that Geraldine, unlike Pecola, is a wealthy adult. 

What struck me as sad is that in The Bluest Eye, all of Morrison's characters experience oppression. I came to a disappointing realization about society in the novel; if you are black and poor, you lose; if you are black and rich, you still lose. The oppression that the characters experience made me feel a sense of hopelessness. I wondered what the cause of this could have been and after pondering for some time, I realized that the oppression isn't due to wealth or age, but rather the white standard of beauty that blacks have.

One particular part of the novel that I found disheartening was when Pauline, a black woman, calls her own daughter ugly. Like the rest of society, even Pecola's own mother marks her as someone who is ugly. Even blacks in the novel have succumbed to white beauty standards. In a society where being black automatically deems one as ugly and less superior, there is no way to live a life free of oppression because of genetics: something that no one has control over.