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Detrimental effects of child abuse on the educational development of children
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Essay on The bluest eye
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In the novel “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison sates the difficult time some of the characters in the story ply. This novel took place in Lorain Ohio, where a group of young girl were trying to find there identify. Pecola Breedlove one of the girls
Had difficult time connecting with the other girls that lived in the neighborhood. Her family was different from the other families that were around her. Pecola is under custody because her father burned down their house. However, she is a very passive and joyful young girl like the other girl in the neighborhood. A little later in the chapter something happens to Pecola that chances her life forever, as the girl lay in bed they say “She really ministration”(Morrison 31). This shows how they have gain some type of respect for Pecola now that she is a young women.
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The next morning, Pecola goes and drinks her regular milk as always.
She drinks the milk out of the Shirley Temple and very special cup that she admires. Shirley Temple is a white girl little with blue eye and blonde curly hair. Pecola want to be and wishes she could be like her. She admires her everyday when she drinks her milk out of the cup. She prays to be like her and to look like her. Pecola says “To have something as wonderful as that happen would take a long, long time. Thrown, in the way, into the binding conviction that only a miracle could relieve her.”(Morrison 46). This shows how Pecola admires and love Shirley Temple each and every time she looks at her. Everything about Shirley Temples changes Pecola perception towards life because; Pecola believes that she is not beautiful enough to be her own
self. Shirley Temple is a doll that has change the aspect of “beauty” in the lives of these young girls. The way Shirley have affect the lives of these young girl is by showing them what true beauty is. These girls don’t accept each other by which they truly are. Pecola is trying to discover where beauty is located inside the doll to see if she could connect with her in any other possible way. Shirley Temple has impact this young’s life’s in many different way that have change the way each of them see life. One of the many ways she have done this is by give them a chance to think of who they truly are and identify them self with what other can’t do. I find this a very important part of the story where is of the girls are very passive and when it comes to identifying themselves. (452)
get blue eyes. Pecola thinks that if she can be like the blue eyed Shirley
Pruitt, Claude. "Circling Meaning in Toni Morrison's Sula.” African American Review 44.1/2 (2011): 115-129. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 14 Apr. 2014.
"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.
“Wicked people love wickedly, violent people love violently, weak people love weakly, stupid people love stupidly, but the love of a free man is never safe” (206). The term “free man” is the sense that the man exists only for himself, for the indulgence of his desires and impulses; in this case, the free man is Cholly. By the end of the novel, he has nothing left to lose. Cholly and Pecola both search for love and acceptance in a world where African-Americans deny and devalue their own race. The element of Cholly within Pecola is shown as Toni Morrison unravels Cholly’s childhood and Pecola’s current situation. Both father and daughter are victims of a society still plagued by the premise of slavery and the mode of white inferiority. Cholly’s rape of Pecola describes the psychological, social, and personal devaluation by white society that raped Cholly his entire life.
The more “ugly” incidents she is subjected to, the more extreme and abundant do her desires evolve to be. The climax is when Pecola is raped by the antagonist of the novel, her own father, Cholly Breedlove. Eventually, she loses her sanity and reaches out to Soaphead to ask for blue eyes. Disgusted with the molestation, people find another reason to despise Pecola and to ignore her. Becoming delusional, Pecola surmises that people ignore her because they are jealous; “Everybody’s jealous. Every time I look at somebody, they look off” (p. 193). Pecola consequently creates an imaginary friend (p. 191) to talk to as a defence mechanism to deal with the pain of being raped, and neglected by her own
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).
Pecola starts off this passage with a sick feeling as she relaxes and stops feigning sleep during her parents' argument. It seems that these arguments happen a lot, for while "she had tried to prevent [the sick feeling] by holding in her stomach, [the sick feeling] came quickly in spite of her precaution" (Morris...
“Sula" by Tony Morrison is the story of a friendship between Nel Wright and Sula Peace, who are opposites in the way of relating to other people, to the world around them, and to themselves. Nel is rational and balanced; she gets married and gives in to conformity and the town's expectations. Sula is an irrational and transient character. She follows her immediate passions, completely unaware of the feelings other people might have. However, Nel and Sula are able to function well only when they are together because they complete each other as opposites. However, as separate entities, Sula and Nel are vulnerable and isolated from the rest of world; Sula because she is impulsive and disregards the feelings of other people, and Nel because she overlooks her own.
