1. The history of the Breedloves' home is that it use to be a store. The Breedlove's lived in a store front. It is a very unattractive building within the community. "...pedestrians, who are residents of the neighborhood, simply look away when they pass it."(Morrison 33). That statement shows me that no one cared about this abandoned store. Before the store was abandoned it was a pizza parlor, a real estate office, and a gypsies base of operations. I believe that no one remembers the Breedlove's living in the store because no one ever took notice of the store also the Breedlove's were not active with in the community to be noticed by anyone. The book states that the Breedlove's did not make a wave in the mayor's office.…
The theme of the story, “The Bluest Eye” written by Toni Morrison, demonstrates the connection between the self-esteem of African-American people (beauty and ugliness), racism and hate. The reason why this theme is discussed was because, we can go back to the origins of African-Americans, it relates to the African diaspora, Jim Crow era, and how people negatively look at blacks today in society, and white supremacy destroyed black imaginary. But before this goes on furthermore, the audience needs to understand the importance of the dominant society which strongly removed the identity of African-American. Claudia and Maureen play perfect roles during the story. They show…
One reason critics praise Toni Morrison’s, The Bluest Eye is because of the way the novel accurately portrays the way society views itself and others (Hoffman). She precisely shows in her work, that mankind is flawed in this aspect. Similar to that, Toni Morrison asks the novel’s readers “to think about perspectives of all types” (Hoffman). With the book’s inclusion of racism and self loathing the author wants the readers to connect with the protagonist, on an emotional basis, and try to first-hand understand Pecola’s perspective. Perhaps the most significant reason critics cite in favor of the novel not being banned is the story’s potential to incite analyzations about self-esteem and body image (Lalami). Readers and educators alike could read the book in detail, and have discussions about the author’s…
To begin, "The Bluest Eye" is Toni Morrison's first novel. This novel tells a story of an African American girl's desire for the bluest eyes, which is the symbol for her of what it means to feel beautiful and accepted in society (American). In the novel, women suffer from the racial oppression, but they also suffer from violation and harsh actions brought to them by men (LitCharts). Male oppression is told all throughout the story, but the theme of women and feminity with the actions of male oppression over the women reaches its horrible climax when one…
A three-hundred-year history of slavery in America led to a psychological oppression of black people in America, which still exists today. Toni Morrison decides not to delineate how white dominance has affected African-Americans culturally yet she challenges American standards of white beauty and how that beauty is socially constructed within our culture. In The Bluest Eye, Morrison uses society’s image of beauty to demonstrate how the value of black beauty is diminished by racial prejudices and dilemmas through the lives of Pecola Breedlove, Claudia and Freida MacTeer, whose young minds were affected by this internalized idea that the color of your skin determined how perfect or worthy you were seen, not to yourself and on the inside, but…
The Bluest Eye is a complex novel written by Toni Morrison, an African American literary theorist. Morrison evokes a society still plagued by the premise of slavery and the exposes this mode of white inferiority through The Bluest Eye. “Wicked people love wickedly, violent people love violently, weak people love weakly, stupid people love stupidly, but the love of a free man is never safe”, Morrison endows these last couple of sentences with a lyrical quality that makes the readers truly understand the depth of Cholly’s character and the “freeness” he experiences. Morrison initially introduces Cholly Breedlove as the antagonist, a drunk and very abusive father; any man who would beat his wife, set his house on fire and rape his daughter couldn’t…
Bibliography: elton, Danielle. "Fear and Self-Loathing in Black America." The Black Snob. Blogspot.com. 9 Sept. 2008. Web. 30 Oct. 2009. Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Penguin Group, 1994. Print.…
The Bluest Eye, written in 1970, is novel by Toni Morrison. It is Morrison's first novel and was written while she was teaching at Howard University. The Bluest Eye tells the tragic story of Pecola Breedlove, a young black girl growing up in Morrison's hometown of Lorain, Ohio, during the hard times following the Great Depression. In this novel, Toni Morrison addresses a timeless problem of white racial dominance in the United States and points to the impact it has on the life of black females growing up in the 1930's.…
