Pecola’s obsession to have blue eyes leading to her schizophrenia

Abstract

Obsession refers to unreasonable thought, idea or emotion that causes such intrusion in human’s mind and the person cannot easily avoid and it has possibility to make himself frustrated if the person cannot accomplish it This thesis analyzes Pecola’s obsession to have blue eyes leading to her schizophrenia in The Bluest Eye. It is the novel created by an African-American writer, Toni Morrison. The causes and the effect of Pecola’s obsession are the problems that will be discussed in this thesis. Further, the approaches used in writing this thesis are psychological approach and sociological approach. Moreover, the method of analysis in this thesis is inductive method that goes from the particular idea to the general one. Pecola is a black and ugly girl. She has bad experiences in her life, she is neglected by her parents, ignored by her teachers, rejected by her classmates and also badly treated by her neighbors. Actually, her own parents neglect her because they are also neglected by their parents, so that they have no idea about how to raise children. Pecola assumes that the reason she is treated like that is because her skin is a lot darker than other black people and it makes her look ugly. Unable to endure the brutality toward herself, every night Pecola prays for blue eyes, because she thinks that there will not be any other way out to overcome her problem except being beautiful by having blue eyes. She never stops thinking about it until finally she is obsessed. As a result, Pecola suffers from schizophrenia, and spend the rest of her life in her own world. She is influenced by perceptual distortion, rational disorganization, emotional instability and loss of control.