ipl-logo

Analysis Of In The Bluest Eye, By Toni Morrison

701 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Media Conceptions of Beauty

In The Bluest Eye, written by Toni Morrison is about a young African American girl named Pecola, and a time were many people grew up with racism and many difficulties during the 1940’s because they were African American. Throughout the novel, it demonstrates that white societies have a better living, and higher beauty standard in which the media illustrates through television and books. This causes many conflicts towards African Americans because they are unable to find the true meaning of beauty. The author Toni Morrison, stresses plot, setting, characterization, or theme when writing a work of fiction like The Bluest Eye. In the novel The Bluest Eye, defining beauty affects many characters’ and supports the theme seen throughout the novel because it reflects their self-esteem due to the media’s perception of beauty. In the novel, it is seen that many adults and children shop and buy magazines, newspapers, and look at the …show more content…

Throughout the novel, it demonstrates that white societies have a better living, and higher beauty standard in which the media illustrates through television and books. This causes many conflicts towards African Americans because they are unable to find the true meaning of beauty. The author Toni Morrison, stresses plot, setting, characterization, or theme when writing a work of fiction like The Bluest Eye. In the novel The Bluest Eye, defining beauty affects many characters’ and supports the theme seen throughout the novel because it reflects their self-esteem due to the media’s perception of beauty, expresses racial issues through the setting in the time of 1940’s, and stresses plot as an important part in the novel to express the struggles and hardship seen in the conflict and situation throughout the

Show More
Related
1430 Words | 6 Pages

In 1970 Claudia was given a white baby doll and was continually only given toys that showed white children. Today’s society does the same thing. Little girls in the digital age are only given images of white girls. This paralyzed act to not represent all children has to do with how the mass producing media was created. Lorna Roth describes the industry with “an apparent lack of awareness of the dominance of Whiteness” by the people that create the photography and visual imagery (Roth 126).

Read More
467 Words | 2 Pages

In both The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison and Mindy Kaling’s Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me a main theme is image. Morrison uses Claudia, an African American child, to show a distinct hatred for the beauty standard. She had such a strong disdain for Shirley Temple and the white doll she was given as a gift. Her detest for these things was because she could never have those things, the beauty was unattainable.

Read More
1648 Words | 7 Pages

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.

Read More
1647 Words | 7 Pages

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

Read More
479 Words | 2 Pages

She is proud to be an African American and tries to incorporate it as much as possible. Another major influence for her book was a real life interaction with a young girl who dreamed for blue eyes. Morrison’s reaction to the girl was anger and confusion on what leads a young girl to desire a transformation in her looks. These thoughts stayed with her and eventually led to the writing of The Bluest Eye during the Black is Beautiful movement working to reclaim African-American beauty. Pieces of Morrison’s life can be seen throughout the story.

Read More
488 Words | 2 Pages

In Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, this novel took place in 1940 in Lorain, Ohio. Beauty is shown numerous ways throughout this book but discrimination was very much a problem due to the standard “white girl beauty”. The characters aren’t comfortable with themselves because of the standard society has set up. Beauty is defined as being very attractive in a physical way: not having any bad qualities(Merriam- Dictionary). Beauty can mean different things to different people it’s kind of undefinable .

Read More
975 Words | 4 Pages

What is the most pressing issue facing society today? In The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison argues that it is beauty standards, even calling physical beauty “the most destructive idea[] in the history of human thought” (122). While this may seem outrageous in a world of terrorism, global warming, homelessness, and hunger, beauty standards and the feelings of inferiority that stem from them affect everybody. In severe cases, these feelings can even manifest themselves deeply inside of a person and lead to eating disorders, depression, anxiety, self-hatred, and even suicide. In The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison uses the insecurities of the female characters to demonstrate that beauty standards are a danger to society, as they perpetuate racism and self-hatred.

Read More
845 Words | 4 Pages

In the novel, The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, the author Toni Morrison uses the characters and their actions to portray social norms. Her writing challenges the very essence of what beauty is through the main characters Pecola, Cholly, Pauline Breedlove, Freida, Claudia, and Mrs.MacTeer. The main character Pecola is thought of by many as ugly and this idea influences her own actions, thoughts, and feelings. The author uses the standards of beauty motif to demonstrate the concept that everyone is criticized and a person’s support system determines how different people deal with it. Additionally, some readers may explore their own biases as they read the book.

Read More
1002 Words | 5 Pages

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.

Read More
1356 Words | 6 Pages

Toni Morrison´s The Bluest Eye (1970) conveys the Marxist idealism that social and economic realities are the factors that determine the culture and consciousness of a particular group. The struggle within the context of the Civil Rights Movement, as well as the rejection of African American people is displayed in Morrison´s work, showing the author´s consciousness. Thus, in this paper I will try to show the author´s belief that human self-realisation is determined and delimited by the dominant class at every level. For this purpose I will focus on the relation between wealth and social class, on how the dominant class, in this case the white one, imposes its values over the black community, reducing its personality and leading its members to lose their identity. I will also try to show how the victims of the capitalist system see themselves trapped in an order from which it is very difficult to escape, and find themselves forced to give up and accept their current condition.

Read More
3280 Words | 14 Pages

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

Read More
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.

Read More
1172 Words | 5 Pages

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.

Read More
835 Words | 4 Pages

Root, Identity and Community have always been the underlying theme of Toni Morrison. Through the accounts of her novels, Toni Morrison shows several ways in which slavery, which was the most oppressive period in the black history, has affected the identity of African American. In Bluest Eye, Morrison shows that a black woman who searches for her true identity feels frustrated by her blackness and yearns to be white because of the constant fear of being rejected in her surroundings. Thus Morrison tries to locate post colonial black identity in the socio-political ground where cultures are hybridized, powers are negotiated and individuals are reproduced as resistant agents. She not only writes about claiming the superiority by the white but also

Read More
1563 Words | 7 Pages

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”.

Read More

More about Analysis Of In The Bluest Eye, By Toni Morrison

Related Topics

Open Document