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The Bluest Eye Gender

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“The Standard of Beauty to a Broken Identity”: An African American Analyzation of Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye Toni Morrison begins with the “perfect” story of Dick and Jane as the primer of the novel. This flawless picture of a family that resides in this green and white house was nothing compared to Pecola’s family. The Bluest Eye centers on the life of an eleven year old African American girl that has endured countless psychological and physical tragedies while growing up. Pecola, the protagonist in the novel, experiences a challenge within her own self and society. The backdrop of this novel derives in 1940- 1941, which remains vastly significant to what soon occurs. The setting of the novel is in Lorain, Ohio, right …show more content…

In To Kill a Mockingbird, blacks are simply oppressed due to the color of their skin. Pecola, hated for issues that she had absolutely no control over and could not adjust. Just like Cholly, some victims of powerful self-loathing turn out to be dangerous, violent, reproducing the same demon that has humiliated them over and over. In the text Feminism is for Everybody, Bell Hooks says “All white women in this nation know that whiteness is a privilege.”(55) Hooks references race in comparison to gender in the chapter called “Race and Gender”. Enlightened how white women may prefer to ignore that statement, nevertheless they are just in denial of its truth. Bell Hooks also has a chapter in the novel called “Double Consciousness”, which is a concept that W.E.B DuBois studies in 1903. In the publication, The Souls of Black Folk, DuBois explains how it is difficult or impossible to have one unified identity. “…Between vision and view, his eyes draw back, hesitate, and hover. At some point in time and space he senses that he need not waste the effort of a glance.” (48) Pecola comes to Mr. Yacobrowski’s Fresh Veggie Meat and Sundries store and he does not even bother to gaze directly at her. “The total absence of human recognition-the glazed separateness.” (49) Pecola does not understand what is causing the store owner to treat her this way. She believes the reason may be because he is a grown man and she is a little girl. Pecola soon discovers that it is on account of her blackness in the view of his white eyes. Unfortunately, they cannot even communicate with each other effectively to handle business, but Pecola gets her Mary Janes. Respect should not be diminished by cruelty and judgement of an individual’s skin tone; it does not hurt to be cordial and

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She miscarries and that was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Pecola retreats into a fantasy world where she is a bird and can fly away from all the pain she has endured, and she is unable to escape the delusion. Another little girl named Claudia blames herself and her sister’s fear of interacting with Pecola as the reason for Pecola’s mental break, but it wasn’t them; it was the adults that surrounded

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Most individuals are able to succeed in life based on their past occurrences. Normally, everyone’s life is the way it is based on what they have done or experienced in the past. However, how one reacts to to their experiences determines their outcome in life. History, memories, and the past encounters are never entirely separated from current events. In order for things to be set in motion in the present, past transgressions precede to teach valuable lessons that connects to the present.

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Developing who she was around the time of the Great Depression, Toni Morrison had inspiring stories that reflected her childhood. During her life there has been some hardships and times where she has had to be strong. Toni Morrison was a highly educated women whose stories Beloved and The Bluest Eye are two of her most controversial stories. She made adjustments but stood up for what she believed in. Growing up as an African-American female during the US civil rights movement, Toni Morrison became a controversial author because she shares her life experiences that generates intense critical reaction.

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Bell Hooks makes arguments on the following topics in the introduction of her book, “the impact of sexism on the black woman during slavery, the devaluation of black womanhood, black male sexism, racism within the recent feminist movement, and the black woman’s involvement with feminism” (p.29). Hooks makes a point to address how race and sex are inseparable. Many women of color were too scared to acknowledge that sexism is just as much of an issue as racism. Hooks states, “Consequently, when the women’s movement raised the issue of sexist oppression, we argued that sexism was insignificant in light of the harsher, more brutal reality of racism. We were afraid to acknowledge that sexism could be just as oppressive as racism” (p.14).

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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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Intersectional analysis still matter because race still matters in this generation. Intersectional analysis is a theory of discrimination with an individual identity, race, sex, age, and other characteristics. I personally think that not only women face intersectionality but men do as well. In this essay, I will argue that bell hooks’ main argument is how white people do not know what people of colour are going through and how “whiteness” has more privileges then the blacks. hooks approach is intersectional because people of colour are being treated as slaves to the “white” just because of their race and at times their gender.

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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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They constantly encounter the problem of not living up to society’s beauty standards, which results in feelings of self-hatred based on race. These feelings perpetuate racism, as society, and even black people, tend to favor white beauty since it is held up as superior. The problems that Pecola, Pauline, and Claudia face in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye are not just figments of the past. Today, millions of women across the country feel some sort of self-loathing stemming from dissatisfaction over how they look. It is important that society tries to free itself from these nonsensical standards and celebrate the unique beauty of each individual

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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.

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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

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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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Double consciousness is a term coined by W.E.B. DuBois in his The Souls of Black Folk. He describes it as, “a peculiar sensation, this double consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity”(2). The theory of double consciousness is the idea that the African American must navigate the voyages of life from within a form of “two-ness” (2), because he is both man, and black.

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As Paul C. Taylor declares, “the most prominent type of racialized ranking represents blackness as a condition to be despised, and most tokens of this type extend this attitude to cover the physical features that are central to the description of black identity” (16). Such attitudes are found in the words of black women themselves, when they talk about Pecola’s baby, saying that it “ought to be a law: two ugly people doubling up like that to make more ugly. Be better off in the ground” (188). Without any support from her community or even family, Pecola is a character who is

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The Bluest Eye: Beauty People often say that “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder” in The Bluest Eye this takes a new meaning. The Bluest Eye is Toni Morrison 's first novel published in 1970. Set in the author 's hometown in Lorrain, Ohio, it narrates the story of a black little girl named Pecola Breedlove. Pecola prays for blue eyes like the ones her idol Shirley Temple has, because that way she will be beautiful and loved. Throughout the novel Toni Morrison takes us on Pecola 's journey to self-destruction because she lives in world that doesn 't find her beautiful or even worth to be looked at.

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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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