Spiritual Space
Deprival of Spiritual Space In order to highlight the severe consequence the deprival of spiritual space can have on Pecola, it is essential to bring up another factor that determines the extent to which spiritual space matters, since the importance of African spirituality to Pecola is not only defined by her surrounding, but also by her intrinsic desire for spiritual space. Constantly being ignored, discriminated, and mistreated, Pecola didn’t abandon herself to vice, instead, she continues to strive for love. “How do you get somebody to love you?” (Morrison 25) is a profound philosophical question she proposes. It is evident that her tragic childhood experience of growing up in an extremely crippled family doesn’t cause her to lose faith …show more content…
Morrison implies Pecola’s condition of lacking spiritual space by inserting bits and pieces of the “Dick-and-Jane” story at the end of each section of the novel without using any kind of punctuation. The lack of punctuation indicates the dissolve of spiritual space, and the disability to access the spiritual realm makes it impossible for Pecola to have the power of spirits to support her in staying strong and surviving the perils of oppression (Zauditu-Selassie …show more content…
One of the reasons behind the abandonment is a disruption of balance caused by the foreign notion of white supremacy. White supremacy stirs up cultural clashes, for instance, a conflict between the different standards for beauty and ugliness; it stimulates the formation of double-consciousness that leads to a sense of “always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others” (Du Bois 2); it destroys the traditional worldview of African-Americans, and then the people as well (Zauditu-Selassie 3). In the Bluest Eye, Pecola is a victim of the imbalance caused by white supremacy, and her desire for blue eyes serves as evidence of distorted cultural values. Morrison demonstrates the destructive effect an imbalanced society can have on its people through narration of Pecola’s tragic fate. Furthermore, by creating a contradiction between Pecola and other members in the same community such as the MacTeer sisters, Morrison indicates that the imbalance can possibly be restored with the power of spirituality. In comparison to the MacTeer sisters, the one thing Pecola lacks in particular is
Analysis Of How The Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, By Julia Alvarez
1452 Words | 6 PagesThis contrast of handling the problem is the main divide between the two novels. While Pecola takes the path of denial and avoidance, Yolanda actually takes steps to improve herself into her new culture. Pecola believes that the problem is nonexistent and ignores it to try and disprove the existence of it. She avoids confronting the reality of her rape and pregnancy through her blue eyes that she now believes that she has: “After that first day at school when I had my blue eyes… Now I don’t go to school anymore.
Comparing Bluest Eye And A Separate Peace
1573 Words | 7 PagesInner conflict also causes the characters behavior and thought process to change at some point throughout the three novels. This leads the characters to their condition that is described at the end or the beginning of the novels plots. Toni Morrison shows Pecola’s inner conflict
Bruce D. Perry's The Bluest Eye
763 Words | 4 PagesEven though Toni Morrison does not provide the reader with an explanation to why Pecola and Cholly end up in such miserable states, the explanation can be found by using Perry’s work. Through picking out the similarities between Perry’s experiences and Pecola’s and Cholly’s stories, the answer to the why can be
Societal Isolation In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein '
1483 Words | 6 PagesShe 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 Effects Of Oppression On Young Black People
265 Words | 2 PagesThese oppressions persist today and so do their effects on black families and even more in young black people. Because Morrison makes the issue not only beauty but also our perception of ugli-ness in general, the problem of the “ugly little girl asking for beauty” is a cultural problem. Every time a young person looks in the mirror and sees that they are not as beautiful as a movie star or not as as beautiful as the television, magazine, and billboard ads tells them they should be, they feel the fear of rejection and abandonment, and through this novel, readers have experienced the emotional pain of that which destroyed Pecola. “Suffering with Pecola, knowing that pain con-sciously, feeling it, acknowledging it openly and directly, most of
The Female In The African-American Community
1149 Words | 5 PagesDelicate and sensitive, she passively suffers the abuse of her mother, father, and classmates. She is a symbol of the black community’s self-hatred and belief in its own ugliness. Others in the community, including her mother and father, act out their own self-hatred by expressing hatred towards her. Pecola’s desire for blue eyes comes from her stereotypical perception that as a black female, she needs to look beautiful to be treated beautifully. She believes that being granted the blue eyes that she wishes for would change both how others see her and what she is forced to see.
