Example research essay topic: Tony Morrisons Bluest Eyes A Book Review - 2,462 words

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TONY MORRISONS BLUEST EYES A BOOK REVIEW INDEX S. NO HEADING PAGE NO 1 INTRODUCTION 3 2. ANALYSIS 4 3 CONCLUSION 11 4 BIBILIOGRAPHY 13 1. INTRODUCTION: Tony Morrison was a noble prize winner for the literature and belonged to the working class American family.

After graduation, Morrison became an English instructor at Texas Southern University in Houston, Texas. In 1957, she returned to Howard to teach English. In 1958, she married Howard Morrison. She had two children and got divorced in 1964. She moved to Syracuse, New York, where she was employed as a textbook editor. She joined later New York Random house as editor.

In 1970, she published her first novel Bluest Eye. She was appointed to Albert Schweitzer chair at the University at Albany in 1984. She was appointed in the spring of 1989 as Professor of the Council of the Humanities at Princeton University and got retirement during May 2006. Her novel Beloved has been declared as the best novel of the past 25 years by the New York Times Book Review. She had won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1993 for her collected works. Ms Morrison is well known for her writings on issues of races and gender and this is well extremely replicated in her first novel the Bluest eyes.

Ms Morrison, in her first novel had vividly explained about the damage that internalized racism can do. In this book, she evaluates racial self-loathing; its sources and consequences by following the experiences and interactions of several members of the small community of Lorain, Ohio in the early 1940 s. She demonstrates how the prevalent cultural beliefs of the day; that white is beautiful and black is ugly and bad can be believed so inherently that it literally forces people to self destruction and madness. 2. ANALYSIS: Morrison explains her wish to understand the damaging internalization of assumptions of immutable inferiority origination in an outside gaze. [ 1 ]. It is the outside gaze of all the towns people that assist to destroy the character of Pecola Breedlove, but more importantly it is recognized cultural white norms that indoctrinate the minds of each of the characters in this story.

This is the real culprit that is responsible for creating a situation where each of these black characters is supported to feel repulsive and stupid and mediocre. This is the demon that permits the white characters to feel better, superior and smarter. Ms Morison illustrates this most expressively through one of the main characters: a young girl named Pecola Bree love, but also through other characters as well. The story starts as a narrative by nine-year-old Claudia as she talks about her daily life.

She and her friend Frieda Macteer lives in Lorain, Ohio, with their parents. It is at the close end of the Greatest Depression, and the girls parents are more anxious with food and shelter than with attending to the mental health of their daughters. However, through the actions of their parents, it is evident that they do care and love their children. The Macteer's take in a boarder, Henry Washington, to help with their fiances and also a young girl named Pecola, who has been forced outdoors by her father drunken act of trying to burn down their own home. Frieda and Claudia feel pity for Pecola and befriend her. They are in fact the only two characters in the entire story who show Pecola any kindness or support whatsoever.

Believing that whiteness is beautiful, Pecola loves Shirley Temple and she considers herself as ugly. In fact, Pecola drinks three quarts of milk plainly to handle the Shirley Temple cup and see Sweet Shirley's face. Pecola joins back in with her family and her life is touchingly gloomy. Her father being a drunkard whereas her mother is more worried with the well-being of the while family for whom she works. The couple always engaged in quarrel and usually seen beating one another. Moreover, her brother, Sammy, frequently runs away from home.

Pecola is fully aware of her ugliness and is of the opinion that if she had blue eyes, she would be loved and her life would be altered. Pecola continuously receiving feed back about her unattractiveness from various peoples like the grocer, the local teenagers who always make fun of her, Mr. Jacobowski looks down at her when she purchases candy, Maureen, a light skinned black girl who befriended her on temporary basis, makes fun of her too. She was also accused of killing a neighbors cat and for this her mother called her a nasty little black bitch.

