The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison‚ is about a young black girl named Pecola Breedlove. During the Great Depression in 1941‚ Lorain‚ Ohio‚ Pecola’s family life is violent and lacking in structure‚ love and support. Throughout her story‚ you hear the voices of many black individuals and how they battle internalized racism. They are always in search of beauty because the world around them finds white or light brown skin and blue eyes beautiful. Blackness is the symbol for ugliness‚ powerlessness and nastiness
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Beauty and The Bluest Eye Toni Morrison’s novel‚ The Bluest Eye contributes to the study of the American novel by bringing to light an unflattering side of American history. The story of a young black girl named Pecola‚ growing up in Lorain‚ Ohio in 1941 clearly illustrates the fact that the "American Dream" was not available to everyone. The world that Pecola inhabits adores blonde haired blue eyed girls and boys. Black children are invisible in this world‚ not special‚ less than nothing
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African- American folklore is arguably the basis for most African- American literature. In a country where as late as the 1860’s there were laws prohibiting the teaching of slaves‚ it was necessary for the oral tradition to carry the values the group considered significant. Transition by the word of mouth took the place of pamphlets‚ poems‚ and novels. Themes such as the quest for freedom‚ the nature of evil‚ and the powerful verses the powerless became the themes of African- American literature
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personalities and behavior. Violence and fighting make way for Pecola Breedlove to have a premature loss of innocence‚ which occurs throughout the entire book‚ including many stories her parents. (statement‚ needs a topic sentence). Pecola loses her innocence before any of the other girls in the story‚ since she is raised in the most violent household. When Morrison recounts Pecola’s family she says “Cholly and Mrs. Breedlove fought each other with a darkly formalism that was paralleled only by their
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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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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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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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