Tone In Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye

315 Words1 Page
bulb-icon

Recommended: Essay about figurative language

Tone Piece The tone of the excerpt of The Bluest Eye is a very depressed and serious piece. Toni Morrison develops this tone using diction and figurative language. The excerpt is about a doll and how Toni thinks that dolls are not beautiful and that they are not lovable. The piece gives a very sad tone to the reader facing the real truth about dolls. Toni uses specific word choice to give the reader a depressed and serious piece. She says, “It was a most uncomfortable, patently aggressive sleeping companion” which Toni is explaining how the doll is uncomfortable and not and not a good thing to sleep with which is very negative. She also says, “I was physically revolted and secretly frightened of those round, moronic eyes, the pancake

Show More
Related

  • The Bluest Eye - Morrison's Attempt to Induce White Guilt

    494 Words  | 1 Pages

    I've heard the fable before, three times in fact. Originally, the oracle in question was always an old man, an Asian philosopher and blind. The boys carried in a live bird, not a dead bird as she described as a "small bundle of life sacrificed" or the absence of bird altogether. The boys asked the same question. If the philosopher answered dead, they would let it fly away, but if he answered alive, they would kill it and drop it at his feet, proving him wrong with either answer. When the old, wise, blind man was presented with the question, he pondered it a bit and deduced their scheme. He answered, "The fate of that bird is in your hands."

    Read More

  • Toni Morisson's The Bluest Eye

    921 Words  | 2 Pages

    Toni Morisson's novel The Bluest Eye is about the life of the Breedlove family who reside in Lorain, Ohio, in the late 1930s (where Morrison herself was born). This family consists of the mother Pauline, the father Cholly, the son Sammy, and the daughter Pecola. The novel's focal point is the daughter, an eleven-year-old Black girl who is trying to conquer a bout with self-hatred. Everyday she encounters racism, not just from the White people, but mostly from her own race. In their eyes she is much too dark, and the darkness of her skin somehow manifests that she is inferior, and according to everyone else, her skin makes her even "uglier." She feel she can overcome this battle of self-hatred by obtaining blue eyes, but not just any blue. She wants the bluest of the blue, the bluest eye.

    Read More

  • Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye

    1866 Words  | 4 Pages

    “The novel addresses the psychological and political implications of black people’s commitment to a standard of beauty (the blonde-haired, blue-eyed ideal)…” (Smith 364). Her desire to have blue eyes was so strong that once she was told her prayers had been granted, she never saw herself the same way again. From that moment on Pecola Breedlove believed that her eyes were blue. The last chapter of The Bluest Eye shows the dialogue between Pecola, and an imaginary figure whom Pecola had created, discussing the blueness of her

    Read More

  • Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye

    2708 Words  | 6 Pages

    Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye. Toni Morrison’s novel The Bluest Eye provides social commentary on a lesser known portion of black society in America. The protagonist Pecola is a young black girl who desperately wants to feel beautiful and gain the “bluest eyes” as the title references.

    Read More

  • Self-Hate in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye

    2420 Words  | 5 Pages

    At a time when blue-eyed, pale skin Shirley Temple is idolized by white and black alike,

    Read More

  • The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

    952 Words  | 2 Pages

    "And Pecola. She hid behind hers. (Ugliness) Concealed, veiled, eclipsed—--peeping out from behind the shroud very seldom, and then only to yearn for the return of her mask" (Morrison 39). In the novel The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison, the main character, Pecola, comes to see herself as ugly. This idea she creates results from her isolation from friends, the community, and ever her family. There are three stages that lead up to Pecola portraying herself as an ugly human being. The three stages that lead to Pecola's realization are her family's outlook toward her, the community members telling her she is ugly, and her actually accepting what the other say or think about her. Each stage progresses into the other to finally reach the last stage and the end of the novel when Pecola eventually has to rely on herself as an imaginary friend so she will have someone to talk to.

    Read More

  • The Bluest Eye abd the development of the American Novel

    409 Words  | 1 Pages

    In The Bluest Eye, Morrison describes the absurd and racist standard by which the characters are judged. And through the actions taken by each character, that absurd standard becomes more defined, the conflict more poignant. In this particular work, it is the American ideal of beauty that makes Pecola resign her self-image as ugly and it is Pecola's reaction to this standard, her futile wish to become beautiful, that drives her into madness and thus completely exposes the absurd and wrongful nature of this standard. And yet who created this standard? It is present in movies, on candy wrappers. It is completely visible, yet the creator of this standard is somewhere else, never appears as a character.

