RACISM AND RELIGION IN TONI MORRISON'S THE BLUEST EYE (original) (raw)

Black empowerment and Afro-American values in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye

IIUC Studies

The Bluest Eye of Toni Morrison is extraordinarily significant, as it addresses the different sides of American literature, and the lives of the Afro-American people. Although the conventional theological aspects of white culture can negatively influence other characters of Morrison, it is Pecola whose life appears to be increasingly defenseless against the impulses of the individuals who have accepted the Western custom. In a democratic country, people generally have the same value, but there are still prejudices in the concepts of beauty and worthiness. The search for freedom, black identity, the nature of evil and the robust voices of African-Americans have become themes for African-American literature. Folklore covers the history of black and white interaction in the United States and also summarizes the feelings expressed in protest literature1. Morrison argues that the survival of the dark ladies in a white dominated society depends on loving their own way of life and dark rac...

Racism: Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye a Mouthpiece of Cloured People

2018

Racism is basically a belief in the superiority of one race to another which results in discrimination and prejudice towards people based on their race or ethnicity. The life of African-American cloured people have been affected by racism. These so-called systems of social and psychological restrictions make coloured people to feel inferiors. Toni Morrison has gained reputation internationally with the publication of her first novel The Bluest Eye. This novel mirroring us the terrible consequences for blacks personalizing the values of a white culture that rejects them both directly and indirectly. Even though slavery is abolished legally through the tough efforts of eminent leaders but still the African-Americans are not considered equal to the whites. The Black people are trying to identify themselves with the white and their cultural ways. Toni Morrison insists on Black cultural heritage and solicits the African-Americans to be proud of their Black identity. This paper presents t...

The African American Woman in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye

2010

In this study we examine how the society, the family and one‟s own psyche are antithetical to the Afro-American woman in Toni Morrison‟s The Bluest Eye. Societal, familial and psychic factors are the triple forces that put the blacks of America in jeopardy. The article traces out the obstruction constructed against the blacks by the white community. Blacks are dehumanized and minimized from subject-hood to object-hood. The paper also discovers how an unhealthy family life alienates one from the other resulting in little sense of belonging. Family, which ought to nourish and develop the individual, degrades into a destructive factor. The study examines the psychological trauma and the danger lurking within the African-American woman. Unable to meet the needs of one‟s environment the individual is on the quest to quench the expectation of others. In the process the individual becomes a prey to depression and frustration which ultimately leads to self-mutilation. In order to have a tru...

Woman As A Victim of Racial Hatred: A Study of Toni Morrison’s Novel The Bluest Eye

Abstract The woman represents the symbol of nature. She contributes to make progress in the family, society as well as country through her active participation same as the male counterpart. But woman is suppressed into lower status compared to the male power and position in the society intentionally, even after her great contribution in reality. The evidence can be found in the portrayal of woman in the literatures from the different

Analysis of Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye from Black Feminist Perspective

Ars Artium, 2014

The Bluest Eye addresses the issue of self disapproval but in the broader black feminist perspective. More than any other human being, pain, disapproval and humiliation are an inseparable part of a black woman's life. Toni Morrison is a black woman and these are not foreign to her. She writes with a personal knowledge of the pain of the black women. In this novel she has depicted their isolation and hurdles in leading a fulfilling human life. Morrison chooses an eleven year old black girl-Pecola Breedlove-as the central character of her novel because she wants to bring forward the most neglected of human species. This novel addresses what can unquestionably be called a 'disease' in black women's psyche and analyses its root causes. This story of an ugly black girl also raises several sociological and psychological questions. The novel calls into question the contemporaneous slogan, "Black is Beautiful" and challenges readers to consider, the seeds of black hatred, the demons within black psyche, and the culprit or with the broader culture that contributes to black low self esteem.

