...beauty ideals, whiteness becomes the paragon of beauty to these characters, consequently lowering their self-esteem. Finally, by juxtaposing a black family that ignores white beauty standards with a family that centres their lives on the impossible quest to be perceived “white,” it is made clear that the fervent desire for conformity has the power to destroy meaningful relationships. In The Bluest Eye, Morrison conveys that adhering to societal ideals is a threshold of one’s loss of identity. This is achieved through the use of the cleanliness and dirtiness motif. In the novel, cleanliness is associated with whiteness and thereby the embodiment of beauty, whereas dirtiness is tied to blackness, a feature adjudged to be the culprit of one’s ugliness. Given this fact, Geraldine and Mrs. Breedlove, black characters that yearn to imitate the lives of white families, are excessively concerned with...
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...The story is about Pecola, a young black girl ostracized by society, who is never able to tell her story, she is silenced by the society which marginalized her. This narrative, especially the seasonal sections written as “the diary,” finally gives “a voice to the voiceless” (Malmgren 155). This is the essential point to most Post Modern novels, representing those who were normally forgotten by literature and history, Malmgren argues that the use of multiple narrators brings this issue to life; this is why Pecola never really gets a chance to tell her own story, it is told for her by those around her, because that how history has been written, by those who are remembered, those who are important enough to be...
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...In the novel The Bluest Eye the author Toni morrison introduces us the narrator Claudia Macteer. Claudia narrates her life and the environment she was raised in. At the beginning of the story Claudia lives with her loving family and a friend of hers-Pecola Breedlove the protagonist. Pecola is temporarily staying with the Macteer’s because of a family complication she was facing. Although pecola and Claudia were raised in a similar neighborhood the two characters have a polar opposite ideas what is beautiful. Pecola believes that beauty is what she sees when she drinks milk out of the sheril temple cup.When she looks at herself and she sees that she is lacking the things the white girls have. This idea of that there is a default in being black...
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