Toni Morrisons: Beloved

535 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Critique of beloved

Chloe Anthony Wofford, also and commonly know as Toni Morrison, was born on February 18th,1931 in Loraine, Ohio. Morrison is the second of four children, to George Wofford, a shipyard worker and Ramah Willis Wofford,a choir singer. Morrison's father worked three jobs in order to provide the best for his family. Mr. And Mrs. Wofford believed it would be a wonderful opportunity for their family to move North to escape racial inequalities, although their southern- African heritage would still remain. As a child, Morrison grew up in a fairly integrated neighborhood and was not fully amply of the racial inequalities taking place. "When I was in the first grade, nobody thought I was inferior. i was the only black in class and the only child that could read." Morrison had many friends of other races, and was not exposed to discrimination until her teenage years when she started dating. Mr. Wofford was a well known racist after being told stories about white adults during his childhood. "My father was a racist. As a child in Georgia, he received shocking impressions of adult white peopl...

Show More
Related

  • Toni Morrison's Sula

    526 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the book Sula by Toni Morrison, Morrison’s ambiguous link between good, evil, and guilt, she is able to show that these terms are relative to each other and often occur mutually. In her comparison of good and evil, Sula states that "Being good to somebody is just like being mean to somebody. Risky. You don't get nothing for it" (145). Good and evil are being compared as if they are equal and that is how the book is structured. For instance, Eva's burning of Plum is a complex conjunction of motherly love and practicality and cannot be described as simply being a good act or a bad one. The killing of Chicken Little is a similarly ambiguous situation from which Sula and Nel's feelings are unclear. Lastly Sula, upon her death bed, questions what it means to be good and suggests that it what may be considered bad could in reality be good. Both in the syncopated style of Morrison's writing and the morally ambiguous portrayal of characters, cause the reader to question morals and think about them on a larger scale.

    Read More

  • Sula by Toni Morrison

    1390 Words  | 3 Pages

    Pruitt, Claude. "Circling Meaning in Toni Morrison's Sula.” African American Review 44.1/2 (2011): 115-129. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 14 Apr. 2014.

    Read More

  • Toni Morrison's Sula - The Fire Within Sula

    1233 Words  | 3 Pages

    Sula by Toni Morrison is a compelling novel about a unique, self-confident woman.  As in many other books, each secondary character in the story serves as a vehicle to explain the main character.  Hannah, Sula's mother, is dominated by the element of air; she is free spirited, frivolous and child-like.  On the other hand, the element of fire is prevalent in Sula, who is impulsive, hot-tempered and passionate.  Despite the differences between the two, Hannah's lifestyle intrigues and influences her daughter.  The effect Hannah has on Sula is reflected in many of her daughter's perspectives and actions.  As a result of the ubiquitous presence of fire within her, in contrast to her mother's blithe spirit, Sula carries all of Hannah's immorality and actions to a more extreme level.  Both women have promiscuous tendencies, do not have close friendships with women, and become easily irritated by Eva.  The difference is that Sula's fiery character leads her to act more cruelly than her mother.

    Read More

  • Recitatif: Toni Morrison

    926 Words  | 2 Pages

    In 1983, Toni Morrison published the only short story she would ever create. The controversial story conveys an important idea of what race is and if it really matter in the scheme of life. This story takes place during the time period of the Civil Rights Movement. The idea of civil rights was encouraged by the government but not enforced by the states, leaving many black Americans suffering every day. In Morrison’s short story Recitatif, Morrison manipulates the story’s diction to describe the two women’s races interchangeably resulting in the confusion of the reader. Because Morrison never establishes the “black character” or the “white character”, the reader is left guessing the race of the two main characters throughout the whole story. Morrison also uses the character’s actions and dialogue during the friend’s meetings to prove the theme of equality between races.

    Read More

  • Toni Morrison's Beloved - Appropriate for High School Students

    733 Words  | 2 Pages

    Beloved is a novel which digs deeply into the lives of four, post-Civil War, African American people. The novel has many things which could be deemed unacceptable but it is necessary to read as high school students in order to expand our views on life as we know it. The novel may have some idiosyncratic issues but they are unfortunately things that occur in our modern day world.

    Read More

  • The Importance Of Love In Toni Morrison's Beloved

    1585 Words  | 4 Pages

    In Toni Morrison’s Beloved, love proves to be a dangerous and destructive force. Upon learning that Sethe killed her daughter, Beloved, Paul D warns Sethe “Your love is too thick” (193). Morrison proved this statement to be true, as Sethe’s intense passion for her children lead to the loss of her grasp on reality. Each word Morrison chose is deliberate, and each sentence is structured with meaning, which is especially evident in Paul D’s warning to Sethe. Morrison’s use of the phrase “too thick”, along with her short yet powerful sentence structure make this sentence the most prevalent and important in her novel. This sentence supports Paul D’s side on the bitter debate between Sethe and he regarding the theme of love. While Sethe asserts that the only way to love is to do so passionately, Paul D cites the danger in slaves loving too much. Morrison uses a metaphor comparing Paul D’s capacity to love to a tobacco tin rusted shut. This metaphor demonstrates how Paul D views love in a descriptive manner, its imagery allowing the reader to visualize and thus understand Paul D’s point of view. In this debate, Paul D proves to be right in that Sethe’s strong love eventually hurts her, yet Paul D ends up unable to survive alone. Thus, Morrison argues that love is necessary to the human condition, yet it is destructive and consuming in nature. She does so through the powerful diction and short syntax in Paul D’s warning, her use of the theme love, and a metaphor for Paul D’s heart.