Survival In The Bluest Eye
1179 Words | 5 PagesSurvival tactics are one of the fine threads when Toni Morrison weaves the novel The Bluest Eye. Through Pocola Breedlove, the protagonist delineates how the little girl succumbs to the concept of assimilation to escape the fury of oppression. Relaxing her own individuality as Pecola started assimilating the white beauty ideals and failing to assimilate her black culture. Her longing for the blue eyes and the ideal of white beauty drives the mantra of the black people to the back seat that “Black is Beautiful”.
Summary Of Toni Morisson's The Bluest Eye
1174 Words | 5 PagesShe wants the bluest eye. Morrison is able to use her critical eye to reveal to the reader the evil that is caused by a society that is indoctrinated by the inherent goodness and beauty of whiteness and the ugliness of blackness. She uses many different writing tools to depict how “white” beliefs have dominated American and African American
Foreshadowing In The Bluest Eye
981 Words | 4 PagesClaudia’s sister Frieda, she 's a ten year old girl who is stubborn and independent. Frieda is more braver than her sister, she defends both her sister and Pecola. Mrs. MacTeer takes care of her daughter and provides Pecola with a place to stay with her due to the misfortunates her family is going through. Pecola Breedlove is the another narrator and the protagonist novel. Pecola is a very fragile child she lives through violence between her parents Cholly Breedlove and Pauline.
Alienated Self-Hatred In The Bluest Eye And Sula
1627 Words | 7 PagesSwine &Das observe in “The Alienated Self; Searching for Space in Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and Sula” anthologized in Modern American Literature that ”This novel probes deeper into the black woman’s psychic dilemmas, oppressions and tribulations as symbolized by the tragic life of Pecola literally affected by the dominant culture’s beauty standards(Swain and Das89). Pecola, like her mother, equated and standardized beauty with white. Both are haunted by this inferiority complex and self-hatred. Cultural hegemony distorts the true nature of values so that it dominates the subordinate class to believe that they are inferior and the dominating class is the superior; as such, here white is believed to symbolize beauty and black is to symbolize ugliness.
Analysis Of Pecola's Eye, By Toni Morrison
1282 Words | 6 PagesLater 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’”
The Bluest Eye Beauty Standards Essay
975 Words | 4 PagesThey constantly encounter the problem of not living up to society’s beauty standards, which results in feelings of self-hatred based on race. These feelings perpetuate racism, as society, and even black people, tend to favor white beauty since it is held up as superior. The problems that Pecola, Pauline, and Claudia face in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye are not just figments of the past. Today, millions of women across the country feel some sort of self-loathing stemming from dissatisfaction over how they look. It is important that society tries to free itself from these nonsensical standards and celebrate the unique beauty of each individual
Social Rejection In The Bluest Eye And The Help
1346 Words | 6 PagesBoth readings take part in a time where racism is at its peak, and children are the ones who receive the harshest affections due to its severity. It will become obvious to see how a caring individual (not always a parent) can become an influential role in a youth’s life by causing them to find love within themselves despite societal views. In The Bluest Eye, the main character Pecola Breedlove comes from a very broken home. Pecola’s role in society is differentiated by Frieda MacTeers, another little girl in the book.
Social And Social Class In Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye
1356 Words | 6 PagesBut it is not only the race and the colour of their skin what makes them unable to change their situation, but also poverty. Race and wealth are intertwined, and Pecola is the fundamental victim of this relationship, for she is a young black girl suffering from this ideology that determines her life. The dominant class imposes its values upon the other, for they think they are the best ones, reducing thus the personality of the people belonging to other classes, and at the same time, making them unable to change their oppressed situation, for they do not have the chance. They just accept their current position, and thus they will always be
Beauty In Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye
719 Words | 3 PagesThe novel tells not only the story of Pecola but the story of the whole black community that unable to conform to white standards of beauty are condemned to sink into a pit of darkness. In this paper I will discuss how beauty is constructed in The Bluest Eye. Beauty is one of the main topics in The Bluest Eye and its importance relies on the fact that this is a novel about finding self-identity, but most of the characters from the novel search for their own identity in others. They value beauty over other things such as intelligence because they live in a society in which beauty is constructed in a way that they associate it with being loved and approved by others and as I just said they establish their self-worth based on how others perceive them. In the case of Pecola, she believes that having blue eyes will make her beautiful and wanted and she will never be sad again, as
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