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Racism in america literature
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Claudia and Frieda MacTeer live in Lorain, Ohio with their parents. Their lives are hard, but their parents provide a stern and loving household. To make money, their parents take in a boarder, Henry Washington. Soon after, another young girl, named Pecola, comes to live with the MacTeers after her father, Cholly, burned down her house. The three girls become friends. Pecola loves milk and Shirley Temple; it quickly becomes clear that she believes that all things Caucasian are beautiful. It also becomes clear that Pecola considers herself ugly because she has such strong African features. She does not believe she can be loved.
Pecola eventually moves back in with her family. Life there is not pleasant. Her father is an alcoholic, her mother is distant, and the two of them often fight. Pecola's older brother, Samuel, often runs away from home. Pecola also runs away but into her own fantasies: she dreams of having the bluest eyes in the world. Pecola's life away from her family is no better. She is often picked on and called ugly by those around her. Claudia and Frieda realize that the entire neighborhood agrees with Pecola that Caucasian features are beautiful.
Pecola's parents have both had difficult lives. Pauline always felt like an outsider in her family and constantly suffers through feelings of loneliness and ugliness. She wants to love her daughter but finds Pecola unattractive. Pauline works for a wealthy white family and finds her solace in their house and in movie theaters showing the glamorous white world. Cholly was abandoned by his parents and brought up by his aunt. He was often humiliated by white people and built up a great rage toward whites and women. When he met and married Pauline, things were good for a time, but he soon felt trapped and unhappy. The marriage is listless and dull, except for those moments when they are fighting.
One day, as he returns home and finds Pecola washing dishes, Cholly's life of rage and aborted desire wells up and he rapes his daughter. Pauline blames Pecola for the rape, irrationally seeing it as Pecola's fault. Pecola becomes more obsessed with getting blue eyes and visits Soaphead Church, a sham mystic, who promises to help her. Instead, he uses her to help kill a dog he doesn't like. Pecola discovers she is pregnant. Over the course of her pregnancy, Pecola goes mad.
Throughout the novel, Pecola is easily manipulated into believing what society tells her, and soon becomes fixated in achieving “beauty”. Due to certain events, Pecola comes to believe that beauty is the panacea to her life’s problems and the key to happiness, demonstrating how manipulating the Master Narrative can be. One of the more subtle events that affect Pecola’s mindset is when she goes to purchase a Mary Jane candy bar. When Pecola goes up to Mr. Yacobowski with her money, he barely acknowledges her: “At some fixed point in time and space he senses that he need not waste the effort of a glance. He does not see her, because for him there is nothing to see” (48). To Mr. Yacobowski, Pecola is so far from the socially acceptable standards: she is a black, poor, and ugly child. Mr. Yacobowski’s blunt ignorance is similar to many other people’s reactions when Pecola is around. Pecola doesn’t know how to think for herself yet, and from this encounter she is forced to see herself, in the eyes of Mr....
Her mother's rejection is subtle yet potent. When Pecola tells her mother about the molestation, Mrs. Breedlove does not believe her own flesh and blood. Pecola calls Pauline Mrs. Breedlove...
As a key character, Pecola Breedlove shows how past history repeats itself in the living present. Pecola is a victim of her parents’ background,
However, Both Pecola and the Claudia grew up in the same Lorain, Ohio community where the culture of white beauty ideals were very pertinent, yet the two children had very different outcomes.
The novel is a retrospective story told by Claudia, one of Pecola's childhood friends. Claudia's account allows the reader to sympathize with Pecola's self-hatred. As an adult, Claudia best articulates how Pecola's victimization is caused by her environment. Telling the story almost three decades later, during the sixties, Claudia reflects on the pain of wanting to be something you can never become. According to an interview entitled "Toni Morrison's Black Magic" in Newsweek, Morrison states that Pecola's character was formed based on the fact that "Black is beautiful was in the air. . . .So I wrote about a child who was ugly-Pecola is the perfect defeated victim-only she was beautiful" (Strouse 56). Morrison's depiction of a victimized Pecola addresses how the dominance of white consumer society can effect the psyche of a young African American girl.
The Carmelites were forced no longer wear their habits, but plain clothes instead. Similarly, the Carmelites dressed the statue of the Infant Jesus with plain clothes in hopes to disguise it when they ship it to the Dauphin. Afraid of martyrdom, Blanche flees the convent and returns to her father’s house; she ran right into the heart of her fear. Her father is killed by revolutionaries, and as she stands over his dead body, a revolutionary spots her. He soon realizes that she is a nun, and forces her to receive “communion”, but instead of receiving the Blood of Christ, she is forced to drink to blood of the people slain by the revolutionaries. According to Villeroi, “Blanche at that moment, embodied her martyred country…” She was taken by the “September Mothers”, thus falling right into the hands of her foes. Likewise, the Revolutionaries intercepted the package containing the Infant King, and it too, fell right into the hands of the foes. The Carmelites expected this to happen, as their motivation of sending the package was to get the Dauphin martyred, as they themselves wanted to be martyred. This hope for martyrdom was what led Blanche to flee the convent. The Carmelites are now being brought to the scaffold, and Blanche is present there against the crowd. After the last nun is martyred, Blanche, still in the crowd, carries on their song. The
Pip starts to view the world differently when he meets a wealthy woman named Miss Havisham and her adopted child Estella. Miss Havisham is a wealthy old woman who lives in a manor called Satis House near Pip’s village. Pip’s views change when Estella starts pointing out and criticizing Pip’s low social class and his unrefined manners. Estella calls Pip a “boy”, implying Estella views herself as above Pip. For example, when Miss Havisham requests for her to play w...
