ipl-logo

Rhetorical Devices In The Bluest Eye

1648 Words7 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. Furthermore, the novel explains how society shapes an individual 's character by instilling beauty expectations. Morrison is effective in relaying her message about the various impacts that society has on an individual 's character through imagery, diction, …show more content…

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…To have something as wonderful as that happen would take a long, long time"(46) This line from the text shows that to Pecola this white feature represents beauty and the end of her problems. Furthermore, symbolism can also be found in the homes of the characters. In the novel, homes are a symbol of economic status. The reader can infer that the nicer the home is, the richer the character. Take the example of Mrs. Breedlove 's employers house compared to her own home. Mrs. Breedlove 's employer 's home is described asx "the large white house with the wheelbarrow full of flowers…We circled the proud house and went to the back"(Morrison 105,106). Based on this description of the house the reader can assume that Mrs. Breedlove 's employer is wealthy. However, the Breedloves ' living

Show More
Related
886 Words | 4 Pages

The world is filled with labels, some negative and some positive. When it comes to negative labeling, a person’s sense of beauty in themselves and in the world is impacted. In The Bluest Eye, author Toni Morrison uses her characters such as Pecola to illustrate how another’s labeling can alter the way one internalizes his or her own beauty; Morrison poses an overall negative storyline filled with labels and discrimination that in turn allows the reader to identify the highlighted and deeper beauty that is not always visible to the naked eye. Pecola, a young girl during a time of extreme racism and discrimination, is raised in an abusive and unstable home. The effects of the abuse on Pecola has a large impact on her views of the world and

Read More
1630 Words | 7 Pages

Pecola wanted to have blue eyes because things may have been easy for her and her life may be better. Pauline messed up foot and fallen teeth made her feel so ugly and she did not wanted to fit in with society was of beauty she didn’t love herself. Cholly had always been neglected by her parents society and he had never learned how to love it affected him in the long run and a traumatic event in his life had scared him as a result. It is why beauty is undeserved for those who are called ugly according to

Read More
576 Words | 3 Pages

Tori Morrison succeeds at getting the awareness out about the impact of internalized racism, and how far people go when it comes to wanting to change their appearance. During the times in the Bluest Eye, according to society, to look beautiful, you had to be white or light skin with blue eyes. The darker shade of brown you were the uglier and poorer you seemed to people. For example, when Pecola was asked by a boy, Junior, to go into his house to see his cat. After the boy tortures the cat and eventually killing it, his mother comes into the door.

Read More
290 Words | 2 Pages

A three-hundred-year history of slavery in America led to a psychological oppression of black people in America, which still exists today. Toni Morrison decides not to delineate how white dominance has affected African-Americans culturally yet she challenges American standards of white beauty and how that beauty is socially constructed within our culture. In The Bluest Eye, Morrison uses society’s image of beauty to demonstrate how the value of black beauty is diminished by racial prejudices and dilemmas through the lives of Pecola Breedlove, Claudia and Frieda MacTeer, whose young minds were affected by this internalized idea that the color of your skin determined how perfect or worthy you were seen, not to yourself and on the inside, but

Read More
680 Words | 3 Pages

In The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, one of the biggest themes displayed throughout the book is how African-Americans are marginalized. For example, throughout the whole book, black characters are marginalized from the both the white and black communities. Throughout the whole book, the most marginalised character is Pecola. Pecola, an eleven year old girl who is ridiculed and insulted by all of her peers and even traumatized by her parents.

Read More
991 Words | 4 Pages

In The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, the standards of

Read More
295 Words | 2 Pages

The purpose of this investigation is to outline how the dominance of the white culture has created racial partiality for people of color blackpeople of color face living within a society where white aesthetics are the only factors equated to beauty, power and worth. Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye demonstrates the importance of safeguarding one’s cultural identity. The question examined is “in what ways and with what results does Morrison use the motif of the eye to highlight the theme of beauty within the novel The Bluest Eye”? The cause for the self hate black characters are seen developing is due to the eye, which represents the ignorant look the white society gives to the black community.

Read More
975 Words | 4 Pages

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

Read More
821 Words | 4 Pages

In the novel, The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison, Claudia Macteer is depicted as the polar opposite of the novel 's main protagonist, Pecola Breedlove. Whilst Pecola is surrounded by constantly fighting parents and is even victimized by one of her parents, Claudia was able to grow up in a stable household with loving parents that support both of their children, Claudia and Frieda. Claudia also has a very strong demeanor; she often takes action in many of the plots throughout the novel. Pecola, on the other hand, acts very child-like in some events in the novel and is very frail and closed in. In this novel, Morrison inserted a debate in which she never intended to write into the pages for us, as the readers, to figure out: a Nature vs Nurture

Read More
1525 Words | 7 Pages

The Bluest Eye written by Toni Morrison in 1970, consists of multiple interlocking stories, denoting a most powerful being, Cholly Breedlove, Pecola’s father. Cholly Breedlove is a man who has suffered through abhorrent bearings, degradation, condescension, abuse, and isolation. Isolated in a society defined by racism, economic inequality, and fanaticism, he was not only shunned but was considered barbarous. Left desolated by racism and violence, he spiraled into madness and violence. His daughter Pecola Breedlove, a young black girl growing up in the town of Lorain, Ohio, similarly, was born into a society characterized by racism.

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
2350 Words | 10 Pages

She is eleven years old black girl who is trying to conquer her self-hatred. Every day she faces racism, not just from white people but also from her own race. Pecola believes that her ugliness bring her miserable "long hours she sat looking in the mirror, trying to discover the secret of the ugliness. The ugliness that made her ignore or despised at school by teachers and classmates alike" (The Bluest Eye p.45). Pecola is very lonely and ordinary black girl and the most important reason for her desire for blue eyes is that she wants to treated differently from her family and friends.

Read More
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

Read More
845 Words | 4 Pages

Throughout her life she encountered difficult obstacles due to her race and she made parallels to it in her novels. Morrison had many themes and strands based on racism, that contributed to her success and elevated her status to an influential African American writer. One major theme Morrison uses consistently across her books is how the past events of characters affect their daily life and consciousness. In The Bluest Eye, the main protagonist, Pecola Breedlove, has parents whose present life was the way it was

Read More
622 Words | 3 Pages

The Bluest Eye – Racial Identity Morrison 's first novel, The Bluest Eye, looks at the appalling impacts of forcing white, working class American beliefs of excellence on the creating female character of a youthful African American young lady prior to the mid 1940s. Roused by a discussion Morrison once had with a grade school colleague who longed for blue eyes, the novel piercingly demonstrates the mental pulverization of a youthful dark young lady, Pecola Breedlove, who hunts down adoration and acknowledgment in a world that prevents and degrades individuals from claiming her own particular race. As her mental state gradually disentangles, Pecola miserably yearns to have the customary American models of female excellence—to be specific, white

Read More

More about Rhetorical Devices In The Bluest Eye

Open Document