The Bluest Eye: Dying to Fit In Claudia MacTeer in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye looks longingly upon society from the outside. Growing up the youngest in the family as well as in a racial minority leaves Claudia feeling excluded and left out. She desires a place within the group society has formed without her. She desires to fit in and be accepted. Claudia desperately wants to experience life to the fullest. She does not want to miss out on any event. Claudia's curiosity is often her conscious motivation to get involved, but the reasons that she acts the way she does go deeper than that. Her personality and character traits make fitting in unfortunately hard to accomplish. Claudia has a strong desire to be included, but her different opinions about life unfortunately create difficulties for her fitting into society. She sees the world from a very different perspective than others. From very early on, Claudia's desires differ from the majority's opinion. She desires to have emotions; society,though, desires possessions. Furthermore, Claudia is physically revolted by what seems to be the epitome of beauty in society's eyes. She feels that she is the only one who feels that little white baby dolls with yellow hair and blue eyes are not beautiful. In a bold attempt to destroy the common perception of beauty, Claudia mangles the dolls she receives, "to see of what it was made, to discover the dearness, to find the beauty, the desirability that had escaped me, but apparently only me" (20). She desires to be included in the unity of society. However, Claudia wants to be included on her own terms. She does not want to limit or conform her beliefs to fit what society wants her ... ... middle of paper ... ...dia's position on the outside of everything forces her into a position of greater strength. Although hurt, the observations she makes mold her into being able to handle difficulties more easily. The loss of innocence which Claudia faces unintentionally is vital to the role she plays in society and in her life. Her thoughts hold a more realistic view of life and human behavior. She sees the pains and sorrows that life truly is constructed of. Claudia feels that she has missed out on so many opportunities and is not included the way others are. Her strong character generates a feeling of both isolation and separation, but, in reality, she tastes life more closely than most people are able to in a lifetime. Although Claudia's passion to be included is unrequited, she is filled with the strength, character, and pain that make her a more knowledgeable and resilient person.
To begin, there are several concepts about compulsory education that aggravates John Gatto and he explains his concerns in his essay “Against School.” Gatto’s first concern is everything is about school is boring. “Boredom is the common condition of schoolteachers (Gatto 608).” If the teachers are bored, they will create a dull and boring environment for the students. “Boredom and childishness were the natural state of affairs in the classroom (Gatto 608).” Lack of creativity and freedom is another concern of Gatto. “An educational system deliberately designed to produce mediocre intellects (Gatto 611).” Also, Gatto thinks school is unnecessary. “George Washington, Benjamin
Juveniles are being taught that in order to have a nice car, branded cloths and the house of their dreams, by getting into an expensive mortgage, they have to be an employee of a huge corporation. In addition, they have to undergo to a prestigious school, study hard, have excellent grades in order to become popular and respectable in the world. However, many people would not become those super leaders, but these majority of people have a great role in the capitalism society of the US. As Gatto says, “We buy televisions, and then we buy the things we see on the television. We buy computers, and then we buy the things we see on the computer. We buy $150 sneakers whether we need them or not, and when they fall apart too soon we buy another pair” (38). Such results are in part of a wrong education that teenagers have received trough many decades. In addition, Gatto highlights that modern educational system has been working in a six basic functions methods that makes the system strong and unbreakable: The adjustable function, indulge students to respect authorities. The integrating function, which builds the personality of the students as similar to each other as possible. The diagnostic and directive function, which allows a school to set permanent scholar grades in order to determinate his or her future role in society. The differentiating function, which gives to the student a good education and after his or her role is diagnosed, they prevent any educational progress. The selective function, function that the system has used to prevent academic growth for the non-selected students. The propaedeutic function, which works in the selection of specific groups of intellectual adults to keep perpetuating the system all over again making it a continuous sequence. (Gatto 34). Gatto’s facts revealed the survival of the educational system for decades,
Throughout your life starting from when you were a child you have experienced different point of views from watching and listening to people. Whether you realize it or not what you have experience has shaped you into the person you are today. The two short stories “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson and “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” by Ursula K. Le Guin and the essay “Hook Ups Starve the Soul” by Laura Vanderkam, are examples of how precedents can influence individuals decisions. These three texts reveal this concept by showing how individuals can be influenced by the actions that people are doing around them, by traditions that were set by past civilians, as well as following any previous examples set by family members. By showing the
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:
... perfect exemplars of how an ideal innocent women, can face undoubtedly tragic fates. Despite much strength in their characters, both Daisy and Desdemona exhibit the vulnerability of their innocence, the ability for others to take advantage of them, and glaring weaknesses. They are unaware of their surroundings, which lead to questionable actions. Their inevitable tragedies occur because of how each character dealt with these situations placed in front of them. All in all, Daisy and Desdemona are responsible for their tragedies because they are women placed in unfamiliar positions and are unable to deal with situations placed in front of them.
