In the novel, The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, readers are taken through the daily lives of African Americans facing many trials and tribulations. Already faced with the harsh reality that they were inferior to the white race. Many families throughout this story have faced this stigma, but it seems the Breedloves had it twice as difficult. A series of social problems that African Americans suffered from in the 1940s-1060s, such as rape, interracial prejudice, and mental illness. First and foremost, it is important to state that the real life of Toni Morrison does indeed correlate with the real story, The Bluest Eye. Just as the little girl who tells the story was nine years old in 1941, so was Morrison. Another similarity is that one particular family, that of the MacTeers, endured many hardships during the Great Depression, as did Morrison's. While specifying that this is one of the characters, Claudia grew up listening to her mother play the violin, just like Morrison. How can you love when you have never received love? Neglected as a child by your own mother, rejected by your own father. It seems that Cholly, Pecola Breedlove's father, had a rather difficult life. Not to mention the racist white people who made him sleep with this girl in front of their eyes. The humility and ridicule he constantly felt. When he met and got Pauline pregnant with Pecola, he even wondered how it would be possible for him to love her when he still had so much anger in his heart. The situations or more so the things that happened throughout this story seemed to affect or better yet impact the African. Americans are represented differently in this reading. Rape is one of them. In particular, it left a lot of paper on the problems that African Americans had within their own culture. The concept of beauty was pretty harsh when light skin like Maureen Peal was considered beautiful. She even said "I'm cute and you're ugly." Meanwhile, someone with darker skin like Pecola's was seen as ugly. If she was cute – and if anything, she was – then we weren't. And what did that mean? We were lesser. Prettier, brighter, but still less. ...And we knew all along that Maureen Peal was not the Enemy and did not deserve such intense hatred. The thing to fear was the one who made her beautiful, not us. (Morrison, 75) Either you accepted the ridicule and believed it yourself, or you knew your worth and fought back. African American women seemed to have been through it all, but the challenge of continuing was the hardest of all..