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.
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.
Throughout Toni Morrison’s controversial debut The Bluest Eye, several characters are entangled with the extremes of human cruelty and desire. A once innocent Pecola arguably receives the most appalling treatment, as not only is she exposed to unrelenting racism and severe domestic abuse, she is also raped and impregnated by her own father, Cholly. By all accounts, Cholly should be detestable and unworthy of any kind of sympathy. However, over the course of the novel, as Cholly’s character and life are slowly brought into the light and out of the self-hatred veil, the reader comes to partially understand why Cholly did what he did and what really drives him. By painting this severely flawed yet completely human picture of Cholly, Morrison draws comparison with how Pecola was treated by both of her undesirable parents. According to literary educator Allen Alexander, even though Cholly was cripplingly flawed and often despicable, he was a more “genuine” person to Pecola than Pauline was (301). Alexander went on to claim that while Cholly raped Pecola physically, Pauline and Soaphead Church both raped her mental wellbeing (301). Alexander is saying that the awful way Pecola was treated in a routine matter had an effect just as great if not greater than Cholly’s terrible assault. The abuse that Pecola lived through was the trigger that shattered her mind. In The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison uses the characters of Cholly Breedlove and Frieda McTeer to juxtapose sexual violence and mental maltreatment in order to highlight the terrible effects of mental abuse.
Pecola is a family friend of Claudia and Frieda. Pecola came to live with the MacTeer because of her abusive father and mother’s dysfunctional love. Pecola is the little girl who wished to be white, who wished to have blue eyes, who wished to be beautiful. Pecola knows that she is not beautiful and everyone tells her. “If she looked different, beautiful, maybe they’d say, “why, look at pretty-eyed Pecola. We mustn’t do bad things in front of those pretty eyes.” (Morrison, 46) Pecola’s self-esteem was demolished even when just being a new born. Her mother Pauline, knew that Pecola was ugly and did not hide it at all. Growing up, Pecola always wanted blue eyes, and always wished to someday have blue eyes, because that was beautiful. And if you had blue eyes, you were
When Pecola was born, a major change occured in Pauline's life. According to Susan Willis, "Adjectives become substantives, giving taste and color and making it possible for colors to trickle and flow and finally be internalized..."3. She now wished to live her life like this, through the colors in herself.
She believes that if she could have blue eyes, their beauty would inspire kind behavior from others. Blues eyes in Pecola’s definition, is the pure definition of beauty. But beauty in the sense that if she had them she would see things differently. But within the world that Pecola lives in the color of one’s eye, and skin heavily influences their treatment. So her desperation for wanting to change her appearance on the account of her environment and culture seems child-like but it is logical. If Pecola could alter her appearance she would alter her influence and treatment toward and from others. In this Morrison uses Marxism as a way to justify Pecola’s change in reality depending on her appearance. The white ideologies reflected upon Pecola’s internal and external conflicts which allowed her to imagine herself a different life. The impacts of one’s social class also impacts one’s perspective of their race. The vulnerability created by the low social class allows racism to protrude in society and have a detrimental effect for the young black girls in “The Bluest Eye” (Tinsley).The quotes explained above express the social and economic aspect of the Marxist theory. The theory that centers around the separation of social classes and the relationship surrounding them not one’s internalization of oneself
Throughout pages 45-50, the author uses the literary element of conflict to further develop Pecola's character as well as to increase the understanding of the environment. Within the pages 45-50, a continuous dilemma that is depicted is a conflict amongst Pecola and her identity. As stated on page 45 " She had long ago given up the idea of running away to see new pictures, new faces...As long as she looked the way she did, as long as she was ugly, she would have to stay with these people.Long hours she sat looking in the mirror, trying to discover the secret of the ugliness." Evidently, it can be noted that Pecola had loathed her appearance and yearned for liberation from her family. She considered herself repulsive, and from her constant