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How Does Toni Morrison Face Institutionalized Racism

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The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison explores the story of multiple characters from different perspectives while centering around the story of Pecola’s life as she faces racism, rape, and desertion. The novel is set in the 1940s where racism was prevalent in all communities and amongst all people. Throughout the novel, Morrison shows how African American communities face both symbolic and institutionalized racism, even from their own race. Middle class African Americans like Maureen and Geraldine are clouded by the idea of whiteness being the ideal beauty as they bash lower class African Americans. Additionally, most characters face institutionalized racism as the division between within black societies leads to tension and conflicts. With the use
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She wrote that her inspiration for the story was a conversation she had had when she was little with another little black girl who had a fascination with blue eyes, much like her character Pecola Breedlove. Morrison is known for her stories that circle around how racism and misogyny affect black women. For The Bluest Eye, a little girl named Pecola Breedlove goes insane from the inhumane treatment she faces as an eleven-year-old african american girl in the Great Depression. There are many points in the book where she is dehumanized and treated less than dirt, even by her own parents. Her father in a bid to feel in control despite how much white men have controlled him, rapes his daughter and she becomes pregnant with his child.

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In The Bluest Eye the majority of it is taken place in Lorain Ohio in the year of 1941, before there were any MLK movements so racism and oppression were still at large. More specifically they lived in a suburban town made of mostly black communities with few white people. The main characters all have pretty bad living conditions. This is due to the cycle of oppression, they started off in a bad place and kept giving and receiving comments that made them seem insignificant. For example Pecola got harassed by school boys, “Black e mo.

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331 Words | 2 Pages

The song represents a journey to self-acceptance of not only one’s hair, but as well as self-acceptance of yourself as an African American Woman. In The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, Pecola, a young African-American in the 1960’s experiences the same shame that comes with being black in a White America. The song, uncovers this for

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‘The Bluest Eye’, as the critic Jane Kuenz argues, certainly shows the power of the media and culture "in the seemingly endless reproduction of images of feminine beauty in everyday objects and consumer goods". Pecola falls victim to the media’s portrayal of physical beauty, which in turn it leads to her receiving “the most destructive ideas in the history of human thought”, there are hints of Morrison’s political past in this as she was indeed a key activist in Black feminist movements who, unlike many other Western variations of feminism at the time, aimed to liberate and dislodge white structures of beauty. Pauline is indoctrinated into the detrimental ideology of directly associating whiteness with beauty and blackness with ugliness. Morrison

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Rhetorical Analysis Essay The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison takes place in Ohio in the 1940s. The novel is written from the perspective of African Americans and how they view themselves. Focusing on identity, Morrison uses rhetorical devices such as imagery, dictation, and symbolism to help stress her point of view on identity. In the novel the author argues that society influences an individual 's perception on beauty, which she supports through characters like Pecola and Mrs. Breedlove.

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With the

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There is a resonating difference between a just and unjust act. A just act stays true to the moral principles of a civilization, while an unjust act is frowned upon by society. However, is it possible for this difference to sometimes seem vague?

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In The Bluest Eye, Morrison offers multiple perspectives to help explain the intensity of racism and what it means to be oppressed and degraded in society. Through the eyes of various characters, readers are taken on a journey during the 1940s to demonstrate how each black character copes with the unfair standards and beliefs that society has. While some of the characters internalize self-hatred and have the desire to be someone else, others do not wish to change themselves to fit into the societal standards. Throughout the novel, there are clear and distinct remarks that are made to help distinguish the difference between white characters and black characters which is quite crucial. Morrison uses dirt and cleanliness to symbolize how society

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The portrayal of racism on the African-American culture is prominent throughout Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eyes. Morrison presents the belief behind the internalized prejudice that black communities and people suffered in the 1940’s. The Bluest Eye speaks the story of how racism was embedded in communities and targeted Africans. After the Lincoln era, whites verbally abused and mistreated African-American citizens by inflicting cruel acts.

