Preview

Who Is Pecola Build A Stable Identity?

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
724 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Who Is Pecola Build A Stable Identity?
In the book written by Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye, our main character Pecola chances to build a stable identity are derailed by both outside influences, and internal conflicts. In the areas of outside reason, would include society its self at that time period of history, her environment which is hugely influenced by her parents and also how her parents view themselves, from especially their personal experiences, and last would be the fact what Pecola herself see herself in a certain image which is hugely based upon her economic status. In the areas of internal. In the area of outside influences Pecola has many hurdles within her reality
Racial society where because she is African American immediately makes her second class in the society she has to live in. Her parents both believe that they are dirty because of things from their past which influences a child view of themselves by looking around the environment they are in. Pecola comes from a poor and impoverished family that has had less education then most in her
…show more content…
In the areas of outside reason, would include society its self at that time period of history, her environment which is hugely influenced by her parents and also how her parents view themselves from especially their personal experiences, and last would be the fact what Pecola herself see herself in a certain image which is hugely based upon her economic status. In the areas of internal they are similar for all thing external we dissect within internal conflicts related to the external components. A great from the breeedloves “The Breedloves did not live in a storefront because they were having temporary difficulty adjusting to the cutbacks at the plant. They lived there because they were poor and black, and they stayed there because they believed they were ugly. (Morrison, Toni Bluesy eyes, Section1.Ch2. line

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    The ideological values of the protagonist, Philomena Beviso, structure the text in the story. Philomena Beviso had the farsightedness of judging her future husband as a worthy man. She had the intelligence to foresee that Costanzo had something exceptional in him. This is proven by the fact that while Costanzo asked her to marry him two years later, Philomena had made up her mind the moment she laid her eyes on him. Another ideological value of the protagonist is the way she handled the issue of the ownership of the shoe store. After many years when Mr. Beviso did not return, Philomena had planned to own the shoe store after seeing her husband troubled because of this issue. Unfortunately, this was not possible because a relative of Mr. Beviso could only own the shoe store. At this point the protagonist, Philomena, came up with a plan to go to Italy for two months and while on their way back they would dispose of their passports in the sea. This allowed them to create new passports in which they wrote their surname as Beviso.…

    • 580 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Bluest Eye Essay

    • 854 Words
    • 4 Pages

    To have value is to be important, useful, and worth something. The way society and alienates Pecola reveals that they hold no value for her. She has been told her whole life that she is ugly, her own mother even said, “But I knowed she was ugly. Head full of pretty hair, but Lord she was ugly” (126). Pecola is alienated from everyone because she is “ugly”. She has been called ugly so much that she now believes she is. If society held any value for Pecola they would not call her ugly; they would boost her up, not bring her down. The black community has been alienated from the whites and has come to believe that whites are superior to them. The Black community idolizes the white community and they believe that the wealthier someone is, the closer to white they are. The black community, trying to be more “white”, then turns around and alienates Pecola because she is the lowest black there is. The Black community views her as less because she is what they call “ugly”. She is “ugly” because of everything that has gone on in her life, and as the novel progresses so does her “ugliness”, along with her alienation from society.…

    • 854 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    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.…

    • 1004 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Best Essays

    Pecola believes that people will value her more if she has very blue eyes, and she will be loved. Soon thereafter, Pecola falls into her imagination-her idealized self. Pecola drives herself into conflict by her consuming obsession for blue eyes, the bluest ones. The Bluest Eye is a book made for pity and compassion. The characters in this book deal with such issues mostly readers face everyday in their life and mostly not. While some people can personally understand incest and rape, but on the other hand racism and a cultural standard of beauty is a human anxiety. The people of Lorain, Ohio are cruel, selfish, and horrible to Pecola, and that has unpleasant effects. Ohio people make mistakes in The Bluest Eye. The effects of The Bluest Eye are the ruin of Pecola. Her baby comes too soon and dies. As a result, she loses her…

    • 1826 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Best Essays
  • Good Essays

    A main theme in the novel is that Pecola believes traditionally white features such as blue eyes are seen as more beautiful than her own black features and often longs for them, thinking it will make her life easier if she was prettier, and other characters in the book, like…