The characters in “The Bluest Eye” are exposed to social standards and norms. The book opens with an excerpt from the book “Dick and Jane”. This excerpt represents the perfect, ideal, suburban, white family. Each chapter in the book also begins with a quote from this book. This makes the lives of the black families in the book seem worse. The comparison of Dick and Jane’s family and life to that of the black families in the book demonstrates how the black families would compare themselves to the white families. The blacks in “The Bluest Eye” feel conflicted because their self-identity does not match up with society’s social norms. An example of this is when Geraldine does everything she can to be that same as white families. She straightens her hair, uses lotion so she does not become ashy, has a steady income, and keeps in house in exceptional shape. But no matter how similar her life style is to theirs, she still does not feel as if she fits in because she knows she is black. This theme can be seen in everyday life when comparing the first and second floor cafeterias at Osbourn Park. It is more usual for white people to sit on the second floor while more colored people sit on the first floor. No one said the setup had to be that way, but it is normal for the students and it is what they are used to.…
Oppression is a prevalent and reoccurring theme in black literature. African-American novelists in the early 20th century offered a predominantly white audience an insight into black culture and vocalized the injustice had by their hands. Alice Walker's The Color Purple and Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye both incorporate controversial female protagonists facing the challenge of mental oppression by both personal and societal belief, and physical abuse at the hands of their aggressors. Whilst each arguably feminist bildungsroman faces criticism for misrepresenting relationships and stereotyping behaviour in black society, it is widely accepted that both authors explore and bring attention to the oppression and abuse of women in a modern context.…
Alienation. A withdrawing or separation of a person or a person’s affections from an object or position of former attachment (Merriam Webster). Society has ways of alienating people for multiple reasons such as their race, gender, class, or beliefs. In The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, the character Pecola was alienated not only by society, but by her family as well. Pecola’s alienation was due to the fact that she was raped by her father and carried his baby. This reveals that society has very little to no values, and that they always assume the worse about people.…
Morrison uses these figures who show how they are admired for their cleanliness and whiteness. These characters parallel Pecola, Cholly, Pauline, Claudia, Frieda and Mrs. MacTeer, who are all reflections of “blackness” which is perceived as dirty and undesirable. These characters all show how everyone in the community is a victim of racism and in return set out to change themselves, developing body dysmorphic disorder. These characters all wish to change their physical appearance and look and act more like the mixed race characters, only to gain acceptance from their community. Toni Morrison's novel The Bluest Eye tells the story how racism and societies standard of beauty leads to body dysmorphic disorder and the demise of a village when they fall to the pressures of what is accepted by…
Beauty in the American culture has been transformed so many times most people do not even know what real beauty is. Someone can see a woman posing on a billboard in New York City and believe that she is beautiful, but who decided who and what can be beautiful. The way our culture is American people watch television, movies, internet clips constantly. People are fed images of what "beauty" is supposed to be, but this idea of beauty is from the eyes of producers, models, musicians, and actors. It seems to me that only the people who are thought to have beauty are deciding what is beautiful.…
"Dandelions. Why do people call them weeds? I think they're pretty. Nobody loves the head of a dandelion" (Morrison 35). "They are ugly. They are weeds" (Morrison 38). Pecola, the main character from the novel The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison, compares herself to the dandelions: ugly and unwanted. Pecola is raised with no sense of self-esteem or self-value. She is a black girl with nappy hair and dark eyes. She yearns for blue eyes, the mark of beauty in the United States during the 1940s. She lives a life of tumult and ugliness. Pecola portrays happier versions of her life through the imaginary character, Jane. Pecola is a very static character who changes very little throughout the book.…
In The Bluest Eye, personally, sisterly love is represented as a “voice” to speak what is unspeakable. In other words, a sister gives words to another sister who is the ultimate “other” and who is silenced and damned by her unspeakable experience in the white patriarchal world.…