... is also narrated by a nine-year-old black girl, which is how old Morrison would've been in 1941, the year the novel takes place. Furthermore, Morrison's family struggled financially during the Great Depression, similarly to the MacTeer family in the novel. Through "The Bluest Eye", Morrison makes a statement about how vulnerable a young black girl, such as herself, is as she is exposed to ... that were stimulating. Morrison thought no one would realize that it wasn't always beautiful, how hurtful racism is. One reason why she wrote "The Bluest Eye" is because someone would actually be...

• Word Count: 1083
• Approx Pages: 4
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

... didn't do exactly what they were to do, they would be beaten, whipped, and sometimes killed. Toni Morrison describes the conditions under which African-Americans in general and Pecola in particular are forced to live. The characters in the Bluest Eye are faced both directly and indirectly by racism. The characters are issued to internal values that create their own set of discrimination within families and ... the neighborhood. Three characters from The Bluest Eye that I will be describing are Pecola , Claudia and Pauline. Pecola Breedlove is an eleven year old ... of her family. Pauli...

• Word Count: 971
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: High School

... women straightening their hair, or getting a weave to fit into a certain, white culture, or people in India and China, using a bleach based lotion to make their skin less pigmented. In The Bluest Eye, Morrison refers to these traits of nature as "funk". This "funk" that is wiped away are little things that a black woman is born with to try ... man's work". Here, they learn "in short, how to get rid of the funkiness... The funkiness of nature... They wipe it away (83)". The Bluest Eye examines the home life of these children in the stories as well. It juxtaposes how a homelife can relate...

• Word Count: 940
• Approx Pages: 4
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

... Adults look away when they see her, and children laugh at her craziness. A young girl's life is destroyed as a result of society's defining the norms, and placing them on such a high standard. In The Bluest Eye, Claudia MacTeer provides a child's point of view-sometimes from an adult perspective while an omniscient voice relates information unknown by Claudia, like Pecola's thoughts ... Morrison also seems to use names as an important role to symbolize the conditions of society. For example, the name of the novel, The Bluest Eye, is meant to get the reader thinking about how the desire ...

• Word Count: 1724
• Approx Pages: 7
• Grade Level: High School

... worth as a human being. Morrison clearly portrays whiteness as a standard of beauty for the characters in her novel, while the outlier is Claudia MacTeer who constantly subverts this idea. Toni Morrison's portrayal of whiteness as the standard of beauty is readily apparent throughout The Bluest Eye. Many of the characters in the novel are described in a physical manner that emphasizes their "unattractive" African American features. ... their work partners; black girls stepped aside when she wanted to use the sink in the girls' toilet, and their eyes genuflected under sliding lids. She n...

• Word Count: 617
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: High School

The Bluest Eye By: Toni Morrison Blonde hair, blue eyes, and white skin was the envy of most young African American girls in the 1940's. In the tragic novel, The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, Pecola Breedlove, an eleven-year-old black girl is a victim of racial self-loathing and also rape by her father which results in pregnancy. Described as submissive, ugly, and ignorant, she is labeled the outcast amongst ... the black community of Lorain, Ohio ... does have blue eyes and goes insane as a result. (p. 204) "She spent her days, her tendril, sap-green days, walking up and down, up and down, h...

• Word Count: 413
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: High School

Setting in "The Bluest Eye" Time 1940-41 The novel is divided into the four seasons Place Lorain, Ohio (Morrison's home town) It is more preciously set around Broadway, Twenty-First and Thirty-Fifth Streets. At the time the story takes place Lorain is a small industrial town populated with immigrant: Europeans, Mexicans and Southern blacks who lived next to each other. The African-American community of Lorain, Ohio ... events Americans of 1940 treasure blonde hair and blue eyes in both dolls and little girls These features reflects the Aryan ideal The connection is reflected by the three pro...

• Word Count: 384
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: High School

Beauty The book portrays the African American population as a culture fascinated by its internalization of a "blue-eyed, yellow haired, pink-skinned" beauty ideal. Women of color are judged according to white standards of beauty", and consequently they are always considered ugly. Hence blacks learn to hate themselves; and Pecola Breedlove, prays every night for blue eyes. As a result the ideal of beauty becomes a unsafe and racist ensnare into which African Americans are born, and from which they can never completely escape. In other words, blackness is associated to ugliness and therefore wea...

• Word Count: 577
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: High School

Fight Against Oppression!!!! In the novel, The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison, the evils inflicted upon blacks by a white society indoctrinated by the inherent beauty of whiteness and ugliness of blackness are thoroughly depicted. Morrison's novel illustrates the disastrous affects racism had on African-Americans during the late nineteen hundreds. The Bluest Eye is a bitter novel that vividly reflects the way in which blacks were treated unfairly, and more important, how ... -year-old girl who faced many tragic events at such a young age. She believes that if she can live up to the image of blue...

• Word Count: 1667
• Approx Pages: 7
• Grade Level: High School

... there and in order from them to feel any self worth they begin to feel the same way about the Americans. Everything in the community costs more to obtain for the Japanese such as the real estate, in order to keep there culture subordinate to the Americans. In the other novel we read, The Bluest Eye, the little black girl wishes that she had blue eyes and because she does not ... and comes to the realization that she cannot, she hates everyone who has blue eyes. She has ... of this racism resulting in genocide may be directly attributed to reification. I believe that in some cases, reif...

• Word Count: 1942
• Approx Pages: 8
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

... it was because Pecola was having her father's baby. Having her father's baby was not the only problem the twelve-year-old young girl had to face. In the novel "The Bluest Eye" by Toni Morrison, Pecola Breedlove must learn what it is like to deal with racism (man versus man ... conflict). And how to deal with her father (man versus man), and herself (man versus himself). In 1941 there was not a white person in the south that gave the black people of the ... community equal rights. The ... her. Everyone that once had once known her had now disowned her. She had no friends. And no one she...

• Word Count: 791
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: High School