    • 658 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Edna was struggling to find happiness in society by feeling that she cannot be a mother and an independent woman. She followed society’s “rules” such as getting married and having children. Overall, Edna wanted more than the life she was living; she wanted to live life on her terms and not living life through a family. Therefore, she did not feel self-fulfilled. Unlike Edna’s struggle to conform to society, Adele Ratignolle is the epitome of a woman in the society. Adele is a beautiful, “idealized” creole woman. She is dedicated to her husband and has performed the wifely duties by bearing children and attending to them. Her family dictates her happiness through wanting to create a happy home. Therefore, her identity is her family; which shows that Adele represents society and the ideal happiness one can achieve. The exact opposite of Adele is Mademoiselle Reisz. Mademoiselle Reisz shows that she disregards society’ standards by not marrying or having children. She focuses on her interests such as piano playing. By not having a family, Mademoiselle Reisz is able to find her own identity. Therefore, she entices Edna’s desire to have the same life through her independence and free spirit. Mademoiselle Reisz tells Edna, that to be happy one is going to have to take risks and be courageous. Therefore,…

    • 1751 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Pecola Beauty Standards

    • 972 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Beauty Standards at the Age of Innocence Beauty standards set by society for black women fuels into their insecurities and drives them towards self-hatred. From the start, Pecola’s community, classmates, teachers and parent’s drill into her head that she is unattractive. Pecola Breedlove comes to admit she is ugly as she starts obsessing over the idea of having the bluest eyes to make her attractive. Pecola full-heartedly believes that blue eyes are a necessity for beauty and if she were to by some means acquire them, all of her problems in life would disappear. “Why, look at pretty-eyed Pecola. We mustn't do bad things in front of those pretty eyes” (46). Pecola assumes blue eyes are the key to gaining admiration from her community and love from her family. While Pecola Breedlove is constantly reminded of everything she is: ugly, poor, and black; her innocence is also stolen from her as she is figuratively raped by society and literally raped by her father.…

    • 972 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Louise’s entire character is powerfully ironic in that she is the furthest thing from a mother. Mothers are expected to be of caring and affectionate nature. However, Louise neglects Isabelle-Marie and treats her like an outsider since she is physically unattractive. Louise only favors her son Patrice because he reflects her outer beauty and she feels the necessity to sustain it by only nurturing him. Since Isabelle-Marie is physically unappealing, Louise does not love or treat her in the same fashion as Patrice. Isabelle Marie finally gains the courage to express how Louise has mistreated her. She exclaims, “[m]other, ever since I was a child you adored Patrice because he was beautiful and hated me, the ugly one. Patrice always Patrice! You never realized that your son was stupid, that he was an idiot…nothing but a beautiful body” (104). Isabelle-Marie’s tone is filled with contempt and jealousy while she spills out all the emotions that she had been bottling up for years. Louise always favoring Patrice due to his beautiful face even if he was just an “idiot” exasperates Isabelle-Marie. Moreover, Isabelle-Marie’s ill thoughts towards her own daughter and disfiguring her brother’s face can be seen as the result of her mother’s intolerance and lack of love towards her. Louise’s superficiality and favoritism towards Patrice transforms Isabelle-Marie to turn into a self-loathing and destructive character. Hence, Louise can be held responsible for creating this dysfunctional family. Rather than loving her children unconditionally as a mother should, she loves them based upon their looks. Therefore, ironically, even though Louise is their real mother, she fits the archetypal character of an evil stepmother due to her discriminate, mean and evil behavior.…

    • 1285 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    The characters are repeatedly being subjected to images of whiteness offered through movies, books, magazines, toys, and of course advertisements. Early into the story, Pecola gushes over Shirley Temple’s beauty, and later on Mrs. Breedlove spends her days at the movies admiring the white actresses, wishing she could be in their place. The association between beauty and whiteness pushes the idea of beauty beyond the body’s exterior, making it a signifier of one’s value and worth. Many characters in the book believe their beauty means who they are in society, community, and…

    • 1060 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Nell: Church and Culture