Readers given to understand that Pecola parents had a difficult living. Pauline's mother had a crippled foot and due to this, she always had an inferiority complex. Whenever she witnesses a film, a gloomy thought used to invade her that she is ugly and romantic love is reserved for those who are beautiful. She indirectly encourages her husbands violent manners so as to feel good about the dominance of above something. She feels most alive when she is at work, cleaning a white womans residence as it confers her authority she lacks at her own home.

As the result, her home and her children suffer for it. Pecola's father, Cholly, was abandoned by his parents when he was child and was raised by his great aunt, who died when he was a teenager. He was disgraced by two white men who witnessed him having sex for the first time and made him continue while they observed him. He ran away to locate his father and when he found his father, he was turned away in a miserable and distressing way. When Cholly met Pauline, [his wife and Pecola mother], he was more or less a scratched adult. He always had the feeling that he had been trapped in his marriage and has no direction.

One day, Cholly returned home in drunken state and found Pecola washing dishes. With mixture of hatred and motives of tenderness that are fuelled by guilt, he raped her. When Pauline found Pecola in unconscious state, she disbelieved what had happened to her and instead of consoling her, she punched her. Unable to bear the shock and ill-treatment of her mother, Pecola went to Soaphead Church, a fake healer and abuser of young girls and asked him for blue eyes. On the advice of the healer, she killed a neighbors dog Claudia and Frieda found that Pecola was raped by her father and she was pregnant. Both of them wanted that baby should be born and alive.

They were ready to spare the money which they have saved after working hard mainly to buy a bicycle. They also decided to buy and plant marigold seeds. They were of the opinion, if the flowers so alive, so were the Pecola's child. Unfortunately, the baby died on its premature birth so as the marigold flower failed to blossom. Cholly, who again raped Pecola for the second time and ran away but unexpectedly died in a workhouse. Besieged with madness, Pecola finally was on the belief that her long cherished wish has been satisfied and now that she has the bluest eyes!

As a creator, Ms Morrison succeeded in portraying the sad conditions of an improvised black family in a small town in Ohio during 1941 and what was regarded as destructive and ultimately dysfunctional as well. Pecola character not only portrayed the self hatred but also how it fostered. Pecola character had been illuminated with inferiority complex as she knew that she lacked beauty. Abuse from the various corner made the situation to worse for Pecola. Pecola was abused by her parents, teachers, fellow students, other town folks [Geraldine and Junior] and Soaphead Church [the false healer]. All this ill-treatment led her to madness.

The character of Pecola is the replica of black community's self loathing and faith in its own ugliness and she is the edifice of human suffering and human cruelty. The author highlights how mental health is affected if the skin color is black and prevalence of socio economic status that dissuades equal respect to black. Pecola character reminds the social status that existed during 1941 as symbol of the black community or as an improvised abused black child which lacks proper mental and physical health. The reason for Pecola's failure to attain maximum mental or physical status as she belonged to extremely low socio economic status, her black race, lack of medical facility as even the cost of burial was out of reach for many of these families and her feminine gender. Her parents failed to shape her mental health but were responsible for its deterioration. Other characters like Frieda, Claudia, Macteer, Geraldine and Junior though belonged to similar socioeconomic status and black race, but their status was somewhat improved as that of Pecola as they had support and encouragement from their parents.

Thus, these characters had some inner strength and with that they waged a war with white superiority of their own culture. Though the book was written in 1970 which narrated the 1941 incidents but the still there exists white superiority in the U. S society. Even today, black and other non-white races are in the lowest socioeconomic levels. Ms Morrison was successful in establishing the ways in which internalized white beauty standards distort the lives of the black girls, women and men. The Bluest eyes deals exhaustively at childhood sexual, physical and emotional abuse.

It portrays how poverty and racism acts as a deterrent in social development. The reader of this story will no doubt will have sunken heart and will definitely work towards social change. Tony Morrison novel The bluest eyes has brought into light many issues like black female prejudice, racial discrimination, gender problems and child abuse. The story mainly spotlights the low-esteem and inferiority complex countenanced by young black women in U. S due to American superiority culture. Morrison had brought the aspirations of blacks through Pecola character as she is infatuated for getting blond hair, white skin the bluest eye and the red cheek.