TONI MORRISON'S THE BLUEST EYE: A POSTMODERN RENDERING

Toni Morison, a prolific American writer has written on the pathetic condition of the suppressed and downtrodden with zest and zeal to highlight the western ideological apparatuses through which the African and other colonized countries are represented. The Bluest Eye is Morrison's first novel published in 1970. In this novel, she questions the western standard of beauty, revealed through the postmodern perspective that it's socially constructed and how this strategic subversion has created a 'myth of white is right'. Morrison wants to persuade the African-Americans from recognizing themselves through the western camera obscura. Instead, she wants to subvert that tendency and boosts them to value and celebrate the blackness. Blackness is pride not a curse, as she demonstrates how the black women characters suffer through the biased representation. Morrison manifests that the white voice is inappropriate to dictate the contours of African-American life. In this novel, the novelist not only focuses on the pride of blackness but also reveals that how the white ideology impacts the black community. This paper seeks to trace how a good piece of work in literature like Morrison's The Bluest Eye has dispelled the ideological fogs and how she attacks and problematizes the concept of 'beauty'. This paper will also explore the main characters' response to the western standard of beauty. The Bluest Eye is a novel of revelation through which Morrison wants to revivify the African-American identity and tried to dismantle the draconian parameters of western ideological apparatuses. Morrison like other black writers has portrayed a world in which the blacks have been shown as accepting and rejecting the western dominating culture. This identification and rejection has an impact on the psychology of the black Americans. She formulates her concept by revealing the inner turmoil of the black selves and distinct features of the Breedlove family which make it unfit in the white aesthetics and finally led the family to destruction. Morrison as a black writer has aptly represented the ambivalent attitude of the black American, being inculcated by rhetorical discourse of the white authorities:

Racism and Representation of Racialized Beauty in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye

SMART MOVES JOURNAL IJELLH

The American novelist Toni Morrison’s novel The Bluest Eye portrays black society and deals with the themes of black victimization and racial oppression. It presents a prolonged representation of the means in which the standards of internalized white beauty contort the life and existence of black women. This paper explores and elucidates the impact of race, racial oppression and representation in The Bluest Eye. And how racism also edifices the hatredness between Blackand White communities. This paper will discuss various issues and concepts such as Race, Race in the Colonial Period, Racializing the Other and Stereotyping. The paper also deals with understanding Representation through the ideas of Saussure, Barthes, Levi-Strauss, Foucault, Geertz, and Said. Racism is primarily a belief in the supremacy and dominance of one race upon another that consequences in the differences, discrimination and prejudice of people towards one another rooted and established on their race or ethnici...

Gender and Identity Agency in Toni Morrison’s the Bluest Eye

2019

Imperialism and colonial practices dominated an entire system of representations, configuring ideological structures guided by a supposed essentialism, which, in turn, justified the oppression of women and the black population based on gender and race. This paper analyses theories that focus on a pluralistic understanding of the world. In the context of postcolonialism, the review of cultural criticism through the literature of prominent women of America proposes a critical reading about the continuity between colonial relations of domination and oppression, underscoring the dual colonisation of women. The assessment of The Bluest Eye (1970), by Toni Morrison reveals a socio-historical understanding of colonialism and its repercussions in contemporary times. The analysis of the authorial voice aims to identify how her perspectives reveal a literature of social engagement, allowing other subjects to become aware of social injustice still very present in the Americans, through the con...

Subversive Politics of Racism in Toni Morrison's the Bluest Eye

2013

The narrator in The Bluest Eye states that "A little black girl yearns for the blue eyes of a little white girl, and the horror at the heart of her yearning is exceeded only by the evil of fulfillment" (162). The little black girl is Pecola Breedlove who is dissatisfied with the world around her. She is born into a society that is confused as it shuns its own cultural values and craves for self-gratification in the culture of the whites. In the novel this tendency of the society finds its symbolic and subversive expression in Pecola's quest for blue eyes which represent the western/racist ideals of beauty. The quest results in the suffering and anguish of the blacks which is presented by Toni Morrison in The Bluest Eye. This article proposes to analyse how the subversive politics of racism is operative in the narrative in the novel.