    • 506 Words
    • 3 Pages

    How did a lack of a peer group impact Nell's childhood? Nell's childhood was impacted by lack of peer group because when her twin sister-may- died she never knew how to 'grow up', or how to properly act with other people her own age. She continued to play with her twin sister inside a mirror and her own head, although if Nell would have had a peer group influence she may have been able to overcome the 'twin speak' and been able to properly correspond to others in society. Not having a role model in her life to help guide her; left her outer image to began to age, but kept her mind as a child’s.…

    • 506 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Bluest Eye

    • 646 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Pecola Breedlove is the protagonist of The Bluest Eye, but despite her central role she remains passive and mysterious throughout the story. The story is told from other people’s points of view to further enhance Pecola’s mysterious character. In the beginning of the story Pecola is a fragile and delicate child a victim of menstruation seems puberty hit her unexpectedly, like so many other events in Pecola’s life that she has no control over. Without the help and support of her parents Pecola has to deal with her problems alone causing a tremendous burden on such a young and helpless little girl.…

    • 646 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the book, Jeannette starts with a scene of her on her way to an event, worried about being over-dressed and sees her mother going through a dumpster. She feels guilty but shamed and gloom as well and realized she was socially privileged and skipped the party to embrace her comfortable home that showed individual influence. Due to this incident, she suddenly starts reminiscing her childhood and how her parents choices affected her.…

    • 1237 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Being born into a family of wealth probably is the only thing Paulette will ever know. Having a father, the town’s mayor, and a mother, a successful actress, who both brought the bread home made Paulette only have a dream life that people would always want. Starting kindergarden, she would have all the nice dresses, and was only sent to school if she was prepped to act like a princess. It was like having a beauty pageant child go to your elementary. But the down fall was that people didn’t understand that she was going to rule the school for years to come. So being ignored in the younger years really made her sensitive, but family oriented/reliant. Every day after school, she would carefully walk to her bus, and sit right in the back, where no one was allowed to sit with her. Well, except her little doll Cynthia. It was like a crutch that lasted only for a little…

    • 666 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Jacquelyn Gucciardi Ms. Waechter Honors English May 24, 2015 The Bluest Eye Although Claudia and Frieda are embarrassed and hurt for Pecola, their sorrow is intensified by the fact that none of the adults seem to share the same feelings of grief and their hopefulness tries to heal their disjointed society. In the passage Claudia begins to describe how she can see the baby, the living human that everyone else wanted dead. The baby that is still in the womb, she pictures the baby, in a dark place this could symbolize death of the baby later. She paints a picture for the reader saying that the baby’s hair like great O’s of wool as in sheep leading us to think that the baby might be a Jesus figure. She describes the baby’s eyes as clean, pure because it hasn’t yet seen the evil of the world. The flared nose, as if the baby is mad or out of breathe again symbolizes death. She says kissing-thick lips, shining a light on the more sexual side making it seem like thats all your lips should be used for. She concludes by saying “the living, breathing silk of black skin”, to express that this baby is living, it is a human, it is taking a breath just like everyone else. Silk is an expensive fabric, something of worth just like this baby’s life. “No synthetic yellow bangs suspended over marble-blue eyes, no pinched nose and bowline mouth.” Claudia goes on to describe the baby as a doll, saying that they are nothing alike, dolls are fake in fact worse they are “synthetic”, and they are far from perfect, they have pinched noses, pinched towards the sky like a snooty white girl. But not like this baby, Claudia felt a yearning, a burning for someone to care for this baby to love it and want it to live. “Just to counteract the universal love of white baby dolls,” she wanted this baby to come into the world to change it, to change how the world viewed black babies, to “counteract” set off the balance, of the whole universe meaning everybody and the love it had for a doll rather…

    • 1246 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Pilate’s ideals of happiness allow for her to guild Milkman in his journey of discovering his true family. After living with multiple families and being ostracized by almost all of them she decides to live by simple questions, “When [is she] happy when [is she] sad and what's the difference? What [does she] need to know to stay alive? What is true in the world?”(149). With these questions Pilate decides to leave everyones preconceptions about who she should be and how she should live her life behind her. She has decided to let what makes her happy dictate her life and not other people's happiness. Pilates lack of an umbilical cord conveys her disconnectedness from her family in her early life. Once she starts embracing what everyone else…

    • 266 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays