English Comparative Essay – And the Mountains Echoed and The Bluest Eye Exploring fictional texts with different national settings provides a comprehensive insight into how relationships developed with other individuals in a community can alter a person’s sense of identity. Khaled Hosseini’s And the Mountains Echoed (2013) and Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye (1970) are texts that present cynical portrayals of relationships amongst various groups within a society. The protagonists of both texts, Pari and Pecola, as well as other central characters are used as vehicles to express how adversity faced by individuals can negatively affect familial and interpersonal relationships, especially in association with notions of abandonment, ethnicity and beauty. Abandonment by supposed support figures has a resonating negative impact on an individual’s sense of self worth. As portrayed in “The Bluest Eye”, Cholly Breedlove is hugely responsible …show more content…
In the 1940’s where “The Bluest Eye” is set, racism is evident and beauty is largely associated with whiteness. The idealization of light skin can be seen all throughout the book, with constant referrals to white icons of the time. The level of persecution Pecola endures as a result of her dark skin tone leads to her obsession for blue eyes, a symbol of beauty in the predominantly African- American society she grows up. She believes 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.” This quote explores the complexities of Pecola’s situation through the use of emotive language, as she only desires blue eyes not to conform to the western standards of beauty but as a method to relieve the passive suffering she endures as a result of difficult familial
Why do directors choose to stay faithful to or depart from a text when they are producing a film? Many directors choose to either alter or maintain literary elements such as characters, plot, and resolution from a text. The presence or lack of these specific features affects the audience. For instance, in the story “The Monkey’s Paw”, a classic short horror story written by W.W. Jacobs, and its accompanying film, the similarities and differences in the characters, plot, and resolution have an effect on the readers and viewers.
A vignette from The House on Mango Street, "Those Who Don't," by Sandra Cisneros, the poem "My Parents Kept Me from Children Who Were Rough," by Stephen Spender, and another poem "We Real Cool," by Gwendolyn Brooks share many similarities and differences. These three pieces of literature talk about racism and rough children. "Those Who Don't" is about racism and how people think about others without getting to know them. "My Parents Kept Me from Children Who Were Rough" explains how a good child wants to be like other children who are bad. "We Real Cool" talks about pool players who are bad. These pieces of literature compare and contrast between figurative language, point of view, and theme.
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. The book seeks to define beauty and love in this twisted perverse society, dragging the reader through Morrison’s emotional manipulations. Her father Cholly Breedlove steals the reader’s emotional attention from Pecola as he enters the story. In fact, Toni Morrison’s depiction of Cholly wrongfully evokes sympathy from the reader.
America, the land of the free and the brave, a country where if you work hard enough you can have whatever you wish! All Pecola Breedlove wanted was to have blue eyes. Today, that dream would be easily fulfilled, but in 1941, it was unattainable. She bought into the belief that to have blond hair and blue eyes was the only way to obtain beauty. It is a belief that has dominated American culture since the nineteenth century. We must look a certain way, have a specific occupation, or live in a particular neighborhood if we are to fit into society. In The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison has captured these and other stigma's we place on ourselves.
In Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, Pecola Breedlove is a young girl trying to find herself. Throughout the novel, as Pecola grows as a young girl her confidence is tainted by her experiences and the world around her. Pecola lives in Lorain, Ohio, in the 1940s. During this time, role models for young girls were predominantly Caucasian, blonde, blue-eyed women. This impacted young girls like Pecola who had no role models to look up to. Pecola not only has no role models, but also an unsupportive family. Pecola’s family is known for their ugliness and argue with each other often. The people in the Breedlove’s community reject them and disapprove of Pecola, some even shunning
Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye tells the story of Pecola Breedlove, a young girl living in Lorain, Ohio, who has to face harsh conditions from a young age. Pecola’s family has a reputation of “ugliness”, a reputation that their town despises them for. Pecola herself believes the allegations that she is ugly to be true, not only because of the constant abuse that she witnesses in her own family, but also because she has been told that she is ugly her entire life by everyone around her, including adults. The novel explores the standards that Pecola is held to, as well as her reactions to not meeting these standards. Some of the alleged qualities of her “ugliness” are her race, her family’s income, her father’s sleeping habits, and her eye color. With these criticisms as impetus, Pecola strives for beauty, and tries to fix the material problems in her life. Pecola, however, is not alone; other characters in the book are strongly affected by physical goods and propagandistic advertisement as well. In The Bluest Eyecultural standards are imposed upon the characters by their consumer goods.
