The Bluest Eye, written by Toni Morrison, is a novel that encompasses the themes of youth, gender, and race. At the time the novel was written, The African American Civil Rights Movement had recently. In the story, Morrison utilizes a story in first person to convey her viewpoints about racial inequality. Authors such as Anais Nin, Virginia Woolf, and Adrienne Rich composed poems and essays that discuss concepts present in The Bluest Eye. Morrison weaves passages of children’s stories to illustrate the chaos amongst the characters in her novel. Morrison does not use children’s books to serve as the basis of her points—she uses them to strengthen her ideas. In The Bluest Eye, Morrison implies that American culture is reason for the discrimination …show more content…
Morrison dedicates an entire chapter towards explaining the apartment Pecola Breedlove moves into once her father is released from jail. The narrator moves backward in time in order to describe the storefront of the Breedlove’s apartment. Morrison produces a great meaning from small details, such as focusing on the furnishing of the dwelling. Claudia explains how the abandoned store “foists itself on the eye of the passerby in a manner that is both irritating and melancholy” (33). The unpleasant qualities of the building symbolize the unpleasantness of the Breedloves’ story—a story about the ugliness inflicted against them. The importance of a story is displayed in Adrienne Rich’s poem, “Diving Into the Wreck,” where she says that “the sea is another story / the sea is not a question of power” (Rich 41-42). In this piece, Rich presents the idea that a story is not a question of power, but a story is an account of one’s life experience. When Claudia discusses the storefront being abandoned, the Breedloves would also be deserted by one another and by the world around them. As she discusses the different occupants of the building, the reader is reminded that no matter hopeless the Breedloves’ are, they are just a part of the neighborhood …show more content…
Her concentration on the quilt the Breedlove family creates together implies that they created it based on “tiny expressions” and “fragments of experience” (Morrison 34) using the limited materials they had. Claudia defines the symbols of hope, rebirth, comfort, through the use of a Christmas tree, a bed, and the sofa. In “Diving Into the Wreck,” the narrator is “carrying a knife, a camera / [and] a book of myths” (Rich 100-01). Rich uses objects to effectively convey her viewpoints. The few household objects the Breedlove family possesses, such as a torn couch that represents the ideas of
In the novel, The Bluest Eye, the author, Toni Morrison, tells the tragic story of Pecola Breedlove. Pecola longs for acceptance from the world. She is an innocent little girl, however, she is rejected practically by the whole world, and her own parents. Pecola endures physical and verbal abuse at home, and also at school. She is always the main character in the jokes that usually refer to her very dark skin. Her mother cherishes the white daughter of the family she works for and calls her own daughter a "rotten piece of apple. Her father Cholly is constantly drunk, and sexually molests her daughter more than once, eventually rapes and impregnates her.
Toni Morrison's novel "The Bluest Eye", is a very important novel in literature, because of the many boundaries that were crosses and the painful, serious topics that were brought into light, including racism, gender issues, Black female Subjectivity, and child abuse of many forms. This set of annotated bibliographies are scholarly works of literature that centre around the hot topic of racism in the novel, "The Bluest Eye", and the low self-esteem faced by young African American women, due to white culture. My research was guided by these ideas of racism and loss of self, suffered in the novel, by the main character Pecola Breedlove. This text generates many racial and social-cultural problems, dealing with the lost identity of a young African American women, due to her obsession with the white way of life, and her wish to have blue eyes, leading to her complete transgression into insanity.
Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye. Toni Morrison’s novel The Bluest Eye provides social commentary on a lesser known portion of black society in America. The protagonist Pecola is a young black girl who desperately wants to feel beautiful and gain the “bluest eyes” as the title references.
Marie, who is a product of an abusive family, is influenced by her past, as she perceives the relationship between Callie and her son, Bo. Saunders writes, describing Marie’s childhood experiences, “At least she’d [Marie] never locked on of them [her children] in a closet while entertaining a literal gravedigger in the parlor” (174). Marie’s mother did not embody the traditional traits of a maternal fig...
Topic: Discuss the issues of self-hatred and the aesthetics of beauty in The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison. What role do they play in the novel and how do they relate to its theme?
At a time when blue-eyed, pale skin Shirley Temple is idolized by white and black alike,
"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.
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.
In the novel “The Bluest Eyes”, by Toni Morrison, Racial self-loathing and hatred is a major theme through the text, and is even evident in the title. Instead of making the plot center around events over racism, the book shows a deeper portrayal of racism, emphasizing on the way racial self-hatred and loathing plagues the black characters. The novel shows an extended depiction of the ways in which internalized white beauty standards distort the lives of the black characters. The author shows this by having African Americans who have lighter features, Maureen Peal, Geraldine and Soaphead Church, and characters with darker features, Pecola and her Parents Cholly, and Pauline Breedlove. Through them we are able to see racial self-loathing, there
In the novel, “The Bluest Eye”, Toni Morrison exposes the roots of a broken community, unveiling the effects it has on its members. Morrison illustrates various disturbing characters that are insecure, lost and troubled. Through extended metaphors she is able to trace back these behaviors to the characters’ past. The structure of her novel follows a repetitive rationale of the character’s behavior after revealing their gruesome actions. The passage (116) further develops the text’s theme of a dysfunctional community. Although the exposure the effects of racism seems to be the main theme, Morrison goes deeper and explores the reason how and why the community continues to live in oppression.
In Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, published in 1970, the struggle begins in childhood. Two young black girls -- Claudia and Pecola -- illuminate the combined power of externally imposed gender and racial definitions where the black female must not only deal with the black male's female but must contend with the white male's and the white female's black female, a double gender and racial bind. All the male definitions that applied to the white male's female apply, in intensified form, to the black male's, white male's and white female's black female. In addition, where the white male and female are represented as beautiful, the black female is the inverse -- ugly.
Social class is a major theme in the book The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison. Toni Morrison is saying that there are dysfunctional families in every social class, though people only think of it in the lower class. Toni Morrison was also stating that people also use social class to separate themselves from others and apart from race; social class is one thing Pauline and Geraldine admire.Claudia, Pecola, and Frieda are affected by not only their own social status, but others social status too - for example Geraldine and Maureen Peal. Characters in the book use their social class as another reason for being ugly. Readers are reminded of the theme every time a new character enters into the book.
With The Bluest Eye, Morrison has not only created a story, but also a series of painfully accurate impressions. As Dee puts it "to read the book...is to ache for remedy" (20). But Morrison raises painful issues while at the same time managing to reveal the hope and encouragement beneath the surface.
In the novel The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, she exposes the suffering produced by the problems caused by gender and race oppression through the experiences of African-American children. During the 1940’s, the United States had composed an identity through mass media with books such as “Dick and Jane”, and movies like “Sherley Temple.” These media sources provided a society based on national innocence. In the novel, Morrison relates to and exposes the very real issues that were hidden by the idea of the stereotypical white middle-class family.
Toni Morrison, the author of The Bluest Eye, centers her novel around two things: beauty and wealth in their relation to race and the brutal rape of a young girl by her father. Morrison explores and exposes these themes in relation to the underlying factors of black society: racism and sexism. Every character has a problem to deal with, and it involves racism and/or sexism. Whether the characters are the victim or the aggressor, they can do nothing about their problem or condition, especially when it concerns gender and race. Morrison's characters are clearly at the mercy of preconceived notions maintained by society.