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The Bluest Eye Thesis

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Recommended: Themes in the bluest eye by toni morrison

The book “The Bluest Eye” was based off African American families and struggles, they were poor and this was the time period after the Great Depression had ended. Nine year old Claudia lived with her parents and ten year old sister Frieda even though the family was barely making ends meet they were still living in an atmosphere of love and safety.In the book you could tell that was a house to go to in time of need anf you could feel secure. The family shared their home with several people one of them a young girl, Pecola, who had moved in with the MacTeer family after her father tried to burn down their families home. Claudia’s mother had a good heart but often felt like she was taken for granted, “Time for me to get out of the giving line
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INSTRUCTIONAL APPROACH KEY CONCEPTS TO BE DEVELOPED Students develop a deeper understanding of how authors use juxtaposition to develop a theme or idea within a text. Students complete this work by examining The Bluest Eye, writing an essay, and finally by selecting an image to illustrate the type of juxtaposition they have identified within the text. Students practice providing feedback to peers by participating in a gallery walk at the end of the Cornerstone.

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Toni Morrison mentions actresses in the novel, and even in today’s culture, Americans tend to see them as beautiful or otherwise. As shown in The Bluest Eye, however, they were depicted differently compared to how the modern-day American depicts actors and actresses: African-Americans admired White actors and actresses. While these appearances are short, they do make a large impact on the characters. Bump makes the claim that “virtually all readers… know that they do not have movie star beauty and thus fear judging by appearance,” meaning that even today’s population yearn for this beauty created by the media i.e. actors and actresses (Bump 157). The first person to arrive on the scene is the famous Shirley Temple, who appears on a cup Frieda

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Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye is set in Lorain, Ohio, during the tail end of the Great Depression and primarly follows the lives of the MacTeer family, consisting of their two daughters, Claudia and Frida. Pecola stays with the MacTeers, as her father, Cholly, is in jail and her mother, Pauline, went to work for a white family. Henry Washington, a boarder, also stays with the MacTeers. Despite the MacTeers struggling to make ends meet, Pecola lacks a stable familial unit, making Claudia and Frida feel bad for her.

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The first piece in my portfolio is a piece of Pecola with blue eyes. One of the overarching ideas presented throughout The Bluest Eye is that white features, specifically blue eyes, is the epitome of physical beauty. Throughout the book, there is vivid visual imagery of blue eyes such as those of “lovely Mary Jane” (Morrison 50). The use of the word lovely further correlates her physical appearance and blue eyes with beauty. This causes Pecola to crave blue eyes so desperately that “every night, without fail, she prayed” in order to gain what she and everyone else unanimously view as beauty (46).

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In the novel The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison demonstrates how a person’s identity affects a person 's actions. The two character who demonstrates this would be Cholly and Pecola. Cholly is an African American man who was abandoned by his mom when he was little later on, he married Polly and had a daughter Pecola. Pecola is a eleven who is African American and dreams of having blue eye because she believes she will finally be pretty. In this novel Morrison argues a person does not have control over their own identity.

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Brown’s Sneaker She always was alone. No one ever went near her. It is not that she was dirty; it was just that she always had a transparent barrier. Her name was Chloe Brown. Everybody called her “Brown” among themselves, and she was twelve.

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Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye is a tragic story about a young black girl growing up in Lorain, Ohio after the Great Depression. Morrison wrote this novel to portray that the racy themes in the book such as incest, prostitution, child molestation, domestic violence, substance abuse, and racism can not only be experienced by adults but by children as well. So to create a piece of literature that shows what that is like, helps society to better understand what exactly it is that, not just a child, but an African American child, would have gone through during that time. So, in The Bluest Eye Claudia MacTeer, nine years old and her sister Frieda who is 10 years old, live with both their parents in an old house.

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Make-up Assignment for Seminar 3 The novel, The Bluest Eyes discusses many interesting themes during the course of the story, for example incest, prostitution, domestic violence, child molestation as well as racism. However, I think that the overall theme of the novel is highlighting how internalized white beauty standards form and cripple the lives of black girls and women. The reason as to why I believe that this is the main theme that Morrison wanted to convey in her novel is because there are implicit messages that whiteness is superior are everywhere throughout the book. Toni Morrison explains that the story of the novel came out of a childhood conversation she could never get out of her mind.

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A Researched Analytical Essay: The Bluest Eye In the novel “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison, we are provided an extended interpretation of how whiteness is the standard of beauty, which distorts the lives of black women and children, through messages everywhere that whiteness is superior. The theme of race and that white skin is greater is portrayed through the lives and stories told by the characters, especially the three girls Claudia, Pecola and Frieda. Through the struggles those people have endured, Morrison shows us the destructive effect of this internalized idea of white beauty on the individual and on society. “The Bluest Eye” has a number of elements that relate closely to Toni Morrison’s own personal life.

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Societal influence and internalized discrimination is the main message in Toni Morrison’s, The Bluest Eye. Using her main character Pecola as the focal point of the novel, Morrison establishes how the influence of race and beauty standards corrupted a young girls mind. Within each chapter, Morrison was able to depict cultural icons such as Shirley Temple, idolized classmates like Maureen and a mother figure all attack a vulnerable character. Because Pecola Breedlove does not meet the white western culture standards, Pecola is in a “world in which only little white girls with blue eyes are loveable” (Bennett). Morrison has illustrated countless times to overlook the white gaze and step out of the spotlight.

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The book “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison takes place in a poor area of Lorain, Ohio in the year 1941. I think this is a great setting for the book. It teaches people now about the hardships that people of color (specifically African-Americans) had to face every day in the early 20th century. Although I like the setting now, I think it would be very interesting to read a book about the same topic in the present time. Hardships for any person of color still exist, even though it may not be as bad or easy to see.

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Rape is inaccurately associated with sex when it essentially is about power. Feminist theorists assert that rape is only one symptom of the larger problem of a male dominated society (Cahill, 2001). Rape is an obnoxious fact of life due to its common occurrence and is commonly misinterpreted as a sexual act rather than a violent one. The act of rape does not occur because the rapist can’t “get sex elsewhere, but because they feel entitled to rape women in order to satisfy their needs. In Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, sex is about power, violence and oppression.

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Toni Morrison’s novel, The Bluest Eyes, portrays an authentic story of growing up as black in a postwar and great depression America. This novel focuses on one year of a group of children’s lives – Claudia, Frieda, and Pecola. Morrison uses their eyes penetrate the self-hatred that has been afflicted and inflicted upon the black community in this country, starting from their childhood. The two sisters, Claudia and Frieda, are the voice of the author. They bitterly recite the story of Pecola Breedlove, who has a bitter mother whose identity solely lies within the white family she serves and a drunkard father who rapes and impregnates his own daughter.

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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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1632 Words | 7 Pages

In The Bluest Eye , Toni Morrison begins the novel with Pecola’s coming to age , her menarche and transition from prepubescence to womanhood . Pecola’s friends , Claudia and Frieda will loose their innocence as they choose to help Pecola . Pecola’s life and the event of the death of her baby ; causing the marigolds unable to bloom and drove her towards insanity. Pecola’s pregnancy exposes the inhumanity and hatred in the hands of the African American community.

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