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The protagonist of The Bluest Eye is a young African American girl named Pecola Breedlove. She is introduced by Claudia, a young African-American girl with who Pecola builds a friendship, as a “girl who had no place to go” (16). Pecola struggles to accept her appearance and believes that the source of all the problems she encounters is her dark skin tone. In the book, Pecola chooses to hide “behind [her ugliness]” and be “concealed, veiled, eclipsed-peeping out from behind the shroud very seldom, and then only to yearn for the return of her mask” (39). She hid behind a mask in order to protect herself from the insults and discrimination she received from society.

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It is the mother’s vulnerability to the racial standards of beauty that is transmitted to the daughter and ultimately leads to her victimization. In fact, the reason of Pauline’s vulnerability to the racially prejudiced notions of beauty lies in her relationship with her own mother. The relationship between Pecola Breedlove, the protagonist, and her mother, Pauline Breedlove, is ironically characterized by lack of love, and emotional attachment, indifference, frustration and cruelty. Set in a small town in Ohio, during the Depression, The Bluest Eye is the story of eleven year old Pecola Breedlove, who, victimized by the racist society, yearns for blue eyes, which, she believes, will make her worthy of love, happiness and acceptance in the

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1542 Words | 7 Pages

Toni Morrison, the first black women Nobel Prize winner, in her first novel, The Bluest Eye depicts the tragic condition of the blacks in racist America. It examines how the ideologies perpetuated by the dominant groups and adopted by the marginal groups influence the identity of the black women. Through the depictions of white beauty icons, Morrison’s black characters lose themselves to self-hatred. They try to obliterate their heritage, and eventually like Pecola Breedlove, the child protagonist, who yearns for blue eyes, has no recourse except madness. This assignment focusses on double consciousness and its devastating effects on Pecola.

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800 Words | 4 Pages

Destructive Nature of Racialised Beauty Toni Morrison published her first book, The Bluest Eye, in 1970. In this novel, Toni Morrison shows how societies racist and false beliefs on beauty can be seriously destructive if believed and taken to heart. Toni Morrison displays the destructive nature of racialised beauty through the character in the novel named Pecola Breedlove. Pecola lacks self esteem and believes that she is the blackest and ugliest girl, and she believes that white is the only beautiful race.

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Toni Morrison, in numerous interviews, has said that her reason for writing The Bluest Eye was that she realized there was a book she wanted very much to read that had not been written yet. She set out to construct that book – one that she says was about her, or somebody like her. For until then, nobody had taken a little black girl—the most vulnerable kind of person in the world—seriously in literature; black female children have never held centre stage in anything. Thus with the arrival of the character Pecola Breedlove, a little hurt black girl is put to the centre of the story. Pecola’s quest is to acquire “Shirley Temple beauty” and blue eyes – ideals of beauty sponsored by the white world.

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835 Words | 4 Pages

Morrison 's first novel, The Bluest Eye, examines the tragic effects of imposing white, middle-class American ideals of beauty on the developing female identity of a young African American girl during the early 1940s. Inspired by a conversation Morrison once had with an elementary school classmate who wished for blue eyes, the novel poignantly shows the psychological devastation of a young black girl, Pecola Breedlove, who searches for love and acceptance in a world that denies and devalues people of her own race. As her mental state slowly unravels, Pecola hopelessly longs to possess the conventional American standards of feminine beauty—namely, white skin, blonde hair, and blue eyes—as presented to her by the popular icons and traditions of white culture. Written as a fragmented narrative from multiple perspectives and with significant typographical deviations, The Bluest Eye juxtaposes passages from the Dick-and-Jane grammar school primer with memories and stories of Pecola 's life alternately told in retrospect by one of Pecola 's now-grown childhood friends and by an omniscient narrator. Published in the midst of the Black Arts movement that flourished during the late 1960s and early 1970s, The Bluest Eye has attracted

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