Geraldine, a respected woman living in the community, does conform to the standard of beauty, and she feels that anyone else is greatly inferior. So as to retain the beauty, Geraldine loses her culture and her individuality. Pecola Breedlove, a young girl, also feels that she must be aesthetically beautiful. She, on the other hand, believes that beauty is the only way for her and her family to be happy. When Pecola finally thinks that she has this beauty, she becomes temporarily happy, but is not really satisfied with what she has. Eventually, Pecola becomes obsessed with being more and more beautiful, a state that she can never truly reach because she is black. The fact that a rigid standard of beauty is established, and all of the members of the community are pressured to conform to it, causes overwhelming effects on those who do fit it, and those who merely try.
A sign of racism towards Pecola takes place in autumn in Mr. Yacobowski’s grocery store. Pecola goes to Mr. Yacobowski’s store because he sells candy for a penny each and she has three pennies in her shoe. Mr. Yacowbowski is a white immigrant man who does not like so associate himself with people of color. When Pecola is in the store, she decides on which
Back in the 1940s, lighter skin was a better look. If you were a dark black girl, you were seen as dirty and lesser. Since Pecola was a dark skin with wooly hair, she was accepted openly. To be beautiful, you need “blue eyes.” Pecola’s hardship of being an “ugly” black girl growing up around whites was hard for her. She believed she was ugly, because she is bullied and tormented. Pecola is a fragile and delicate child when the novel begins, and by the middle of the book, she has been almost completely worn-out by hurt and shame. Pecola is a symbol of the black community’s self-hatred and belief in its own ugliness. Others in the community, like her mother, father, and Geraldine, act out their own self-hatred by expressing hatred toward
Pip's miserable childhood is established within the first few chapters of the play. First, the reader is introduced to a young and innocent Pip standing next to his parent's tombstones and second, Pip is raised by a loud and abusive woman, who is actually his sister. Apart from his sister, Pip also has an uncle, Mr. Pumblechook, who is equally as unkind. These two characters make the young boy's life dreadful and yet, they play an important role in Pip's growth as a character. Mrs. Joe's hate towards Pip is expressed throughout stage one of the n...
Pecola believes she is far from meeting the white standards of beauty, offering no opposition to the judgements implied on to her. Her unconscious assimilation to beauty standards brings her into a state of delirium and worthlessness. Her conviction of her ugliness is rooted from societal standards of beauty rather than from herself: “...long hours she sat looking in the mirror trying to discover the secret of her ugliness, the ugliness that made her ignored and despised at school, by teachers and classmates alike” (Morrison 34). Pecola’s inability to reject and oppose standards of beauty is expected, as every encounter and experience further reinforces her low self-esteem. All members of Pecola’s community, participate in crushing any possibility of a healthy self image of herself. For example, when Pecola heads to the grocery store, the clerk looks at her and her money with disdain: “She looks up at him and sees the...total absence of human recognition the glazed separateness. She doesn’t know what keeps his glance suspended...The distaste must be for her, her blackness” (Morrison 48). From this quote, Morrison describes how non-black members of the community treat Pecola lower than human. She is rejected due to her blackness and therefore her ugliness. Pecola frequently encounters such discrimination not only due to her race, but her gender as well. Such distressing encounters paired with a poor sense of self, Pecola falls victim to cultural expectations and her community’s prejudice. Society has eaten away at her self-esteem and self-worth; thus, Pecola is prevented from developing a positive self image and instead, loses her innocence on account of her community’s own need for self assurance. Living in a community that internalize white beauty standards, and condemned by her peers and parents for it,
The Bluest Eye, demonstrates numerous examples of prejudice. Author, Toni Morrison, portrays the ending of The Great Depression and families, particularly those in black communities, faced with economic struggles and poverty. Despite the pressing economic concerns, prejudice is the underlying theme throughout the novel. Vivid, descriptive imagery reveals how social classes were distinguished among Pecola’s community. Segregation and prejudice were displayed between Pecola, her family, community members, and children in her social circles. One prominent example of prejudice is seen when Pecola’s mother displays a preference for her white employer’s children over her own, which furthers Pecola’s feelings of insignicance even with her own mother. Pecola was even beaten by her mother in front of the “little white girl.” Pecola’s mother understood the supremacy of the white family, and the enjoyment and comfort she received motivated her to jeopardize and damage her relationship with her own flesh and
The concept of physical appearance as a virtue is the center of the social problems portrayed in the novel. Thus the novel unfolds with the most logical responses to this overpowering impression of beauty: acceptance, adjustment, and rejection (Samuels 10). Through Pecola Breedlove, Morrison presents reactions to the worth of physical criteria. The beauty standard that Pecola feels she must live up to causes her to have an identity crisis. Society's standard has no place for Pecola, unlike her "high yellow dream child" classmate, Maureen Peals, who fits the mold (Morrison 62).
Pecola begins to believe that if she is able to achieve physical beauty, her life will improve. This false belief turns out to be destructive to Pecola and eventually lead to her sanity.