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Racism and literature
The impact of cultural stereotypes
Racism in america literature
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Self- confidence in Pecola Breedlove Self-confidence is crucial in a personality. Nevertheless, society and family influence on the self-esteem of a person, they are key in a person’s personality. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison describes a racist society that constructs a concept of beauty and that leads characters to commit certain actions with rough consequences, the most affected character by those actions is Pecola Breedlove. The aim of this essay will be to provide a deep analysis that explains how family and Pecola’s classmates impact on her self- acceptance and make her feel inferior because of her colored skin. The first factor that affects on Pecola’s low self- esteem is her family. Since she is a child, she has experienced rough situations as her father is always drunk, her mother hates her family for being black and poor and her brother always escapes from their home. Pecola’s family has a strong feeling about their ugliness due to their blackness because it is not what society defines as its ideal of beauty; Cholly Breedlove and Mrs. Breedlove have gone through social racism and they have grown up with insecurities about themselves. Pecola’s mother works with white people and she gradually hates her family because they do not fulfill her expectations of …show more content…
Pecola has not enough support from her family in order to resist bullying at school. Her classmates bully Pecola for being black, even their colored partners, but they criticize her because everybody does and Pecola is not strong enough to defend herself as her self- esteem is so damaged. What is more, when someone wants to offend a boy, they comment he is Pecola’s boyfriend, and they consider that like an insult. As Pecola feels really insecure, they always attack her when they are in group and she only cries. Consequently, all those negative comments affect on her
Much of life results from choices we make. How we meet every circumstance, and also how we allow those circumstances to affect us dictates our life. In Marian Minus’s short story, “Girl, Colored," we are given a chance to take a look inside two characters not unlike ourselves. As we are given insight into these two people, their character and environment unfolds, presenting us with people we can relate to and sympathize with. Even if we fail to grasp the fullness of a feeling or circumstance, we are still touched on our own level, evidencing the brilliance of Minus’s writing.
It also explores ideas about prejudice of someone’s appearance and how friendship, peer pressure and family support contribute to complicating or resolving the problem. Through these core themes, Carl has doubt and worry, but also learns confidence and acceptance.
She stopped letting me sleep on the bottom bunk; she began to tease me about my fears.” (Evans 46). As 9 years old child, Allison is annoyed of Tara because she’s being tedious. Allison’s act might be seen as siding with her grandmother, and this directly explains that Tara went through the suffering alone, without anyone supporting her. This might be the reason why in the end, Tara decided to jumped off the tree, because she felt tortured and pressured badly by everyone surround her, and no one ever pay attention to her. Her best friend who she had always spent time with, giving her back to her, and stressed her to the point that she dare to jump. Somehow, we encounter these kind of situations in real life, and Evans are trying to make readers realize such tragedy really did happened in our surroundings. Frustration due to racial discrimination actually happens commonly. Those kinds of mistreatment that one’s receiving due to differences in race or culture indirectly affect his or her mentality and their character development. Evans wants the readers realize that such offensive behavior we frequently do – whether it is intentional or not intentional – affect other person’s psychological state. Readers ought to be aware of any shape of discrimination among our society and to select suitable actions when binding relationship with people from other
Janie’s first discovery about herself comes when she is a child. She is around the age of six when she realizes that she is colored. Janie’s confusion about her race is based on the reasoning that all her peers and the kids she grows up with are white. Janie and her Nanny live in the backyard of the white people that her Nanny works for. When Janie does not recognize herself on the picture that is taken by a photographer, the others find it funny and laughs, leaving Janie feeling humiliated. This racial discovery is not “social prejudice or personal meanness but affection” (Cooke 140). Janie is often teased at school because she lives with the white people and dresses better than the other colored kids. Even though the kids that tease her were all colored, this begins Janie’s experience to racial discrimination.
The difference of color is seen through the eyes, but the formulation of racial judgement and discrimination is developed in the subconscious mind. Toni Morrison’s short story “Recitatif (1983)” explores the racial difference and challenges that both Twyla and Roberta experience. Morrison’s novels such as “Beloved”, “The Bluest Eye”, and her short story “Recitatif” are all centered around the issues and hardships of racism. The first time that Twyla and Roberta met Twyla makes a racial remake or stereotype about the texture and smell of Roberta’s hair. Although they both were in the orphanage because of similar situations, Twyla instantly finds a racial difference. The racial differences between Twyla and Roberta affects their friendship, personal views of each other, and relationship with their husbands.
Caucasia examines how each individual formulates an identity with him or herself. The author portrays how the individuality of oneself is socially constructed, as individuals are forever pressured to conform to acceptable behaviours. Birdie’s identity is shaped on how other members of society perceive her, and she wants to fit those notions and be accepted. She is confused about her identity because of the different qualities that she inherits from both the “white” and “black” communities. It is evident that society will only judge an individual based on the colour of a person’s skin; a person of white complexion is at the top of the hierarchy, while a darker skin tone is accepted to be at a lower point in social hierarchy. Both Birdie and Cole are r...