All through the novel, Pecola implore for blue eyes on the belief that once she got the blue eye, all her miseries will disappear. Pecola was on the wrong belief that if she drank plenty of milk, then color of the skin will automatically change from black to white. Pecola was distressed when Mr. Yacobowski, the candy store owner refused to touch her or even refused to treat her as a real person due to her black color. The racial discrimination prevailed everywhere, in school, in shops, in streets and where not. In school, Pecola, Frieda and Claudia were always ignored by teachers and distressed by the fellow students.

Contrarily, Maureen, a charming girl was admired and coveted by all. She fascinated the entire school. When school teachers called on her, they grinned encouragingly. Further, black boys didnt stalk her in the halls. When Maureen was assigned as work partner in the school, white girls wont suck their teeth. She was not stoned by the white students.

Black girls left her alone when she used the sink in the girls toilet and their eyes kneeled under sliding lids. All these description about Maureen revealed that Pecola, as a black girl, had to suffer all the above actions which Maureen was spared. One may think that Maureen was a white girl but was actually not a white girl but a light skinned black girl. Even though Maureen was a black girl, she enjoyed much positive approaches from teachers, fellow students since she possessed a light black skin as opposed to dark black skin of Pecola. Pecola life was very miserable as she was tormented by all the characters around and this led her to insanity and at last, death... Morrisons state of mind was reflected through character James Baldwin.

Unlike Frieda and Claudia, Pecola lacked inner confidence that would facilitate her to resist against racist white and the black identity forced on her. The misery had started even at the time of birth of Pecola as her mother Pauline after having delivered her commented that she was a black bitch. 3. CONCLUSION: Morrison places more emphasize on the de facto separation, where black and white segregate themselves rather than segregation imposed by the government. Thus, by separation, the white and black organize themselves into two groups: the black, the ugly and the white, the beautiful. This misbelief, this illness that white frame the standards for beauty is the foundation for the commencement of demoralization of breed loves and hatred. The pity is that black is still separated from other blacks there making to feel that as if the other is more important in life.

The white conducted themselves to make it believe that white is beautiful thereby making little black girls yearn for the blue eyes of a little white girl. [p 204 ]. Pecola's catastrophe is disastrously predestined but by escaping into madness she is at least free. Readers final image of Pecola is her rocking back and forth, conversing with invisible with invisible admirers, gaze locked in the mirror. She sees the world with the bluest eyes that take away the ache and unattractiveness, eyes that reflect only one kind of pretty. Readers will struck by the hollow echoes, the deep grooves carved into our collectively psyches from racism and judgment over skin color.

Thus, the novel deals with small-town meanness and racial hatred leeched into the bone like a slow-acting poison. Morrison finally emphasized through this novel that black is made to believe that If one want to one life to live, let him be live it as a blond and this myth has devastated Pecola life. WORKS CITED Alexander, Allen. "The Fourth Face: The Image of God in Toni Morrison's 'The Bluest Eye. '. " African American Review 32. 2 (1998): 293 +. "Beautiful, Blurred Vision; 'Bluest Eye's ees Sadness Grandeur in Tale of Race Identity, Bigotry. " The Washington Times 20 Oct. 2006: D 03. Bloom, Harold, ed. Toni Morrisons the Bluest Eye. Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 1999.

Boyd, Valerie. "Black and Blue: An Unforgettable Literary Debut, the Bluest Eye Was Toni Morrison's Attempt to Expel the Despair of a Generation. " Book Jan. -Feb. 2003: 27 +. Ken, Jane. "'The Bluest Eye': Notes on History, Community, and Black Female Subjectivity. " African American Review 27. 3 (1993): 421 +. Moses, Cat. "The Blues Aesthetic in Toni Morrison's the Bluest Eye. " African American Review 33. 4 (1999): 623. Werrlein, Debra T. "Not So Fast, Dick and Jane: Re imagining Childhood and Nation in the Bluest Eye. " MELUS 30. 4 (2005): 53 +.

Research essay sample on Tony Morrisons Bluest Eyes A Book Review