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The development of racism in America
Theme of gender in Toni Morrison's the bluest eye
Theme of gender in Toni Morrison's the bluest eye
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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.
has faced the expectation and desire of his mother for him to become a priest and follow the Luna side of his family, however his father had wanted him to become a Marez, and to stay itinerantly on the plains. Evenly, he is torn between the Catholic religion and a more pagan religious belief represented by the golden carp. In the conversation, he conclusively understands that he does not have to pick one and discard the other, but can in fact incorporate elements of both opportunities into who he is as a person: "Then maybe I do not have to be just Marez, or Luna, perhaps I can be both--" I said... "Take the llano and the river valley, the moon and the sea, God and the golden carp--and make something new," I said to myself. This was what Ultima
“ She appeared to have fainted… she was lying on the kitchen floor under a heavy guilt, trying to connect the pain.. with the face of her mother looking over her.” (161) Thus we see that Pecola eventually gets pregnant by her father, but later on delivers a premature child who eventually dies. At the end the baby dies, Cholly Breedlove dies and the innocence of the girls is also dead. Claudia reminicizes that their marigold seeds had not sprouted because-
In this excerpt Baby Suggs is at her deathbed after she is impacted by Sethe killing her daughter, yet she is using the little energy left to become preoccupied with color. Throughout Beloved there is a religious symbolism of two connected colors, white and red, the white of milk and the red of blood, both colors represent the beginning and and to the human life. Paul D shuts his red heart in a rusted tobacco box, Denver drinks her sister’s blood and her mother’s milk, the source of Baby Suggs’ life and her religious calling in the green clearing is the life in her red heart, red is the color of the ribbon Stamp Paid thought was a cardinal feather. Morrison’s diction used to describe color in Beloved, is a reinvention of the literary color
Likewise, Morrison also uses symbolism for the duration of the novel to establish how people can judge a person based on their economic standing. For instance, symbolism is represented through the blue eyes that is repeatedly mentioned in the novel. The blue eyes represent the idealistic white middle class life that Pecola dreams of having since white people commonly have blue eyes. The reader can infer this suggestion because whenever Pecola is experiencing bad things she wishes to have blue eyes. Morrison writes, "If she looked different, beautiful, maybe Cholly would be different and Mrs. Breedlove too…Each night, without fail, she prayed for the blue eyes…
He is very reckless and a person who is constantly putting his family in danger, but his violence is the way he shows his love. This quote that Claudia sums up the dynamic of the Cholly, saying “We had dropped our seeds in our own little plot of black dirt just as Pecola’s father had dropped his seeds in his own plot of
I will never date a beauty," Cavan said, his face scrunched up. "But--" "All you blonde, popular, and bimbo-type beauties can go to hell." Without sparing another glance at my best friend, Cavan shuffled away, leaving her stranded in the middle of the dance floor. He messed with the wrong people.
Pecola and her mother, Pauline, see themselves as ugly because they hold themselves to beauty standards in which light-skinned people are the ideal. Pecola and her mother have a brutal home life due to the drunken violence of Cholly Breedlove, and the constant pressure of beauty standards only adds to their misfortune. Morrison explains this pressure by asserting that “[i]t was as though some mysterious all-knowing master had given each one a cloak of ugliness to wear, and they
The social standards of beauty and the idea of the American Dream in The Bluest Eye leads Mrs. Breedlove to feelings of shame that she later passes on to Pecola. The Breedloves are surrounded by the idea of perfection, and their absence of it makes them misfits. Mrs. Breedlove works for a white family, the Fishers. She enjoys the luxury of her work life and inevitably favors her work over her family. This leads Pecola to struggle to find her identity, in a time where perception is everything.
But it is not only the race and the colour of their skin what makes them unable to change their situation, but also poverty. Race and wealth are intertwined, and Pecola is the fundamental victim of this relationship, for she is a young black girl suffering from this ideology that determines her life. The dominant class imposes its values upon the other, for they think they are the best ones, reducing thus the personality of the people belonging to other classes, and at the same time, making them unable to change their oppressed situation, for they do not have the chance. They just accept their current position, and thus they will always be
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
The novel tells not only the story of Pecola but the story of the whole black community that unable to conform to white standards of beauty are condemned to sink into a pit of darkness. In this paper I will discuss how beauty is constructed in The Bluest Eye. Beauty is one of the main topics in The Bluest Eye and its importance relies on the fact that this is a novel about finding self-identity, but most of the characters from the novel search for their own identity in others. They value beauty over other things such as intelligence because they live in a society in which beauty is constructed in a way that they associate it with being loved and approved by others and as I just said they establish their self-worth based on how others perceive them. In the case of Pecola, she believes that having blue eyes will make her beautiful and wanted and she will never be sad again, as
The idea that blue eyes are a necessity for beauty has been etched on pecola's head in her whole life "if I looked different beautiful, may be cholly would be different, and Mrs. Breed love too may be they would say, why look at pretty eyed pecola. We mustn't do bad things in front of those pretty eyes "(the bluest eye
African- American writings have dealt with manifold themes throughout history. The American Civil War can be considered a break-through in the political as well as literary history. Many texts were born with subtle experiences of racist attitudes in America. Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye can be pinned to the African- American writings after the American Civil War movement of the 1960’s, representing a “distinctively black literature” what Morrison calls “race-specific yet race-free prose”.
The Bluest Eye is a novel about a black girl named Pecola Breedlove who wishes for beauty in order to attain a better life. She faces emotional and physical conflicts throughout her childhood. At eleven years old, Pecola is raped by her alcoholic father and becomes pregnant. Unlike anyone else, Claudia and Frieda MacTeer, tries to help her through the pregnancy. However, Pecola’s baby ends up dying because it is premature.
