ipl-logo

The Characters Of White Beauty By Toni Morrison

1135 Words5 Pages

To begin with, Morrison presents with the character of Pecola a feeble, low self-esteem person who is under the spell of the stereotype of white beauty. She considers herself ugly because she does not have the physical attributes of this aesthetic ideal. Moreover, she is influenced by the gaze of the other: how the others see her reinforce the idea that she is not beautiful, lowering even more her self-esteem. As a result, she stands for the tragedy of the self-conscious individual. This is, she is not aware that she does not need to have the white beauty attributes in order to be somebody due to she is an individual by herself. In this case, she is not aware that she is beautiful; but the problem is that the rest of society understands beauty according to a determinate ideal; and anything that does not follow this pattern falls off from being considered beautiful. Consequently, not being conscious of her existence as an individual, Pecola rejects her physical appearance because she desires to be beautiful according to the white beauty; and by this act, she also rejects her psyche, her soul and her identity. The repulsion for her physical appearance, her blackness, can be considered, in a larger scale, the renunciation to her African traces, her origin, and by this, the denial of her community too. Tragically, she presents a double personality that does not allow her the realization of any true self. Thereupon, she is entrapped and divided between her two-ness: what she is,

Show More
Related

  • Comparing Bluest Eye And A Separate Peace

    1573 Words  | 7 Pages

    Inner 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

    Read More

  • Bruce D. Perry's The Bluest Eye

    763 Words  | 4 Pages

    Even 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

    Read More

  • Summary Of Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five

    1817 Words  | 8 Pages

    She is taken in by a local family, but eventually goes back to live with her abusive parents. Pecola’s parents hate themselves and each other which is expressed in equal measures of violence and neglect. Pecola is raped by her father and impregnated, but the child does not survive premature birth. Eventually, Pecola pleads with a town mystic to grant her wish of having blue eyes, believing this “mark of beauty” will finally earn her the love she so desperately craves. Pecola finally loses her sanity, believing her wish granted, and spends the rest of her life in a world of fantasy on the edge of

    Read More

  • Movie Comparison: The Bluest Eye By Toni Morison

    642 Words  | 3 Pages

    In the book when we first meet Pecola she is homeless and teased by kids at school. Claudia is Pecolas sister who wonders why people admire white girls.

    Read More

  • The Bluest Eye Beauty Standards Essay

    975 Words  | 4 Pages

    Pecola and her mother, Pauline, see themselves as ugly because they hold themselves to beauty standards in which light-skinned people are the ideal. Pecola and her mother have a brutal home life due to the drunken violence of Cholly Breedlove, and the constant pressure of beauty standards only adds to their misfortune. Morrison explains this pressure by asserting that “[i]t was as though some mysterious all-knowing master had given each one a cloak of ugliness to wear, and they

    Read More

  • Rhetorical Devices In The Bluest Eye

    1648 Words  | 7 Pages

    Likewise, Morrison also uses symbolism for the duration of the novel to establish how people can judge a person based on their economic standing. For instance, symbolism is represented through the blue eyes that is repeatedly mentioned in the novel. The blue eyes represent the idealistic white middle class life that Pecola dreams of having since white people commonly have blue eyes. The reader can infer this suggestion because whenever Pecola is experiencing bad things she wishes to have blue eyes. Morrison writes, "If she looked different, beautiful, maybe Cholly would be different and Mrs. Breedlove too…Each night, without fail, she prayed for the blue eyes…

    Read More

  • The Hierarchy Of Race By Maureen Peal

    1016 Words  | 5 Pages

    She goes from being nice and sweet to becoming the same angry bully as who she protected Pecola from: “Safe on the other side, she screamed at us, ‘I am cute! And you ugly! Black and ugly black e mos. I am cute!’” (Morrison 73).

