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
mind what exactly beauty is. People know that it can help you out in life. But what most people don’t know is that, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Meaning that beauty should not be characterized by what people are told it is, beauty is different for everyone, what is beautiful for you may be ugly to someone else. The characters in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye are confronted with the ideal of beauty and strive for it whether they know it or not. The two characters that I think were followed
opposites is more than racist. It is destructive to the minority community in that it creates resentment, low self-esteem, and a perverse hierarchy where minorities judge themselves and others on their proximity to the white beauty standard. In The Bluest Eye, Morrison critiques the white beauty standard that causes the black minority to feel a destructive self-hatred towards themselves and their fellow blacks because their self-perception is an unrealistic and unattainable beauty seen in publicity and
The Bluest Eye is a brilliantly written novel revealing the fictional trauma of an eleven-year-old black girl named Pecola Breedlove. This story takes place in the town of Lorain, Ohio during the 1940’s. It is told from the perspective of a young girl named Claudia MacTeer. She and her sister, Frieda, become witness to the terrible plights Pecola is unintentionally put through. Pecola chooses to hide from her disabling life behind her clouded dream of possessing the ever so cherished “bluest of eyes”
Through works of literature, past events can positively or negatively shape a character in societal and personal manners. Often, authors provide insight into a character’s history in order to justify their current condition. In The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison’s use of characterization and background information of Cholly and Pauline Breedlove contributes to their present actions, attitudes, and values. Morrison’s descriptions of Cholly Breedlove’s past creates justification for his evil persona. Throughout
The Bluest Eye The major characters in The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison were Pecola Breedlove, Cholly Breedlove, Claudia MacTeer, and Frieda MacTeer. Pecola Breedlove is an eleven-year-old black girl around whom the story revolves. Her innermost desire is to have the "bluest" eyes so that others will view her as pretty in the end that desire is what finishes her, she believes that God gives her blue eyes causing her insanity. She doesn't have many friends other than Claudia and Frieda. Throughout
There are several themes throughout the novel The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison. One theme being self-hatred. Throughout this novel, self-hatred has made itself prevalent through different characters, like Claudia and Pecola. Claudia’s self-hatred can be seen when she dismembers and destroys her doll with blue eyes and blond hair because she viewed herself as ugly and that she didn’t have the things that the doll had. Another example of self-hatred in this novel is with how Pecola feels guilty about
THE BLUEST EYE The Bluest Eye is a complex book. Substance wise it is a disturbing yet relatively easy read, but Toni Morrison plays with the narrative structure in a way so that complexity is added to the hidden depth of the text. From the beginning to the end of the book, the author takes the reader through a series of point of views that take turns in narrating the story. But by the end of the book, the author leaves the reader unclear on who the actual main character of the book is. Pecola
The organization of The Bluest Eye by season rather than the conventional chapter by chapter narrative suggests a cyclic occurrence, one of repetitive angst and in many ways irony. Pecola Breedlove’s life is a reflection of these seasons, the latter often being oxymoronic in relation to the actual chain of events. Each season connoted different aspects of Pecola's life and was often times the antithesis of her mere existence. The novel starts off with autumn, a season of maturity and harvest. It
Toni Morrison’s novel, The Bluest Eye, presents the lives of several impoverished black families in the 1940’s in a rather unconventional and painful manner. Ms. Morrison leads the reader through the lives of select children and adults, describing a few powerful incidents, thoughts and experiences that lend insight into the motivation and. behavior of these characters. In a somewhat unconventional manner, the young lives of Pauline Williams Breedlove and Charles (Cholly) Breedlove are presented to
The Bluest Eye, written by Toni Morrison in 1970, seeks to critique and critically analyze African Americans perception of beauty throughout the 20th century. The story follows the tragic events that transform the life of elven year old Pecola Breedlove. Pecola’s interoperation of the world, and herself, is that if she could obtain or have blue eyes, then she would in fact be beautiful. Toni Morrsion confronts controversial social, racial and gender related issues throughout The Bluest Eyes concerning
Pretty Blue Eyes An unexpected twist, that Pecola’s bright, blue eyes would be the source of her blindness. Nothing pummeled at her mind more than her inexorable yearning for a physical trait exclusive to white culture. The porcelain-skinned children of storybooks taught her that beautiful, sparkling blue eyes were the golden key to beauty, and she retained this information well. She wasn’t the only one. Girls of colored skin have been pressured for years to strip themselves of their culture—mentally
The Power of The Bluest Eye America has been described by various terms such as melting pot and tossed salad, but what these terms are trying to convey is that America is a country of great diversity. The literature of this country reflects its population in its diversity of genres, themes, language, and voices. One of these voices is Toni Morrison, an author who knows and appreciates the power of language, and uses it. In her Nobel Prize acceptance speech she states, "The vitality of language
Toni Morrison begins her novel, The Bluest Eye, with an emblem, Dick and Jane. Since she started writing this emblem which says, “Here is the house” (page 3), it made me question why she began her book talking about a house? In The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison uses symbolism and allegory to demonstrate how the homes in which people live, are a reflection of how the people live and who they are. In the prologue of Dick and Jane, their house is said to be “green and white. It has a red door. It is very
Toni Morrison’s Bluest Eye follows the narrative of Pecola Breedlove, a young black girl who wishes for beauty. “Mocked by others for the dark skin, brown eyes that set her apart, she yearns for blonde hair and blue eyes that she believes will finally let her fit in”(Morrison, Forward). Through the narrative her dream grows more severe her life changes and she slowly dwells in to madness. Which brings up powerful questions such as How is beauty constructed by society? Is it the same for all genders
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
The Bluest Eye is an exceptionally written novel which reveals the fictional traumatic life of an eleven year old African American girl named Pecola Breedlove. This novel takes place in the town of Lorain, Ohio during the 1940’s and focuses on the racism that the characters endured throughout the story. This story is told from the perspective of a young African American girl named Claudia MacTeer. She and her sister, Frieda MacTeer become witnesses to the terrible circumstances Pecola is terribly
Toni Morrison's “The Bluest Eye” set in post-WWI, Lorain, Ohio, narrates the lives surrounding Pecola Breedlove, a young black girl who wishes to be beautiful. Influenced greatly by her relationship with her mother, Pauline, Pecola adapts to a world of unworthiness and unattainable expectations beauty. Their mother/daughter relationship is just one of many examples throughout the novel further pinpoint its related themes of self worth and ugliness, both physically and mentally. An analysis of the
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
Mother Morrison, the only living winner of a Nobel Prize for literature in the United States, has a tendency to depict African American social context through all her writing. The novel “The Bluest Eye” demonstrates the hardships that a young African American girl goes through in a society that is dominated by Western European standards of beauty. The novel centers around a young girl named Pecola Breedlove. The novel begins from the perspective of two other little girls in her neighborhood that