    Read More

  • The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

    952 Words  | 2 Pages

    "And Pecola. She hid behind hers. (Ugliness) Concealed, veiled, eclipsed—--peeping out from behind the shroud very seldom, and then only to yearn for the return of her mask" (Morrison 39). In the novel The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison, the main character, Pecola, comes to see herself as ugly. This idea she creates results from her isolation from friends, the community, and ever her family. There are three stages that lead up to Pecola portraying herself as an ugly human being. The three stages that lead to Pecola's realization are her family's outlook toward her, the community members telling her she is ugly, and her actually accepting what the other say or think about her. Each stage progresses into the other to finally reach the last stage and the end of the novel when Pecola eventually has to rely on herself as an imaginary friend so she will have someone to talk to.

    Read More

  • The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

    1122 Words  | 3 Pages

    Beauty is dangerous, especially when you lack it. In the book "The Bluest Eye" by Toni Morrison, we witness the effects that beauty brings. Specifically the collapse of Pecola Breedlove, due to her belief that she did not hold beauty. The media in the 1940's as well as today imposes standards in which beauty is measured up to; but in reality beauty dwells within us all whether it's visible or not there's beauty in all; that beauty is unworthy if society brands you with the label of being ugly.

    Read More

  • Toni Morrison's Beloved - Bold but Unsuccessful

    736 Words  | 2 Pages

    Toni Morrison's fifth novel, Beloved, a vividly unconventional family saga, is set in Ohio in the mid 1880s.  By that time slavery had been shattered by the Civil War, the Emancipation Proclamation and the succeeding constitutional amendments, though daily reality for the freed slaves continued to be a matter of perpetual struggle, not only with segregation and its attendant insults, but the curse of memory.

    Read More

  • Toni Morrison Beloved Analysis

    820 Words  | 2 Pages

    Cruelty is the idea of gaining pleasures in harming others and back in 1873, many African American slaves suffered from this common ideology according Heather Andrea Williams of National Humanities Center Fello. Toni Morrison, an African American author who illustrates an opportunity for “readers to be kidnapped, thrown ruthlessly into an alien environment...without preparations or defense” (Morrison) in her award-winning novel Beloved as method to present how cruel slavery was for African Americans. In her fictional story, Beloved, Morrison explained the developement of an African American slave named Sethe who willingly murdered her own child to prevent it from experiencing the cruel fate of slavery. Nonetheless, Morrison

    Read More

  • The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

    1195 Words  | 3 Pages

    There are many themes that seem to run throughout this story. Each theme and conflict seems to always involve the character of Pecola Breedlove. There is the theme of finding an identity. There is also the theme of Pecola as a victim. Of all the characters in the story we can definitely sympathize with Pecola because of the many harsh circumstances she has had to go through in her lifetime. Perhaps her rape was the most tragic and dramatic experience Pecola had experiences, but nonetheless she continued her life. She eliminates her sense of ugliness, which lingers in the beginning of the story, and when she sees that she has blue eyes now she changes her perspective on life. She believes that these eyes have been given to her magically and in some respects her eyes begin to corrupt her as an individual. The story begins to take a turn and the reader realizes that the main character has begun to entirely rely on self-image in order to build confidence. This leads to the question of how significant are the "Blue eyes" to society and how does the theme of beauty and ugliness linger throughout the story. With this in mind, how does this make Pecola a victim of society and a victim in herself?

    Read More

  • Margaret Garner and Seven Others by Toni Morrison

    1062 Words  | 3 Pages

    How would one feel and behave if every aspects of his or her life is controlled and never settled. The physical and emotional wrought of slavery has a great deal of lasting effect on peoples judgment, going to immense lengths to avoid enslavement. In the novel, Beloved, Toni Morrison uses the characters adversity to expose the real struggles of slavery and the impact it has on oneself and relationships. Vicariously living through the life of Sethe, a former slave who murdered one of her kids to be liberated from the awful life of slavery.

    Read More

  • The Role Of Identity In Toni Morrison's Song Of Solomon

    1281 Words  | 3 Pages

    Toni Morrison is one of the leading Afro-American writers who addressed the position of the African Americans in the pre-slavery and post slavery periods. She was concerned with the way Black individuals and communities were expressive or silenced within a dominant culture which has been intolerant of the racial difference. She knew fully well that everything was not well with America. She was aware of the identity crisis faced by the Blacks in America. Therefore, she tried her best to defend her race, protest against racial discrimination and glorify her culture and tradition.

    Read More

  • Universal Themes in Toni Morrison’s Beloved

    969 Words  | 2 Pages

    In Toni Morrison’s novel, Beloved, Morrison uses universal themes and characters that anyone can relate to today. Set in the 1800s, Beloved is about the destructive effects of American slavery. Most destructive in the novel, however, is the impact of slavery on the human soul. Morrison’s Beloved highlights how slavery contributes to the destruction of one’s identity by examining the importance of community solidarity, as well as the powers and limits of language during the 1860s.

    Read More

  • Toni Morrison Biography

    1003 Words  | 3 Pages

    Her mother was a church-going woman and sang in the choir. Her mother didn’t work; she just stayed home and took care of the family. By being black, her parents faced lots of racism living in the south (1). Both of her parents had moved from the south to escape the racism and to find better opportunities. Living in an integrated neighborhood, Morrison did not become fully aware of racial divisions until her teens (2).

    Read More

More about Toni Morrisons: Beloved

Open Document