It's All About Perspective

People have many different perspectives on life. Some people are pessimists, while some are optimists. They have a choice to either have a negative outlook on life or a positive one. This choice determines if that individual will be happy or sad, loud or quiet, energetic or reserved, etc. However, some people, such as minorities, are not given this simple choice. They are raised in a world where society oppresses them. Society forces them to believe that they are lower than human-status. It causes these individuals to accept that the way people observe them are more real than what they themselves observe.

Pecola Breedlove in the novel The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, is portrayed as a weak, American American girl who wants blue eyes in order to change what she sees and to change how others see her. She has a very negative outlook on life as she always concludes that how people see her ugliness creates the hurtful behavior that she notices and experiences. For example, when Pecola goes to buy Mary Jane candies, she thinks the cashier's "distaste must be for her, her blackness" (49). She has encountered so many unforgiving glares of white people that she automatically assumes she is the problem. Her daily rejections from society emphasizes that ugliness is inherent and nothing can change even by peering at the world differently. Despite her attitude, I believe she can change her gloomy perspective. When Pecola wonders "why...do people call them weeds" (Morrison 47), she is trying not to conform to society's opinion on dandelions. "She thought they were pretty" (47)
which illustrates how Pecola isn't mature enough yet to realize that beauty can be created by seeing rather than being seen. However, this little moment of freedom and individualism shows how with a little help, she can eventually grow into a strong and confident African American woman.