Labeling In The Bluest Eye

Throughout Toni Morrison's short story "Recitatif", there is a continuous undertone of racial tension between the two main characters, Twyla and Roberta. Although it is never disclosed which character is white and which is black, Morrison makes it clear that the two are on opposite sides of the fence in this tension. The story takes place over many years of the character's lives and examines five different time periods in which their lives intertwine. In this paper I will examine how Morrison strategically manipulates our own thoughts on racial stereotypes to muddle our ability to discern the races of Twyla and Roberta as they grow and their paths stray. To start, to stereotype is "to believe unfairly that all people or things with a particular

The social standards of beauty and the idea of the American Dream in The Bluest Eye leads Mrs. Breedlove to feelings of shame that she later passes on to Pecola. The Breedloves are surrounded by the idea of perfection, and their absence of it makes them misfits. Mrs. Breedlove works for a white family, the Fishers. She enjoys the luxury of her work life and inevitably favors her work over her family. This leads Pecola to struggle to find her identity, in a time where perception is everything. Pecola is challenged by the idea that her mother prefers her work life, that they have an outdated house, and that she does not look like the Shirley Temple doll with blue eyes.

John F. Kennedy preaches that “conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.” Conformity and fitting society’s so-called “correct” mold does exactly that. It limits individuality, and in the case that someone is unable to fit such a narrow mold, causes agony and self-loathing, It’s easy to believe in the ideal of individuality, but the truth of the matter lies in the fact that knowing is not the same as truly carrying out the ideal. Being rejected due to appearance can often cause agony, especially in a school setting. But, in a society where beauty is restricted to fair skin, blond hair, and blue eyes and anyone else is subjected to the harassment of society, the effects can be tremendously even more detrimental. In The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, the standards of

Moore asks the kids about the thoughts they have over the store. Sugar replies, “You know, Miss Moore, I don't think all of us here put together eat in a year what that sailboat costs.” She tells the students to picture how someone has the money to meet such a grand expense for only a toy and how another family must spend that expense for survival requirements. Sugar also comments, “"... this is not much of a democracy if you ask me. Equal chance to pursue happiness means an equal crack at the dough, don't it?” Sylvia becomes even more angry than she was before. She does not like touching this subject because she has begun to understand what this lesson consists of. This is what Ms. Moore wants them to recognize the reality of the world. She aimed towards provoking curiosity, envy, and anger itself in hopes of demonstrating that there is a path to be in this social class. To reveal the disadvantages that they battle and inspire them to chase after an aspiration that could alter their life through equal opportunities They do not have to encounter a future that is not different from the present. They do not have to live the way they are accustomed into their

Later in the book, Toni Morrison uses Pecola’s own conviction of being “ugly” to show that she truly believes that if she changed her physical appearance to match those at the top of the race and beauty hierarchies, her perception of her reality would be ameliorated. Back at home after her parents’ fight, Pecola ponders the unfair way she is treated by teachers compared to her Caucasian classmates at school. When the narrator says, “It had occurred to Pecola some time ago that if her eyes, those eyes that held the pictures, and knew the sights—if those eyes of hers were different, that is to say, beautiful, she herself would be different. Maybe they’d say, ‘Why, look at pretty-eyed Pecola. We mustn’t do bad things in front of those pretty eyes’” (46), Morrison suggests that Pecola believes that her identity is based on her eyes and that attaining beauty would be the solution for gaining acceptance from others. The “pictures” and the “sights” the narrator refers to are her memories or experiences. “Those eyes” are what allow people to see the world and are often referred to as symbols of truth and “the windows to the soul.” Pecola’s desire to change her eyes means that she wants to alter the truth: her race, her self-imposed “ugliness,” her experiences, her identity—everything that makes her who she is. In this quote, Pecola believes that the word “different” means to be “beautiful.” When Pecola believes that “if those eyes of her” were “different,” she believes that altering

Although Flannery O’Connor’s short story, “The Lame Shall Enter First,” creates a wicked atmosphere through its plot and characters, it can easily be compared to “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin with its dangerous environment within the city of Harlem. The evil shown in both of these stories are reflected through the effects of family neglect, the main characters’ persistence for change and the outcomes, and the secondary characters that are primary source of darkness.

