Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Aspects of racism in the bluest eye
Racism in toni morrison's sula
Racism in toni morrison's sula
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Aspects of racism in the bluest eye
The Power of Self-Sight In Egyptian mythology, Horus, the god of sky and kingship, was said to have blue eyes that when gazed into, reflected back the future. The Eye of Horus, his symbol was known as one of protection and good health. This symbol was used by pharaohs in the afterlife to ward off evils. In the novel, The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison, the young girls, Claudia, Frieda, and Pecola, see the possession of blue eyes as a power that protects and entitles those who have them. They wish to have these blue eyes for they represent the the kindness and love that is received by little white girls and not by them. The motif of blue eyes is representative of the ideal image characters have and the belief that obtaining them would change the way they are seen by the world and therefore the way they see the world.
In the young girls' minds, blue eyes are the primary representation of what they see as the ideal image of those around them. They have built this ideal image from the things and
…show more content…
After her eyes have experienced her father raping her she can no longer live with having them. She wishes to "rise up out of the pit of her blackness"(174) and see the world with the bluest eyes. Her sanity gives way and she sees the world through what she believes must be the bluest eyes known to man. Pecola no longer sees herself as others do either, for she believes that God has granted her the bluest eyes. The God granted gift of blue eyes is the end of Pecola's sanity and "the damage [is] done total"(204). She is no longer able to see the real world at all, only the veil of the insanity. This veil of insanity is somewhat of a blessing to her for she no longer sees the terrible things she once did. Those watching her from the real world used her pain and ugliness to glorify themselves. Pecola's wish for blue eyes came true at the cost of her sanity and her true sight of the
She is envious of people with blue eyes because she thinks that those people have better lives. “Here was an ugly little girl asking for beauty....A little black girl who wanted to rise up out of the pit of her blackness and see the world with blue eyes…” this quote is from Soaphead, a man that runs a church and he pretends to be God, after Pecola has asked him to give her blue eyes. Even a terrible man that has committed many terrible sins, feels sympathy for Pecola because of the terrible life she has
Hence, “she, stepped over into madness” (T. Morrison 1970) and spent her days talking to her imaginary friend about her imaginary blue eyes. As Vickroy says, “Pecola’s belief that she has blue eyes more importantly symbolize the trauma of not being loved.” (L.Vickroy, 2002). We see in the novel that Pecola innocently seeks a physical reason for her lack of being loved by her parents and classmates “It had occurred to Pecola some time ago that if her Morrison 1970) as well as a stable source of food “Three quarts of milk. That’s what was in that icebox yesterday.”
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.
In The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, the narrator Claudia tells the story of a girl named Pecola who dreams to have blue eyes so she can feel beautiful in a white society. At the beginning of the novel, Pecola moves into Claudia’s home and becomes friends with Claudia and Frieda, who is Claudia’s older sister. This particular passage on page nineteen describes the three girls eating and playing together. Using three allusions, Shirley Temple, Bojangles, and Jane Withers, this passage highlights the importance of white beauty to the girls, its emphasis in society, and shows that Claudia is independent.
The concept of physical beauty and desire to conform to a prescribed definition of what is considered beautiful can destroy a person's life. In Toni Morrison's novel, The Bluest Eye, many characters are obsessed with attaining the idealist definition of what is considered beautiful. The characters of Geraldine, Pauline, and Pecola all believe that physical perfection leads to acceptance; however, it is the same belief that causes their personal downfalls and prevents them from recognizing their own inner beauty.
In this passage of The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison uses juxtaposition and anaphora to show of how the situation looks like and how it actually is. Juxtaposition is used in contrasting the differences between “And all of our beauty, which was hers first and which she gave to us. All of us-all who knew her-felt so wholesome after we cleanses ourselves on her. We were so beautiful when we stood astride her ugliness” (Morrison 205). This shows how lonely Pecola was from the rest of the word. Morrison tells of how life striped from Pecola what was originally hers and gave it to other people, instead giving her ugliness. Pecola did not develop to be normal and instead had to suffer about what she was born with. Morrison also employs anaphora in “Her simplicity decorated us, her guilt sanctified us, her pain made us glow with health, her awkwardness made us think we had a sense of humor” (Morrison 205). Morrison uses her to emphasize what Pecola gave to the world and to say that she got nothing good back in return. The revelation makes the readers feel bad for Pecola because she could do nothing more to help herself since she couldn’t control her
Imagery of the eye appears throughout Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner. From the opening scene depicting an eye glaring upon the dystopian future of Los Angeles, to Dr. Chew’s genetic laboratory with hundreds of replicant eyes, to finally the graphic scene with Roy gouging out Tyrell’s eyes, eye imagery evidently plays a certain significance. What are we to make of Scott’s tremendous fascination with eyes? Traditionally, eyes have been used in literature and film as a motif representing identity, surveillance, vulnerability, and the window to one’s soul. Scott builds upon these existing definitions and uses the eye motif to help us better understand the film’s main characters and themes, as well as to help answer the fundamental question that Blade Runner offers us: What does it mean to be human?
The idea that blue eyes are a necessity for beauty has been imprinted on Pecola her whole life. " If [I] looked different, beautiful, maybe Cholly would be different, and Mrs. Breedlove too. Maybe they would say, Why look at the pretty eyed Pecola. We mustn't do bad things in front of those pretty [blue] eyes'"
"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.
