Toni Morrison's Book Before Autumn

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Recommended: Problems with racism in literature

Another reminder of white superiority was also though children’s books. Before autumn begins, Toni Morrison includes an excerpt from a children's book, Dick and Jane. These children books were used to teach kids in the 40’s-50’s how to read. Each character in these books were white and they had perfect parents, perfect everything. “Here is the family. Mother, Father, Dick, and Jane live in the green-and-white house. They are very happy”… “See Mother. Mother is very nice. Mother, will you play with Jane? Mother laughs. Laugh, Mother, laugh. See Father. He is big and strong. Father, will you play with Jane? Father is smiling” (3). Even children's books and toys were belittling to the little girls in this story. Toni morrison places the Dick and Jane story to introduce the causation of the little girls’ desires. Pecola has a different coping mechanism than Claudia. Instead of becoming angry she becomes envious and covets white beauty. “Each night, without fail, she prayed …show more content…

Winter is usually associated with death or emptiness. The characters’ life remain empty as they are reminded of their “ugliness”. In these chapters Pecola is harassed by a group of boys from her school. They laughed and bullied her, taking their own self-hatred out on Pecola. They taunted her for being black, regardless of their skin color being the same as hers. The Negrophobia in this scene is something that is both forced upon them and chosen. Aaron Gullikson writes in The Significance of Color Declines: A Re-Analysis of Skin Tone Differentials in Post-Civil Rights America journal: “The general consensus seems to be that there exists a universal distaste within the black population for particularly “black” phenotypes (e.g dark skin, kinky hair, etc.) due to ubiquitous and hegemonic white ideals of beauty” (158). This is an example of the destroying effects of Negrophobia among the black community towards themselves. Negrophobia extends to other characters as

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