Their research clearly showed that the Asian-American women in both studies were schooled by popular culture to objectify themselves, their bodies and their cultures. They report that the young women experienced a pernicious internalization of dominant ideas of Americanization (Lee and Vaught, 457-466)
She discusses how a unique quality of media is their public pervasiveness and people's knowledge that the images or ideas they see are also seen by many others, often millions of others. Moreover, individuals believe that others are more strongly affected by media portrayals (Milkie,190-210)
Pecola's pregnancy and psychosis represent extreme consequences of racism. Werrlein asserts that, as various characters in The Bluest Eye "label, degrade and define Pecola's body so as to disavow the realities of racism in their own lives, Morrison suggests that they mirror the work of a nation that ironically invests in the ideology of childhood innocence at the expense of its children" (Werrlein, 53- 72)
Further, red is also viewed to describe emotions that stir the blood, such as anger, passion and love. (Gagliardi)
According to Baby Suggs, "There is no bad luck in the world but whitefolks." (Morrison, p
She was born in 1931 in Ohio and had three siblings. Her family was filled with storytellers and musicians and she grew up listening to the tales of generations gone by as they were handed down through the relatives (Harris, 2001)
It tells the life of a spirit of a dead baby girl, which took a human form to confront her mother. However, far from being a mere ghost story, 'Beloved' also presents how slavery has denied its victims of individuality and the true value of freedom (Malmgren, 1995)
At the same time however, the novel has an optimist note about it, and is meant as a lesson for the black people and the way in which they can cope with the trauma of slavery by recovering their own sense of identity, which brings them true independence: "What Beloved suggests is that while the suffering of the 'black and angry dead' is the inescapable psychological legacy of all African-Americans, they can rescue themselves from the trauma of that legacy by directly confronting it and uniting to loosen its fearsome hold."(Bowers, 75) Works Cited Bowers, Susan
"(Morrison, 139) as Carl Malmgren comments in his study Mixed Genres and the Logic of Slavery, according to the logic of slavery the African-Americans were objects or animals, whose sense of self had been completely atrophied by the dehumanizing ownership: "Slaves as animals, slaves as objects, slaves as commodities -- the common denominator here is the denial of the selfhood of the slave, the conversion of the Other to Object, the reduction of human beings to checker pieces, counters, or commodities."(Iyasere, 198) the slaves only existed in the way in which they were defined by their white masters
Whites might dirty her all right, but not her best thing, her beautiful, magical best thing -- the part of her that was clean."(Morrison, 251) Thus, even when the masters were somewhat mild and allowed more freedom to the blacks, like Mr
As Morrison herself asserted in an interview, her design in Jazz was to give the impression that the book "was talking, writing itself in a sense."(Cutter) as such, although the story seems to be told from the point-of-view of several characters, such as Violet, Joe Trace, Alice Mansfield or Felice, that are guided by an omniscient narrator, the text speaks for itself as if it had no author whatsoever
The very first lines of the novel seem to belong to a gossipy and well-informed narrator: "Sth, I know that woman."(Morrison
Later in the book she is raped by her own father, and she "loses all sense of reality," Byerman explains on page 56 of his essay ("Beyond Realism: The Fictions of Toni Morrison"). Sadly, Pecola visits a con man that poses as a person capable of performing magic, and Pecola comes to believe "she has actually undergone the change in eye color that she so strongly and pathetically desired" (Byerman 56)
And poor Pecola's parents didn't accept her even from the beginning. Her mother, Pauline, looked at Pecola right after she was born and said, "Head full of pretty hair, but Lord she was ugly" (Harris 30)
Add to that, Morrison often uses historical events to weave into her stories so she makes her point that way, too. The critic Jane Kuenz comments in African-American Review that Pecola's parents live in a storefront apartment, and overhead from the apartment three "magnificent whores live" (Kuenz 1993)
In this case, there are good and bad lessons to be understood by the reader. Claudia, the narrator, points out that at first mama believed the children were doing something dirty; but after mama discovered where the blood was coming from, and that Pecola was just "ministratin" (Morrison 31), Claudia carried the "little-girl-gone-to-woman pants" (the blood-soiled underpants) and mama took Pecola into the bathtub to wash her
"And let the things you own other things. Then you'll own yourself and other people too" (Morrison, p
The total absence of human recognition -- the glazed separateness." (Bloom, 21-22) Thus, the main idea of the novel is that of the continuous mirror- reflection between the self and society
We honed our egos on her, padded our characters with her frailty, and yawned in the fantasy of our strength. " (Morrison, 59) Claudia's statement intimates that everyone who knew Pecola saw her the way she saw herself: as being ugly and awkward, and that, in a sense the image that the rest of the world had of her was a reflection of the image she had herself of her own person and inner self
Literary critic Harold Bloom continues, "Pecola, certainly, is expunged from human society even before she has awakened to a consciousness of self. Pecola stands for the triple indemnity of the female Black child: children, Blacks, and females are devalued in American culture" (Bloom 30)