The first stage of Pecola coming to believe she is ugly starts with her family's attitude toward her. Right from the very start of Pecola's life her parents have thought of her as ugly on the outside as well as on the inside. When Pecola was born, Pecola's mother, Pauline, said: "Eyes all soft and wet. A cross between a puppy and a dying man. But I knowed she was ugly. Head full of pretty hair, but Lord she was ugly" (Morrison 126). Pecola became labeled ugly as soon as she was born. The reason people think of her as ugly relates to the way she gets treated by her family. Her parents never even gave her a chance to prove that she is worth something and not just a piece of trash. In the first stage of Pecola's realization of being ugly, she starts to feel the way she does because her family does not give her any support and tell her she actually means something to them. Pecola does not really have anyone that she can go to talk about things. All of the weight of her problems rests on her shoulders with no one to help her out, not even her parents, the two people that brought her into this very world.
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 most damaging interracial confrontation related to color involves Pecola and an adult, Geraldine (Samuels 12). When Pecola enters Geraldine's home at the invitation of her son, Geraldine forces her to leave with words that hurt deeply, saying "Get out... You nasty little black bitch. Get out of my house" (92).
Toni Morrison's novel, The Bluest Eye contributes to the study of the American novel by bringing to light an unflattering side of American history. The story of a young black girl named Pecola, growing up in Lorain, Ohio in 1941 clearly illustrates the fact that the "American Dream" was not available to everyone. The world that Pecola inhabits adores blonde haired blue eyed girls and boys. Black children are invisible in this world, not special, less than nothing. The idea that the color of your skin somehow made you lesser was cultivated by both whites and blacks. White skin meant beauty and privilege and that idea was not questioned at this time in history. The idea that the color of your skin somehow made you less of a person contaminated black people's lives in many different ways. The taunts of schoolboys directed at Pecola clearly illustrate this fact; "It was their contempt for their own blackness that gave the first insult its teeth" (65). This self hatred also possessed an undercurrent of anger and injustice that eventually led to the civil rights movement.
beauty in her culture, Pecola must do the impossible: find white beauty. Toni Morrison shows
Blond hair, blue eyes. In America these are the ideals of a woman’s beauty. This image is drilled into our minds across the lifespan in the media and it conditions people's standards of beauty. We see Black women wish that their skin was lighter. In an episode of "The Tyra Banks Show", a Black girl as young as 6 talks about how she doesn't like her hair and wishes that it was long and straight like a white woman's. Some minorities get surgery to change their facial features, or only date white men. Having been taught to think that white people are more attractive than people of their own ethnicity. In Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, the character of Pecola exemplifies the inferiority felt throughout the black community due to the ideology that white qualities propel you in social status. Pecola’s mother, Pauline Breedlove, said it best when she was introduced to beauty it being the most destructive ideas in the history of human though. From which the envy, insecurity and disillusion have been derived by the ideas of beauty and physical appearance. Pecola’s story is about the consequences of a little black girl growing up in a society dominated by white supremacy. We must not look at beauty as a value rather an oppressive discourse that has taken over our society. Pecola truly believes that if her eyes were blue she would be pretty, virtuous, and loved by everyone around her. Friends would play with her, teachers would treat her better and even her parents might stop their constant fights because, in her heart of hearts, no one would want to “do bad things in front of those pretty eyes.”
Having inherited the myth of ugliness and unworthiness, the characters throughout the story, with the exception of the MacTeer family, will not only allow this to happen, but will instill this in their children to be passed on to the next generation. Beauty precedes love, the grownups seem to say, and only a few possess beauty, so they remain unloved and unworthy. Throughout the novel, the convictions of sons and daughters are the same as their fathers and mothers. Their failures and accomplishments are transferred to their children and to future generations.
Maureen Peal comes from a rich black family and triggers admiration along with envy in every child at school, including Claudia. Although Maureen is light-skinned, she embodies everything that is considered "white," at least by Claudia's standards: "Patent leather shoes with buckles.fluffy sweaters the color of lemon drops tucked into skirts with pleats. brightly colored knee socks with white borders, a brown velvet coat trimmed in white rabbit fur, and a matching muff" (Morrison 62).... ... middle of paper ...
If any person can be credited for creating the obsession of beauty that Pecola builds it is Pauline (Pecola’s mother). Pecola experiences many insecurities and it can definitely be said that many of these are because of the way that Pauline acts in society and around Pecola. It was stated in the story that Pauline would always go to the movies and rate the characters on their beauty. This is one example that shows the obsession that Pauline has with beauty and looks. This rubbed off on to her daughter and that is where Pecola received her lack of self-esteem. It is clear that Pecola idolizes the ideals of being beautiful. It is interesting that Pecola is not the person telling the story in this book, and it is Claudia instead. It seems that the author wants the reader to build an immense amount of sympathy for Pecola because it would just be less effective if Pecola was telling the story. If it Pecola that was narrating in many parts then it would be more difficult to see her as a "total victim".