Disabled Vision and Schizophrenia in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye

Abstract

Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye represents the obsessed involvement of the characters in the world of appearances. This paper explores how the central character’s self-image is determined by the primary Subject, which orients social perception, and how the characters are primarily concerned with their public image since social perception from without (how they are perceived) shapes their self-perception. As the process of self-realization is interrupted by the disorientation of self-perception, the characters cannot construct a true Self of their own. Their vision is disabled by the prevailing primary Subject, and the persona is unable to perceive the world from her perspective reversing the existing binary. As there is no self-perception (a point of reference), identity formation ends in failure, and the persona turns out to be a passive object having a negative image of herself. She, first, suffers from split of personality and schizophrenia, then declines her negative self-image through surrogate images, and finally drives herself to insanity.