In the 1940's as well as present day, the media pushed on society an image of perfection and beauty. This image is many times fake, but the naive cannot deceive, and it can become an icon of beauty. If you do not fall within the image then you are ugly. In the book "The Bluest Eye," we witness the power that the media has on specific characters: Pecola Breedlove, Claudia and Frieda MacTeer. The icon of beauty at that point in time is Shirley Temple, a white girl with blond hair and blue eyes. She is also the first reference to beauty in the book. Claudia explains her feelings towards Shirley Temple by saying, "...I had felt a stranger, more frightening thing than hatred for all the Shirley Temples of the world" (19). Claudia is relating the hatred that she felt towards Shirley Temple to the envy she has towards girls who are beautiful like Shirley. Claudia herself knows that the media is trying to imply this image she says, "Adults, older girls, shops, magazines, newspapers, window signsall the world had agreed that a blue-eyed, yellow-haired, pink-skinned doll was what every girl child treasured" (20). This idea is repeated repetitively throughout the story, the idea that blue-eyed is beautiful. Frieda and Pecola love Shirley Temple while Claudia despises her with envy. Pecola once goes to purchase some candies called Mary Janes, she is very intrigued by the blue-eyed, blond girl in the wrapper. The narrator tells us that Pecola feels Mary Jane's eyes are pretty and that by eating the candy she feels the love that she has for the girl on the wrapper and she finds herself closer to her (50). The idea pushed by the media that blue eyes are beautiful builds up a strong destructive desire in Pecola.
The name Jim Crow comes from a popular minstrel, a performance which included songs whose lyrics told the stories of distant places or of existing or imaginary historical events (http://www.american-historama.org/1866-1881-reconstruction-era/jim-crow-laws.htm), during the 1950s. This minstrel was surrounded about the character of Jim Crow, a Black African American that was thought to have been a trickster. In traditional African culture the Trickster is depicted as a shape-shifting crow named "Jim." Thus, the reasoning for the name. Jim Crow was played by a White man painted with black paint and his character was to be dumb it was made to continuously ridicule African Americans. Later on Jim Crow became the name for laws made specifically for
The Bluest Eye Toni Morrison is an African American writer, who believes in fighting discrimation and segregation with a mental preparation. Tony focuses on many black Americans to the white American culture and concludes that blacks are exploited because racism regarding white skin color within the black community. The bluest eye is a story about a young black girl named Pecola, who grew up in Ohio. Pecola adores blonde haired blue eyes girls and boys. She thinks white skin meant beauty and freedom and that thought was not a subject at this time in history. This book is really about the impact on a child’s state of mind. Tony Morrison has divided her book into four seasons: autumn, winter, spring, and summer. The main characters in this book are three girls, Claudia and Frieds McTeer, and Pecola Breedlove. Why was Pecola considered a case? Pecola was a poor girl who had no place to go. The county placed her in the McTeer’shouse for a few days until they could decide what to do until the family was reunited. Pecola stayed at the McTeer’s house because she was being abuse at her house and Cholly had burned up his house. The first event that happens in the book was that her menstrual cycle had started. She didn’t know what to do; she thought she was bleeding to death. When the girls were in the bed, Pecola asked, “If it was true that she can have a baby now?” So now the only concern is if she is raped again she could possibly get pregnant. Pecola thought if she had blue eyes and was beautiful, that her parents would stop fighting and become a happy family.In nursery books, the ideal girl would have blonde hair and blue eyes. There is a lot of commercial ads have all showed the same ideal look just like the nursery book has. Pecola assumes she has this beautiful and becomes temporary happy, but not satisfied. Now, Pecola wants to be even more beautiful because she isn’t satisfied with what she has. The fact is that a standard of beautyis established, the community is pressured to play the game. Black people and the black culture is judged as being out of place and filthy. Beauty, in heart is having blond hair, blue eyes, and a perfect family. Beauty is then applied to everyone as a kind of level of class.
A reader might easily conclude that the most prominent social issue presented in The Bluest Eye is that of racism, but more important issues lie beneath the surface. Pecola experiences damage from her abusive and negligent parents. The reader is told that even Pecola's mother thought she was ugly from the time of birth. Pecola's negativity may have initially been caused by her family's failure to provide her with identity, love, security, and socialization, ail which are essential for any child's development (Samuels 13). Pecola's parents are able only to give her a childhood of limited possibilities. She struggles to find herself in infertile soil, leading to the analysis of a life of sterility (13). Like the marigolds planted that year, Pecola never grew.
In Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, the character Claudia struggles with a beauty standard that harms her sense of self-esteem. Claudia tries to make sense of why the beauty standard does not include black girls. The beauty standard determines that blonde-haired blue-eyed white girls are the image of beauty and therefore they are worthy of not only attention, but are considered valuable to American culture of the 1940s. Thus, learning she has no value or beauty as a black girl, Claudia destroys her white doll in an attempt to understand why white girls are beautiful and subsequently worthy, socially superior members of society. In destroying the doll, Claudia attempts to destroy the beauty standard that works to make her feel socially inferior and ugly because of her skin color. Consequently, Claudia's destruction of the doll works to show how the beauty standard was created to keep black females from feeling valuable by producing a sense of self-hate in black females. The racial loathing created within black women keeps them as passive objects and, ultimately, leads black women, specifically Pecola, to destroy themselves because they cannot attain the blue eyes of the white beauty standard.
To me this insinuates her desire to see the world differently and conversely the world will view her differently as well. She even attempts to purchase a pair of blue eyes at one point. Claudia, the novels narrorator, describes her desire as “Here was an ugly little girl asking for beauty. . . A little black girl who wanted to rise up out of the pit of her blackness and see the world with blue eyes. His outrage grew and felt like power.