Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Beware of your Stare

It has been said many times that the eye is the window to the soul. Through the first few chapters of Staring: How we look and The Bluest Eye, we have seen the importance and the impact of the eye and what it does more than just show us what is physically in front of us.

We live a visual life. We are familiar, unfamiliar, frightened, and comforted by things that we physically see every single day. We are also affected by the way we are perceived and seen by those around us. And even though we may physically see the same objects, we each have our own personalized lenses that we use to comprehend our surroundings and form judgments and rationalizations accordingly. We interact with people differently by how they look, how they dress, the body language we see among with other things. And when aspects of our visual world change, as do our reactions.

The fact that Toni Morrison puts focus on Pecola’s obsession with blue eyes in her novel The Bluest Eye, it was anything but accidental. Being a young black girl in the early/mid 1900s lends a different perspective then if she were a white girl. Pecola sees the world as an ugly, hateful place and views herself and the ugliness put on her and portrayed through her, as the result of her “ugliness” and in association, her brown eyes.

She wants to change her eyes, so she can change what she sees, and what others see when they look at her. She is surrounded by people who judge her based on her appearance, and ultimately her blackness. She is ignored by the candy storeowner, and beat up and picked on by boys at her school. Being hated because of what people see, and even being unseen because of her appearance are points of great importance and significance.

These points not only show the perspective of Pecola and how she is hated by society, and even her family, but show how people have segregated and done hateful acts in general in the past based solely on appearance. The most obvious example is racial segregation, however there are other ways as well. If people are not very well dressed, or have missing teeth or don’t fit stereotypical appearance norms, they are typically treated differently. People’s physical appearance depicts how they see the world, and ultimately how others see them and interact with them.

The way we see things and the way we look at things has a big impact on not only our lives, but those around us. If we give someone a “dirty” look, we can be perceived as mean, and they can feel as though something is wrong with them.

Are you aware of how you look at people? When was the last time someone gave you a look that made you question them and yourself?

2 comments:

  1. I agree that with Staring: How we look and The Bluest Eye it is definitely apparent that eyes do more than merely show us what is in front of us. Am I aware of how I look at people? To be honest, no I am not always aware of the looks I give people. I am not very good with hiding my emotions therefore if I am thinking something about a situation or someone, it is definitely written all over my face. From personal experiences I feel that (especially in groups of girls) it seems that the "stares" of people are noticed more often. I wonder if girls question "looks" more than guys. . .

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  2. I like this post because it made me think of another reason for Morrison's choice to focus on the eyes rather than skin or hair. This reason is probably because having blue (White) eyes would enable Pecola to break out of the habit of walking the world with a downcast gaze. Her eyes would transfix others with their beauty and give her the POWER of a stare, something she doesn't come into in this novel because of her status as a young, Black, penniless girl.

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