    Read More

  • The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

    1122 Words  | 3 Pages

    Beauty is dangerous, especially when you lack it. In the book "The Bluest Eye" by Toni Morrison, we witness the effects that beauty brings. Specifically the collapse of Pecola Breedlove, due to her belief that she did not hold beauty. The media in the 1940's as well as today imposes standards in which beauty is measured up to; but in reality beauty dwells within us all whether it's visible or not there's beauty in all; that beauty is unworthy if society brands you with the label of being ugly.

    Read More

  • An Analysis Of Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye

    1692 Words  | 4 Pages

    A paradigm as defined in the dictionary is an example serving as a model. In his book, 7 habits of highly effective teens , Sean Covey compares paradigms to glasses and says that if the paradigm, or perception, is incomplete it is like wearing the wrong prescription. One example Covey gave is:

    Read More

  • Broken Community in Bluest Eyes by Toni Morrison

    623 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the novel, “The Bluest Eye”, Toni Morrison exposes the roots of a broken community, unveiling the effects it has on its members. Morrison illustrates various disturbing characters that are insecure, lost and troubled. Through extended metaphors she is able to trace back these behaviors to the characters’ past. The structure of her novel follows a repetitive rationale of the character’s behavior after revealing their gruesome actions. The passage (116) further develops the text’s theme of a dysfunctional community. Although the exposure the effects of racism seems to be the main theme, Morrison goes deeper and explores the reason how and why the community continues to live in oppression.

    Read More

  • Morrison's Bluest Eye Essay: Self-Definition

    2534 Words  | 6 Pages

    In Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, published in 1970, the struggle begins in childhood. Two young black girls -- Claudia and Pecola -- illuminate the combined power of externally imposed gender and racial definitions where the black female must not only deal with the black male's female but must contend with the white male's and the white female's black female, a double gender and racial bind. All the male definitions that applied to the white male's female apply, in intensified form, to the black male's, white male's and white female's black female. In addition, where the white male and female are represented as beautiful, the black female is the inverse -- ugly.

    Read More

  • The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

    1109 Words  | 3 Pages

    Social class is a major theme in the book The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison. Toni Morrison is saying that there are dysfunctional families in every social class, though people only think of it in the lower class. Toni Morrison was also stating that people also use social class to separate themselves from others and apart from race; social class is one thing Pauline and Geraldine admire.Claudia, Pecola, and Frieda are affected by not only their own social status, but others social status too - for example Geraldine and Maureen Peal. Characters in the book use their social class as another reason for being ugly. Readers are reminded of the theme every time a new character enters into the book.

    Read More

  • Social Issues in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye

    562 Words  | 2 Pages

    A reader might easily conclude that the most prominent social issue presented in The Bluest Eye is that of racism, but more important issues lie beneath the surface. Pecola experiences damage from her abusive and negligent parents. The reader is told that even Pecola's mother thought she was ugly from the time of birth. Pecola's negativity may have initially been caused by her family's failure to provide her with identity, love, security, and socialization, ail which are essential for any child's development (Samuels 13). Pecola's parents are able only to give her a childhood of limited possibilities. She struggles to find herself in infertile soil, leading to the analysis of a life of sterility (13). Like the marigolds planted that year, Pecola never grew.

    Read More

  • Racial Beauty Standards In The Bluest Eye

    1353 Words  | 3 Pages

    In Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, the character Claudia struggles with a beauty standard that harms her sense of self-esteem. Claudia tries to make sense of why the beauty standard does not include black girls. The beauty standard determines that blonde-haired blue-eyed white girls are the image of beauty and therefore they are worthy of not only attention, but are considered valuable to American culture of the 1940s. Thus, learning she has no value or beauty as a black girl, Claudia destroys her white doll in an attempt to understand why white girls are beautiful and subsequently worthy, socially superior members of society. In destroying the doll, Claudia attempts to destroy the beauty standard that works to make her feel socially inferior and ugly because of her skin color. Consequently, Claudia's destruction of the doll works to show how the beauty standard was created to keep black females from feeling valuable by producing a sense of self-hate in black females. The racial loathing created within black women keeps them as passive objects and, ultimately, leads black women, specifically Pecola, to destroy themselves because they cannot attain the blue eyes of the white beauty standard.

    Read More

  • Family Relationships in Morrison's The Bluest Eye

    1780 Words  | 4 Pages

    “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison, is a story about the life of a young black girl, Pecola Breedlove, who is growing up during post World War I. She prays for the bluest eyes, which will “make her beautiful” and in turn make her accepted by her family and peers. The major issue in the book, the idea of ugliness, was the belief that “blackness” was not valuable or beautiful. This view, handed down to them at birth, was a cultural hindrance to the black race.

    Read More

More about Tone In Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye

Open Document