    Read More

  • Social And Social Class In Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye

    1356 Words  | 6 Pages

    But 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

    Read More

  • A Mercy Toni Morrison Analysis

    1283 Words  | 6 Pages

    Jonathan Hernandez Mrs. Franklin English 11 September 9, 2014 The Male Overcast Widely renowned Toni Morrison, is an award winning author and a Nobel recipient; within her novel A Mercy (2008), reveals the effects of hierarchy from a physiological standpoint. She supports her revealing by first introducing a female character that comes to power in a male dominant world, then the character (Rebekka) strikes tragedy as her only male support dies leaving the female with a mantle solely made for men which causes Rebekka to lose a place in her mentality of social hierchy; as such she turns to God as a replacement which can only be seen as a replacement for the vast hole in her heart for a male representative. Morrison’s purpose is to give her readers of a new perspective based on the social stratifiction so heavily influenced by the difference in gender during the late 1600’s in order to educate the minds of those that predominantly view the gender social order as a petty argument for the wealthy. She adapts the reading to revolve around a general tone of consequence and repentance.

    Read More

  • Kittens In The Bluest Eye

    336 Words  | 2 Pages

    In The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, there is a girl named, Pecola, and she is constantly teased and ridiculed by characters in the book. For example, Pecola meets a light-skinned boy named, Junior, and one day he invites Pecola to his home and play with his kittens. “Some kittens. We got some kittens. You can have one if you want.”

    Read More

  • Identity In The Bluest Eye

    835 Words  | 4 Pages

    Morrison 's first novel, The Bluest Eye, examines the tragic effects of imposing white, middle-class American ideals of beauty on the developing female identity of a young African American girl during the early 1940s. Inspired by a conversation Morrison once had with an elementary school classmate who wished for blue eyes, the novel poignantly shows the psychological devastation of a young black girl, Pecola Breedlove, who searches for love and acceptance in a world that denies and devalues people of her own race. As her mental state slowly unravels, Pecola hopelessly longs to possess the conventional American standards of feminine beauty—namely, white skin, blonde hair, and blue eyes—as presented to her by the popular icons and traditions of white culture. Written as a fragmented narrative from multiple perspectives and with significant typographical deviations, The Bluest Eye juxtaposes passages from the Dick-and-Jane grammar school primer with memories and stories of Pecola 's life alternately told in retrospect by one of Pecola 's now-grown childhood friends and by an omniscient narrator. Published in the midst of the Black Arts movement that flourished during the late 1960s and early 1970s, The Bluest Eye has attracted

    Read More

  • The Role Of Feminism In Toni Morrison's Beloved

    2515 Words  | 11 Pages

    The characters in Beloved, especially Sethe and Paul D are both dehumanized during the slavery experiences by the inhumanity of the white people, their responses to the experience differ due to their different role. Sethe were trapped in the past because the ghost of the dead baby in the house was the representation of Sethe’s past life that she couldnot forget. She accepted the ghost as she accepted the past. But Sethe began to see the future after she confronted her through the appearance of her dead baby as a woman who came to her house. For Sethe, the future existed only after she could explain why she killed her own daughter.

    Read More

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

    3280 Words  | 14 Pages

    It is the mother’s vulnerability to the racial standards of beauty that is transmitted to the daughter and ultimately leads to her victimization. In fact, the reason of Pauline’s vulnerability to the racially prejudiced notions of beauty lies in her relationship with her own mother. The relationship between Pecola Breedlove, the protagonist, and her mother, Pauline Breedlove, is ironically characterized by lack of love, and emotional attachment, indifference, frustration and cruelty. Set in a small town in Ohio, during the Depression, The Bluest Eye is the story of eleven year old Pecola Breedlove, who, victimized by the racist society, yearns for blue eyes, which, she believes, will make her worthy of love, happiness and acceptance in the

    Read More

  • Theme Of Double Consciousness In The Bluest Eye

    1542 Words  | 7 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Essay On Fighting The Hate Of Beauty By Toni Morrison

    2363 Words  | 10 Pages

    Fighting the Hate of Beauty Toni Morrison is an author who loves to write about black experiences. She published her first book in 1970 were racism was still a big topic. In her novel she like to give people an idea of what the daily struggle it is to be an African American. Morrison is one of the best authors that portrays a struggle in society because she is never scared to write the truth. Some of Morrison works are very vivid to really illustrate the whole picture she paints through the novel.

    Read More

More about The Characters Of White Beauty By Toni Morrison

Open Document