Abstract: The Bluest Eye, written by the American black authoress Toni Morrison, reveals a world where black females’ value has been degraded under white culture dominance. This paper, by comparing Claudia and Pecola’s utterly different destinies, tries to analyze the reasons why Pecola loses herself in dilemma under white culture dominance while Claudia struggles to search for her identity and finally sticks to black culture. This paper explores two specific reasons from the aspects of individual and family, which are also the impacts of white culture dominance: Parents’ love and harmonious family environment make Claudia independent and courageous while indifferent attitudes of parents and broken family environment make Pecola dependent and coward. Claudia survives because she accepts her identity as black people confidently while Pecola loses her own identity and is caged in the pain of finding her cultural birthright. And it concludes that the right way for blacks to survive is to root in black’s traditional culture and to protect their own culture values from the erosion of white culture dominance.

Key words: The Bluest Eye; White culture dominance; Black females; identity

CONTENTS

Abstract

摘要

1. Introduction..1

1.1 Toni Morrison and The Bluest Eye

  1.2 Literature Review

2. Impacts of White Culture Dominance on Claudia and Pecola’s Destinies...5

2.1 Impacts of White Culture Dominance on the Blacks

2.2 Impacts on Claudia

2.2.1 Self-esteem Attitude

2.2.2 Independent Personality

2.2.3 Courageous Character

2.2.4 Concerned Attitude of Parents

2.2.5 Harmonious Family Environment  

  2.3 Impacts on Pecola

 2.3.1 Self-inferior Attitude

2.3.2 Dependent Personality

2.3.3 Coward Character

2.3.4 Indifferent Attitude of Parents

2.3.5 Broken Family Environment

3. Conclusion..15

Bibliography...17

Acknowledgements18