The Bluest Eye: Conformity The basic theme of the novel, The Bluest Eye revolves around African Americans' conformity to white standards. Although beauty is the novel's larger theme, Morrison carefully examines the influence of dominant white culture on class levels. Morrison bases the novel on issues of beauty in an attempt to make African Americans aware that they do not have to conform to white standards on any level. Morrison's main character, Pecola Breedlove, unquestioningly accepts the ideology that white features correlate with beauty. . Yet Morrison wrote this novel at the height of the “Black Is Beautiful” era, during which African Americans were reconditioned to believe that their appearance was synonymous with beauty. The novel is a retrospective story told by Claudia, one of Pecola's childhood friends. Claudia's narrative allows the reader to sympathize with Pecola's self-hatred. As an adult, Claudia explains best how Pecola's victimization is caused by her environment. Telling the story nearly three decades later, in the 1960s, Claudia reflects on the pain of wanting to be something you can never become. According to an interview titled "Toni Morrison's Black Magic" in Newsweek, Morrison states that the character of Pecola was formed based on the fact that "Black is beautiful was in the air... So I wrote about a child who was ugly - Pecola is the perfect defeated victim, except she was beautiful” (Strouse 56). Morrison's depiction of a victimized Pecola addresses how the dominance of white consumer society can affect the psyche of a young African American girl. Morrison writes the novel as a coming-of-age story about three s... ....in life, being exposed to more pleasant lifestyles made them want more for themselves. All Breedloves believe that they would have achieved a higher level of success if they had been born beautiful. Morrison implies that they believe success correlates with beauty. He states, “As long as she [Pecola] looked the way she did, as long as she was ugly, she should have stayed with those people” (39). Do white beauty standards place beautiful people in higher class status? According to Morrison, the Breedloves attribute their residency to the fact that "they were poor and black, and they stayed there because they thought they were ugly" (34). The Breedloves' mentality is instilled in them by their surroundings. Moving from the South to the North, the moral values ​​of African Americans went from the value of community and family to the fetishization of material goods.