Liberation is defined as more than just a physical movement towards freedom or as a concrete escape from a difficult situation. Liberation is equality, a release from real and figurative imprisonment, and a strong mental and spiritual change in mindset (Merriam-Webster 1). Characters like Pecola Breedlove in The Bluest Eye and Dinah in The Red Tent experience tremendous liberation from their devastating situations when they manage to find true happiness. Portrayed as a battered and abused girl in Toni Morrison’s novel, Pecola Breedlove lives a life of confusion, racism, resentment, and hostility. It is only when Pecola convinces herself that she has blue eyes that she is able to liberate herself and feel true happy. Pecola lives a disheartening life but with patience and perseverance, she frees herself from the sadness of her world and achieves mental bliss. Much like Pecola, the character Dinah from Barbara Kingsolver’s classic faces difficulties living as a female in a male-dominated world. Dinah is trapped from the start of her life to a predestined and repetitive life of child-bearing and child-rearing and besides finding temporary refuge and liberation in the red tent, is trapped for most of her life. Dinah experiences a life of deceit, betrayal, and lost-love but is able to find liberation in the new and different life she chooses to live. Pecola Breedlove and Dinah are able to best achieve spiritual liberation and combat two very unfair societies through perseverance, patience, and hope for a positive change.
Dinah is born into a society where all women are expected to put their feelings aside to conform to and satisfy the man and his children. She is trapped from the very beginning in a chauvinistic and male-dominated worl...
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...— for repose and restoration, for the knowledge that life comes from between our legs, and that life costs blood. (Diamant 158)
Very crucial to Dinah’s eventual freedom and liberation from her displeasing life is her enduring patience. Dinah does not revolt against the unjust society or demand an immediate change towards liberation, but instead lives through the misery and hopes for a future of freedom. Without patience, determination in achieving her goals, and perseverance through the challenging events of her life, Dinah would not have achieved such satisfying liberation in her later years. It is the patience and the decision to wait for the good that is to come that provide Dinah and Pecola with such remarkable liberation.
Works Cited
Merriam-Webster. “Liberation.” Merriam-Webster. Web. 16 January 2014. .
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Women play a key role in this novel in many ways. In the case of...
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For one, brief hour she was an individual. Now she finds herself bound by masculine oppression with no end in sight, and the result is death.
Pecola’s perception of her aesthetic lead her through a life long crucible with lead her to losing her peace of
for it shows that even in death, new life will grow out of the "grave." The
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