A typical family in the 1940’s consisted of a caring, nurturing mother whose sole purpose was to raise her child with unconditional affection, and a strict but tough-loving father who would always be there for his child no matter what the circumstance. In Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, Cholly Breedlove never experienced this form of authentic love. Growing up with absent parents, Cholly was forced to be independent from birth. This independence gave way to his brand of freedom -- meaning that he was able to live without boundaries, and that he was exempt or released from onerous burdens, or more importantly, his abusive parents. Freedom was his scapegoat; an excuse to become an evil and despicable monster who terrorized
The basic theme of the novel, The Bluest Eye revolves around African Americans' conformity to white standards. Although beauty is the larger theme of the novel, Morrison scrutinizes the dominant white culture's influence on class levels. Morrison sets the foundation of the novel on issues of beauty in an attempt to make African Americans aware that they do not have to conform to white standards on any level.
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.
The concept of physical appearance as a virtue is the center of the social problems portrayed in the novel. Thus the novel unfolds with the most logical responses to this overpowering impression of beauty: acceptance, adjustment, and rejection (Samuels 10). Through Pecola Breedlove, Morrison presents reactions to the worth of physical criteria. The beauty standard that Pecola feels she must live up to causes her to have an identity crisis. Society's standard has no place for Pecola, unlike her "high yellow dream child" classmate, Maureen Peals, who fits the mold (Morrison 62).
In the beginning of “Barbie Doll”, pleasurable and unpleasurable imagery is given so that the reader can see the extremes girls go through to be considered perfect.
Topic: Discuss the issues of self-hatred and the aesthetics of beauty in The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison. What role do they play in the novel and how do they relate to its theme?
In his article “Against School”, John Taylor Gatto writes regarding his opinions that America’s current system of schooling children is bad within itself, and unfixable. In this essay Gatto includes confusing personal antecedents, historical examples that do not correspond with modern day society smoothly, and overall he just does not fully explain his already weak evidence. Due to this, instead of convincing parents to take their children out of school and rethink society, he just leaves the reader confused over what the problems truly are.
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.
Toni Morrison’s novel, The Bluest Eye, presents the lives of several impoverished black families in the 1940’s in a rather unconventional and painful manner. Ms. Morrison leads the reader through the lives of select children and adults, describing a few powerful incidents, thoughts and experiences that lend insight into the motivation and. behavior of these characters. In a somewhat unconventional manner, the young lives of Pauline Williams Breedlove and Charles (Cholly) Breedlove are presented to the reader. Through these descriptions, the reader comes to understand how they become the kind of adults they are. Background information is given not necessarily to incur sympathy but to lend understanding.
Toni Morrison's critique of the visual system within popular American culture and her rejection of white-defined female beauty are reflected in her first novel. Morrison's The Bluest Eye reveals the crippling effects of white standards of female beauty on a young black girl, Pecola Breedlove. This is done through the constant references to blue eyes and the comparison to vision as a whole; the way the characters view themselves, others and the world as a whole. This allegorical novel can be said to make statements not just on perceptions of beauty in general, but specifically the racially charged beauty ideals of America in the 1940’s. In one way or another, almost all of the characters are preoccupied with defining or examining beauty during the course of The Bluest Eye.