Lens Becoming an individual and finding a true self-identity is not always easy as it seems‚ but can be seen as a sign of growing up. This is seen as an issue in Toni Morrison’s‚ novel The Bluest Eye. The main character is a young girl named Pecola Breedlove‚ who deals with the struggles of developing an identity and being accepted by society. Pecola is a young girl growing up in the early 1940s; she would face many great trials along the way such as‚ being poor and black. She is often called “ugly”
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prejudice and damage done to individuals.”(Beian 132). We know that Pecola has already been labeled "ugly" because she is a Breedlove‚ but there are other aspects of Pecola’s lack of self-love that lead to the growth of her Body Dysmorphic
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In African-American texts‚ blacks are seen as struggling with the patriarchal worlds they live in order to achieve a sense of Self and Identity. The texts I have chosen illustrate the hazards of Western religion‚ Rape‚ Patriarchal Dominance and Colonial notions of white supremacy; an intend to show how the protagonists of Alice Walker’s The Color Purple as well as Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye‚ cope with or crumble due to these issues in their struggle to find their identities. The search for self-identity
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The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison. 224 pp. New York: Holt‚ Rinehart and Winston. $8.95. The Bluest Eye‚ set during the 1940s after the end of the Great Depression in Lorain‚ Ohio‚ tells the heartbreaking story of eleven year old Pecola Breedlove‚ who perpetually prays for blues so she can be as beautiful and loved as blue-eyed‚ white American children. Pecola believes that she’s destined to live a tragic life due to her perceived ugliness‚ which is constantly reinforced by the way the people in her
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girls in movies and the preference for white girls in by black men in the society. Adult girls and women are shown to hate their black bodies‚ they hate their black children for their skin color. For instance‚ Pecola is seen as being ugly by Mrs Breedlove. "The Pecola family lived in Ohio because they were poor and blacks. They stayed here because they believed they were ugly." (Morrison‚
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The aesthetic criteria used in John Leonard’s review places an interest in form and content of the novel. Leonard’s criteria seems unafraid of reading for otherness and valuing the feeling of being overwhelmed at the end. In other words‚ Leonard seems to embrace contamination. Similar to Frankel‚ Leonard sees meaning in the poetic language‚ however Leonard values it because of the awareness it gives to the reader. Since Leonard is able to brave feeling contaminated while reading‚ he mentions that
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of beauty. An establishment of an artificial scale of beauty showing how a race and culture values are easily being disallowed by the ideology of being the perfect beauty of a human being. Morrison uses characters such as Claudia Macteer‚ Pauline Breedlove and include child star Shirley Temple to demonstrate how the hegemonic white culture is the factor of the beauty barrier that is within the black (African-American) community. White Beauty was the desired beauty‚ the media contributed to
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The 20th century is been called the age of suspicion. Nothing is what it seems‚ it’s about the lack of trust and believes. There are 3 big figures of this century that talk about suspicion‚ Darwin‚ Marx‚ and Freud. The kid is the best portrait of this suspicion‚ cause they don’t know everything and they don’t have full control of the world around them. Dorothea Lange is a famous photographer from the 40’s‚ she went in an intern camp and pictures them. In 17S is peculiar the episode of Rosie washing
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"It had occurred to Pecola sometime ago that if her eyes.. -if those eyes of hers were different‚ that is to say‚ beautiful‚ she herself would be different." (Page 46‚ section "Autumn"). Pecola longs for someone to love her‚ before her father‚ Cholly‚ burned down her family’s home her parents continuously brutal arguments and would beat each other‚ her brother Sam would then get himself involved in these fights and would beat his father in order to prevent him from continuing to beat their mother
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She is foster child who lives in a small house with two other girls‚ Claudia and Frieda MacTeer‚ and their parents‚ she is raped by her father‚ Cholly‚ and eventually becomes pregnant. Throughout the novel she yearns for blue eyes because she believes they will make her beautiful. Towards the end of the novel Pecola finally obtains her blue eye‚ but only by losing her sanity. Claudia‚ the narrator
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