Tuesday, September 4, 2007
The Bluest Eye
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison is a novel that expresses hardships that some young black woman may have endured in the 1940s. One of the main hardships that I noticed in The Bluest Eye was that of Pecola. Pecola felt as if she was too ugly or 'too black'. Pecola longed for bright blue eyes because she felt like that would make her prettier, more like a Shirley Temple doll. Although Toni Morrison showed that Pecola and maybe some of the young women from that time did not accept themselves or there skin color she also had characters who did. Claudia is one character that does not want to be more like Shirley Temple or like the white children in her town. When Claudia is given a little white doll with blue eyes for Christmas she is more interested in destroying it rather than worshiping it. I would ask if because of this behavior Claudia is hateful to the white community or if she is simply very secure with her inherent culture and is sick of the white culture being idolized by the black community.
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4 comments:
you are badass.
I think you touched upon something. Claudia is at an age when beauty and femininity is not her primary concern. She doesn't want to look like the white dolls nor does she want to mother them. Like with her concern with Bojangles and Shirley Temple, Shirley should not be the one up on the stage with her friend, her family. It should be her up there having fun. And instead of a white doll filling up her time, she'd much rather spend time with her own family.
Shirley temple has two significant meanings to me. First, I used to watch her on TV all the time as a kid. Second, since my last name is Shirley some people used to call me Shirley Temple as a nickname. I never really liked it much but it was kind of hard to avoid. I think this relates to the story in that there are somethings in life that people will say and do that will not please you and there isn't a whole lot you can do about it besides ignore it and express how you feel about it. I think that the expression of the doll being torn up was her way of telling the world that she is sick of it and is willing to fight against white idolism.
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