The American Lie

What is the American dream? Two middle-class people meet, marry, move into the house with the white-picket fence, and have their two point five kids. Happy and simple, right? That only works in happy stories before the sixties. Nowadays, there are many messed up families in America. Abuse, divorce, debt, drugs, and many other factors play into dysfunction. The media and modern public some to favor broken homes over happy families. Toni Morrison’s novel, The Bluest Eye, is the perfect example of a broken home and dysfunction. Her use of the famous Dick and Jane story adds onto the feeling of the lie known as American Dream. But what exactly is the American Lie?

Everyone growing knows the story of Dick and Jane. The stories are about two happy little kids with their parents and neighbors. Nothing bad ever happens to them. It is the type of simple world that everyone wants to live in. However, America and the rest of the world do not live in simplicity. The Bluest Eye reflects that rather well with Pecola and the way that she lives her life until the last chapter. She lives a depressing and damaged existence. Morrison adds onto this cold truth with, what else, the Dick and Jane narratives. She puts them into the story in a rather creative way. She repeats the narrative three times. The first time Morrison uses the story, the text looks nice and normal. It follows the American Dream down to a tee. Everybody is happy with their lives. Jane is white and pretty. The Bluest Eye seems like one of those many stories of the American Dream about to unfold. However, this is only an illusion. Morrison has a nasty surprise for the reader to behold. She writes the narrative again. Only this time, she takes out all of the punctuation. The Dick and Jane story looks distorted, but not too bad. This makes the reader a tiny bit uneasy about what is going to happen next. But yet, Morrison is still not finished. She writes the narrative once again. This time, not only is the punctuation gone, but she took out all of the spaces in the words as well. Now, Dick and Jane look like a sick and cruel joke to the whole world. The story looks like this on pg. 4, “Hereisthehouseitisgreenandwhiteithasareddooritisveryprettyhereisthefamilymotherfatherdickandjaneliveinthegreenandwhitehousetheyareveryhappyseejaneshehasareddressshewantstoplaywhowillplaywithjaneseethecatgoesmeowmeowcomeandplaycomeplaywithjanethekittenwillnotplayseemothermotherisverynicemotherwillyouplaywithjanemotherlaughslaughmotherlaughseefatherheisbigandstrongfatherwillyouplaywithjanefatherissmilingsmilefathersmileseethedogbowwowgoesthedogdoyouwantoplaydoyouwanttoplaywithjaneseethedogrunrundogrunlooklookherecomesafriendthefriendwillplaywithjanestheywillplayagoodgameplayjaneplay.” After the distortion of the narrative, Morrison goes into the actual story itself.

Why does America believe its own lie? Maybe it is to escape their own stressful and worn out days in their lives. The American Lie has become nothing more than escape from a miserable reality. It seems that only beautiful, rich people get nice things. They never seem to have any bad days at all. Pecola desires to be white and have blue eyes so that she can be beautiful and loved by everyone. Her mother, Pauline, wants to be beautiful as well. Both have desires that open the door to their destructive paths. It is not only them. Media plays into the American Lie as well. Magazines, movies, ads, internet, and TV will usually show skinny, beautiful, blonde-haired and blue-eyed women to sell to the people. Pecola and Pauline both fell into that trap. Pecola idolizes Shirley Temple and wants to be just like her. So, she drinks milk and eats the candy called Mary Jane just to have blue eyes. Pauline works for a white family and watches romantic movies to escape into a fake, beautiful world. Both paths lead to a nasty accident waiting to spring forth.

The American Lie leads to hurtful consequences to those who believe the lie too closely. Pecola’s destruction is when she loses her sanity after everyone torments her, her father, Cholly, rapes and impregnates her, and Soaphead uses her to kill a dog, and she loses her baby early. All for what? Just to have blue eyes to be pretty and loved? To the modern reader with high self-confidence, that just seems like a waste. But, what exactly is normal and what exactly is fake? Media and reality are so blurred together these days. Sometimes, people cannot tell what is real or fake. The lie has perfected itself so that it can be so believable that way. Pecola and Pauline themselves gets so lost in the illusion that they do not take time to look into themselves and see their own inner strength and beauty. They believe the American Lie to be the truth too well that it just ate them up and destroyed them in the end.

What is exactly is the American Lie? Is it Dick and Jane’s perfect and happy little world? Is it to be rich, popular, beautiful, and to have any and everything in sight? Or is it an ugly trap to crush true beauty and strength into the background for money? One thing is for certain: the American is just that, a lie. Morrison, Pauline, Pecola, and the other characters in The Bluest Eye prove that strongly after the novel is broken down and closely looked at piece by piece.

Works Cited

Morrison, Toni.  The Bluest Eye.  New York: First Plume Printing, 1994.  Print.