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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3/23/11 Choice and the Characters of Sula Toni Morrison’s Sula explores the power of choice and its importance in the course of human existence. Regardless of the fact that the African-American characters of Sula are of an oppressed nature‚ they forever maintain the freedom of choice. This theme of choice provides insight into the acquirement and personification of identity. Sula and Nel‚ the primary characters of the novel‚ are utilized by Morrison to highlight how personal identity is established
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In her novel Beloved‚ Toni Morrison explores the paradoxical nature of love both as a dangerous presence that promises suffering and a life-giving force that gives the strength to proceed; through the experiences of the run-away slave Sethe. The dangerous aspect of love is revealed through the comments of Paul D and Ella regarding the motherly love of Sethe towards her children. Sethe’s deep attachment to her children is deemed dangerous due to their social environment which evidently promises that
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In the novel‚ The Bluest Eye‚ author Toni Morrison introduces readers to the life of Pecola Breedlove‚ a young African American female who lives a pitiable existence and wishes more than anything that her eyes were blue because in her mind‚ girls with blue eyes are loved‚ admired‚ have a better life and don’t have to endure the hardships that she faces daily. Morrison utilizes a combination of the reminiscing narrative of Claudia‚ a now adult friend of Pecola’s when they were children‚ and trips
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Can literature “tell the truth” better than other arts or other areas of knowledge? John Stuart Mill once proclaimed that there are many truths of which the full meaning cannot be realized until personal experience has brought it home. This means that one cannot perceive the truth without understanding it. For example one cannot know the truth of Pythagoras’s theorem being that a right angled triangle’s hypotenuse’s square value is equal to the squares of both its other sides. This is because
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"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
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Cynthia Ms. Stern AP Language Bluest Eye Passage 28 November 2012 Bluest Eye The passage is an excerpt from The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison. The overall purpose of this excerpt is to showcase both Claudia’s and Freida’s innocence as they struggle to comprehend—and fix—the tragedy of the situation Pecola was in. Our astonishment was short-lived‚ for it gave way to a curious kind of defensive shame; we were embarrassed for Pecola‚ hurt for her‚ and finally we just felt sorry for her. Our
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Kaitlyn Queen AP English IV Mrs. Conner In the two novels‚ The Color Purple and The Bluest Eye‚ the authors Alice Walker and Toni Morrison similarly observe the negative life effects caused by physical‚ sexual‚ and verbal abuse that can be destructive to the human mind and produce a shame within oneself as well as shaming from others. Both novels are set in the 1900s‚ presenting a racist and sexist environment that contributes to the dehumanization/ degeneration of a human being. In addition‚ love
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Jeremy Vandroff Beloved: Two Sisters In Toni Morrison’s Beloved‚ Sethe’s daughters Beloved and Denver are the force behind many of her thoughts and actions. Beloved and Denver are two very different characters who have equal of impact on the story and Sethe’s life. They are both similar and different in many ways. The sisters pasts which affect how they act help to mold the plot. Beloved is the daughter Sethe killed who has come back to life in an adult sized body but with the
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Flying to Find Love Toni Morrison whose born name Chloe Ardelia Wofford‚ grew up in a home of storytelling and retellings (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toni_Morrison). One of her favorite past time mythological stories from her childhood‚ has become the basis for a new tale to be told in Morrison’s “Song of Solomon”. The original myth tells of a story of the Igbo People of the West African Nation of Nigeria who were boarded on ship to be sold to slavery‚ and had revolted‚ causing white overseers
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