In the novel The Bluest Eye, one girl desires to have blue eyes. Pecola Breedlove sees importance in having blue eyes. She grows up in a town where in most cases she is not accepted for what she looks like. Her town is full of race and people judging others by the way they look. We see this even through her family atmosphere, her mother is convinced that everyone in the Breedlove family is not attractive in anyway. This has a negative effect on Pecola mainly because she wants to be like everyone else instead of always feeling different from those around her. In Pecola’s life she is surrounded by fighting and hate. Her parents are always fighting and she sees in her community problems with race. One of the reasons she wants blue eyes is so maybe she can see things with a new view. She hopes that there can be love and acceptance in her life. In Toni Morrisons’ novel The Bluest Eye, Pecola desires to have blue eyes because she reads the Dick and Jane pre primers with girls who have blue eyes, she desires love and acceptance in
The Bluest Eye, beginning narration through the eyes of Claudia MacTeer and alternating with a third person omniscient point of view, objectively illustrates Pecola’s negatively internalized physiognomy from both internal and external perspectives. As the novel opens, a brief allusion is made to the story of Dick and Jane and their “very pretty white and green house” (Morrison 3) however, the repetition of this story is integral in depicting “the void that [Pecola] could not reach” (Morrison 204) as the settings markedly stereotypical descriptors embody the white lifestyle that “filled the valleys of [her] mind” (Morrison 204). This story also juxtaposes Pecola’s current living situation as her family’s dysfunctional tendencies further coerce Pecola into believing that she is unworthy
In Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eyes, the pursuit of affection, perfection, and “beauty” of being white is what drives our characters to divulge into internalized racism and eventually see the destruction of themselves and race. In the beginning of the novel, we are given an example of what people in society see as perfection. The Dick and Jane novels, which show the lives of a happy white American couple, provide the overall standard of perfection and beauty in society. During these times in the 1940’s, just being white gave people more privileges and power over the foreigners or African American population.
Pecola’s conversation with her imaginary friend is one of the most crucial scenes in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye. In it, a young African-American girl in the 1940s takes on the impossible task of trying to conform to societal expectations of beauty. The most damaging force is not racist white people but Pecola herself. She attempts imitating something she is not and never leaves behind the parasitic ideas of beauty that infest her thoughts. By asking the manipulative Soaphead Church to grant her wish for blue eyes, she destroys herself.
From the era of 1400s till 1800s, music was at peak and has brought impacts in people’s life. More musical instruments were invented and musicians were well known at that time with the purpose to entertain them. By then, musical instruments started to spread widely around the world. Musical instrument is defined as any form of potential devices that gives musical sound. I will contrast two musical instruments, banjo and guitar in terms of their history, their characteristics, and the styles to play them. Yet, people will still know that they share the common similarities in terms of categorized as the strings-family instrument, the portability and how they are played.
In The Bluest eye, there are many social elements promoting white people’s beauty standards. Shirley Temple, who is the girl that is featured in the cup that Pecola likes, is white person. The movies Pauline went to see shows white men taking good care of their women while living in big clean houses. The girl featured on the candy that Pecola likes is a white girl, Mary Janes. Simply put, Pecola and Claudia, Frieda are all surrounded by the social environment promoting white women as a beauty standard. Because of that, they just accept that they are not pretty. Though harsh social environment did not bring Claudia and Frieda to ruin, it did affect Pecola gravely. She believes that she is not receiving any love from her mother because of her
“Her writing demands participatory reading” (Bump). But do critics or even readers themselves feel comfortable enough to discuss this experience? Did Morrison tell too much of the truth about society that it exposed their own ugliness? Some critics have remarked on the emotional impact of The Bluest Eye but can feelings about beauty and ugliness enable white readers to become more conscious of the impact of racism? We can use this novel as a template as an ethical emotive criticism that connects feelings to thought - psychological models of racism, stigmatism, judging by appearance, and hierarchies of emotions (Bump). Using Claudia as the narrator, Morrison uses her feelings of anger to express how she herself feels; Pecola is too vulnerable to be angry at what she goes through but it is Morrison who is angry at the dissolution of African-Americans and their appearance. The novel itself intensifies rather than deflects the reader’s sense of Morrison’s anger. Morrison’s scale of anger about racism parallels with the characters and what happens to them in the book, meaning that as Claudia gets angry or upset with Pecola at times, us as readers should too. Morrison’s anger does not just come about to write a good story but out of frustration, she wants readers to understand that race is an ideologically
Toni Morrison’s Bluest Eye is a tragic narrative of how one black community loathes itself for not being white. Even more tragic is the story of Pecola Breedlove, a young girl who hates herself for not being white. The constant criticism, the bullying received at school, and her rough family life at home lead Pecola to seek escape from her misery. In order to escape from her misery Pecola fantasizes about becoming beautiful. Pecola begins to believe that if she is able to achieve physical beauty her life would improve. This false belief turns out to be destructive to Pecola and eventually lead to her
Academic writing consists of many types of writing such as proposals, formal essays, informal essays, lab reports, comparative essays, and etc. With so many types of academic writing out there, some may question whether it is truly necessary to have so many optional types to choose from when writing. Although there are so many types of writing each one functions to convey what the writer is trying to explain or convey different. A lab report conveys the hard data and facts from experiments that a scientist documents to support their hypothesis. A proposal highlights the advantages of an action to convince someone else to follow through with that action. Both of these different types of writing achieve their own unique purpose to fully bring out the worth in the writers words. Although these two are important in academic writing, comparative essays are one of the most useful and basic types of academic writing that can be used in college and anywhere else.