Connie from “Where are you going, Where have you been?” by Joyce Carol Oates represents a situation opposite of that which Pecola is subject to. Connie “knew she was pretty and that was everything” (Seagull Reader 337). She had “long dark blonde hair that drew anyone’s eye to it” (337). She lived with her parents and sister in a comfortable home. She went shopping with her best girl friends. She was everything that Pecola laid awake dreaming about at night. She was seemingly everything that society praised in a fifteen year old girl.

The first major role-change for females in the African-American community occurred in 1619, when the first African slaves were brought to the North American colony of Jamestown, Virginia, to aid in the production of such profitable crops as tobacco (History, “Slavery In America”). Slavery was practiced right through in the American colonies in the 17th and 18th centuries, and African-American slaves helped build the economic foundations of the new nation. The African female was attributed not only economic responsibilities when purchased as a slave. Sexual duties and childbearing were of primary importance to the plantocracy and white men were bewilderingly drawn to the ‘foreign charms’ of

What else do they do? They also make us feel like we are not apart of this “dream” , they segregate us, they, discriminate us, they make stereotypes about us, but not that they don’t have stereotypes of their own, ours is just less condescending, and that is how they view us. Take young Pecola Breedlove for instance, she is an African American girl who is blinded by caucasian beauty that she can’t see her own, she believes in order to fit into society, she needs to have blonde hair and blue eyes. She has been deprived of her own self just to fit this “American Dream.” But yet, both the Declaration of Independence by Thomas Jefferson and The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison Present the concept of the "American Dream". The character of Pecola Shows

What is the significance of Pecola's encounter with the three prostitutes (which begins on page 50)?

Bias and oppression are shown throughout fictitious writings, as they seek to emulate reality. The articles “Egyptian Christians Living in Fear for the Future” by Orla Guerin, “It's not Just the Terrorists: al-Sisi's Government Persecutes Egypt's Christians” by Raymond Ibrahim, “Egyptian Church Blasts Kill 44; Islamic State Takes Responsibility” by John Bacon, “Congress Commits to Fighting Religious Persecution” from CBN News, and “To US VP Pence: Defend the Rights of Christians and all Egyptians” by Amr Magdi, alongside the novel The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison show how certain groups have faced and continue to live through the harshness of prejudice. Both African Americans and Coptic Christians are the past and present victims of this harsh

Eleven years later, I was in another classroom reading Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye”. My teacher asked us if we had successfully decoded the primer. I remember the silence in the room as we mulled over the question. I remember sitting at my desk the night before,

The protagonist of Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse Five”, Billy Pilgrim, is “unstuck in time.” The novel, in no particular order, details Billy’s life from his basic education to his death. During that time, he goes to war where he experiences being a POW. When he comes back, he gets married and raises two children with his wife. He nearly dies in a plane crash and then his wife is subjected to accidental death on her way to visit him. Despite expectation otherwise, Billy is able to emotionally separate himself from these tragedies and regard all the senseless violence in his life as simply different periods of time through his science fiction experience with the “Tralfamadorians” who allegedly abduct him.

Toni Morrison, in numerous interviews, has said that her reason for writing The Bluest Eye was that she realized there was a book she wanted very much to read that had not been written yet. She set out to construct that book – one that she says was about her, or somebody like her. For until then, nobody had taken a little black girl—the most vulnerable kind of person in the world—seriously in literature; black female children have never held centre stage in anything. Thus with the arrival of the character Pecola Breedlove, a little hurt black girl is put to the centre of the story. Pecola’s quest is to acquire “Shirley Temple beauty” and blue eyes – ideals of beauty sponsored by the white world. Growing up, black children in America are constantly

The Bluest Eye is a novel about a black girl named Pecola Breedlove who wishes for beauty in order to attain a better life. She faces emotional and physical conflicts throughout her childhood. At eleven years old, Pecola is raped by her alcoholic father and becomes pregnant. Unlike anyone else, Claudia and Frieda MacTeer, tries to help her through the pregnancy. However, Pecola’s baby ends up dying because it is premature. In Toni Morrison’s novel, The Bluest Eye, she validates her theme of how society can corrupt people through the portrayal of a conflicted society of racism to show segregation between the white and nonwhite, symbolic blue eyes to portray what the characters desperately desire in order to have a better life, and an abused