The Effects Of Motherhood In Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye

She wrote that her inspiration for the story was a conversation she had had when she was little with another little black girl who had a fascination with blue eyes, much like her character Pecola Breedlove. Morrison is known for her stories that circle around how racism and misogyny affect black women. For The Bluest Eye, a little girl named Pecola Breedlove goes insane from the inhumane treatment she faces as an eleven-year-old african american girl in the Great Depression. There are many points in the book where she is dehumanized and treated less than dirt, even by her own parents. Her father in a bid to feel in control despite how much white men have controlled him, rapes his daughter and she becomes pregnant with his child.

‘The Bluest Eye’, as the critic Jane Kuenz argues, certainly shows the power of the media and culture "in the seemingly endless reproduction of images of feminine beauty in everyday objects and consumer goods". Pecola falls victim to the media’s portrayal of physical beauty, which in turn it leads to her receiving “the most destructive ideas in the history of human thought”, there are hints of Morrison’s political past in this as she was indeed a key activist in Black feminist movements who, unlike many other Western variations of feminism at the time, aimed to liberate and dislodge white structures of beauty. Pauline is indoctrinated into the detrimental ideology of directly associating whiteness with beauty and blackness with ugliness. Morrison

A Researched Analytical Essay: The Bluest Eye In the novel “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison, we are provided an extended interpretation of how whiteness is the standard of beauty, which distorts the lives of black women and children, through messages everywhere that whiteness is superior. The theme of race and that white skin is greater is portrayed through the lives and stories told by the characters, especially the three girls Claudia, Pecola and Frieda. Through the struggles those people have endured, Morrison shows us the destructive effect of this internalized idea of white beauty on the individual and on society. “The Bluest Eye” has a number of elements that relate closely to Toni Morrison’s own personal life.

In the novel, The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison, Claudia Macteer is depicted as the polar opposite of the novel 's main protagonist, Pecola Breedlove. Whilst Pecola is surrounded by constantly fighting parents and is even victimized by one of her parents, Claudia was able to grow up in a stable household with loving parents that support both of their children, Claudia and Frieda. Claudia also has a very strong demeanor; she often takes action in many of the plots throughout the novel. Pecola, on the other hand, acts very child-like in some events in the novel and is very frail and closed in. In this novel, Morrison inserted a debate in which she never intended to write into the pages for us, as the readers, to figure out: a Nature vs Nurture

Throughout the Bluest Eyes, Toni Morrison emphasizes the idolization of Whiteness through cultural conceptions of beauty that significantly influences the characteristics and actions of Pecola and Pauline Breedlove, alluding to the detrimental effects that romanization of White features has on modern America. The main character of the Bluest Eyes is Pecola Breedlove, who is raised by her parents Cholly and Pauline Breedlove. Cholly and Pauline have an estranged marriage, where Cholly’s abusive alcoholism leads the the parents’ negligence to their family. Particularly for Pecola and Pauline, their fascination with White

Although, some of the particular issues in the story may not occur in normal everyday life, conflicts exist at any time frame and in everyone’s life. In The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison uses characters such as Claudia, Cholly, and Soaphead to claim that individuals sometimes blame others as a coping mechanism when they are unhappy with themselves or their lives. Upon the start of The Bluest Eye, Morrison introduces readers to Claudia and her major character conflict, her distain towards society’s idea of beauty. Society and media in the 1940’s presented the idea of beauty as a white, blue eyed child. Claudia looks at a cup with Shirley Temples face on it, her reaction can be immediately known; “I hated Shirley.

Corruption of Men There is a large sense of wickedness around the world, and although it might not seem true, but most of it comes from corrupt man. The novel, The Bluest eye, was written by Toni Morrison following the years after the Great Depression. It centers around the story of a young girl named Pecola who experiences domestic violence and racism within her surrounding. Pecola often feels “ugly” due to her black skin color; she tries to deal with it by wishing for blue eyes in order to assimilate with the white culture.

Toni Morrison´s The Bluest Eye (1970) conveys the Marxist idealism that social and economic realities are the factors that determine the culture and consciousness of a particular group. The struggle within the context of the Civil Rights Movement, as well as the rejection of African American people is displayed in Morrison´s work, showing the author´s consciousness. Thus, in this paper I will try to show the author´s belief that human self-realisation is determined and delimited by the dominant class at every level. For this purpose I will focus on the relation between wealth and social class, on how the dominant class, in this case the white one, imposes its values over the black community, reducing its personality and leading its members to lose their identity. I will also try to show how the victims of the capitalist system see themselves trapped in an order from which it is very difficult to escape, and find themselves forced to give up and accept their current condition.

In her interview to the newspaper The Gurdian Morrison says, “In this country American means white. Everybody else has to hyphenate” (Jan 29 1992). Racial bigotry in The Bluest eye is an obvious indication of Toni Morrison’s concern, to describe creatively the insensitivity of the white folks towards black. Pecola, the Chief character in The Bluest Eye is the most woeful creation who consistently suffers the racial discrimination. Her own mother Pauline Breedlove abuses Pecola by treating the white girl of her employers as superior to her just because of the colour.

Root, Identity and Community have always been the underlying theme of Toni Morrison. Through the accounts of her novels, Toni Morrison shows several ways in which slavery, which was the most oppressive period in the black history, has affected the identity of African American. In Bluest Eye, Morrison shows that a black woman who searches for her true identity feels frustrated by her blackness and yearns to be white because of the constant fear of being rejected in her surroundings. Thus Morrison tries to locate post colonial black identity in the socio-political ground where cultures are hybridized, powers are negotiated and individuals are reproduced as resistant agents. She not only writes about claiming the superiority by the white but also

Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye shows a lot of characters whose lives would have been better if their parents had been better. For example, Cholly’s parents, the Breedloves, and Geraldine are bad parents who failed to take care of their kids and raise them correctly. As a result, Cholly, Pecola 's, and Junior grow up in a bad environment and they become corrupted people. Parents play a major role in helping their kids build a strong self-esteem. The Macteers show good example of parents who take pride their kids, Claudia and Frieda and make them proud to be black.

She was influenced by the ideologies of women’s liberation movements and she speaks as a Black woman in a world that still undervalues the voice of the Black woman. Her novels especially lend themselves to feminist readings because of the ways in which they challenge the cultural norms of gender, slavery, race, and class. In addition to that, Morrison novels discuss the experiences of the oppressed black minorities in isolated communities. The dominant white culture disables the development of healthy African-American women self image and also she pictures the harsh conditions of black women, without separating them from the oppressed situation of the whole minority. In fact, slavery is an ancient and heinous institution which had adverse effects on the sufferers at both the physical as well as psychological levels.

Toni Morrison, the first black women Nobel Prize winner, in her first novel, The Bluest Eye depicts the tragic condition of the blacks in racist America. It examines how the ideologies perpetuated by the dominant groups and adopted by the marginal groups influence the identity of the black women. Through the depictions of white beauty icons, Morrison’s black characters lose themselves to self-hatred. They try to obliterate their heritage, and eventually like Pecola Breedlove, the child protagonist, who yearns for blue eyes, has no recourse except madness. This assignment focusses on double consciousness and its devastating effects on Pecola.

The book “The Bluest Eye” was based off African American families and struggles, they were poor and this was the time period after the Great Depression had ended. Nine year old Claudia lived with her parents and ten year old sister Frieda even though the family was barely making ends meet they were still living in an atmosphere of love and safety. In the book you could tell that was a house to go to in time of need anf you could feel secure. The family shared their home with several people one of them a young girl, Pecola, who had moved in with the MacTeer family after her father tried to burn down their families home. Claudia’s mother had a good heart but often felt like she was taken for granted, “Time for me to get out of the giving line

Therefore, here attempted to believe that Toni Morrison's very success as a writer may be a testimony to her power to examine themes from various angles and to accept unresolved situations as they are. Patrick Bryce Bjork in his conclusion observes that: "Her[Toni Morrison] characters waver within the contradictions and ambiguities o desire and repression, control and chaos, attraction and chaos, attraction and repulsion, connection and withdrawal" (Song of Solomon, 1977). Some scholars have even come to the conclusion that what Toni Morrison talks about in her novels is almost entirely foreign, different from the notion of the "rugged individualist" that characterizes the works of the Transcendentalists, even distasteful to many Americans