Toni Morrison: The Bluest Eye
Toni Morrison, a black American, was born in 1931in Lorain, Ohio. She grew up in an environment steeped in black culture. She had a family that encouraged her to be proud of her origins, believe in herself. At school she was the only black child in the class.In 1955 she received a master's degree in English from Cornell University. In 1957 she married a Jamaican architect. Their marriage ended in 1964 when their two sons were little.She was a senior editor for the publisher Random House then thought African-American literature and creative writing at Yale University. She has a passion for black history and issues of black identity, an academic and personal interest in race."The Bluest Eye (1970) is the novel that launched Toni Morrison into the spotlight as a talented African-American writer." "Her first novel focuses on young girls and the damaging effect of stereotypical white ideals of beauty." The idea for The Bluest Eye came partly from one of Morrison's elementary school classmate, a black girl, whose wish for the eyes of a white girl exposed her disdain for her own racial identity and proposed questions about beauty and inferiority. The Author became i
Probably the most destructive ideas in the history of human thought. We mustn't do bad things in front of those pretty eyes'" (The Bluest Eye, p. The characters in the novel suffer from an internalized racism that is supported by the society in which they live. Maureen is a girl who being a mulatto is in the same grade as Pecola, "but the two girls are treated very differently. She has lighter skin than most blacks, has green eyes, and wears her hair in thick braids. Maureen Peal is a symbol of beauty in the novel. They scorn her family: "Black e mo. More importantly, these books show that happiness can only be attained through beauty, and that an ugly person can never really be happy or good. Names in the novel often symbolize conditions in society or in the context of the story. Morrison is shows that children learn race hatered from their parents through Geraldine, a colored woman, who refused to tolerate "niggers", and her son Junior. In Pecola's tragedy Morrison's uses her critical eye to reveal societal and situational forces working against an entirely vulnerable little girl.
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