Toni Morrison Essay Example For Students

Toni Morrison Essay OutlineThe Bluest Eye by Toni MorrisonTHESIS:In the novel The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison incorporates various techniques in The Bluest Eye, such as her use of metaphors, the ironic use of names and the visual images that she uses. I. Background information on Toni MorrisonA. Where she was born. B. Where she attend collegeC. Why she changed her nameD. When she got marriedII. The Bluest EyeA. Summary of The Bluest EyeB. What is a theme?1. The main theme of The Bluest Eye. C. What is a Plot?1. What is the plot of The Bluest Eye?D. How Toni Morrison plays with the names in The Bluest Eye, so they are not what they seem to be. -I-1.The significance of Pecolas nameE. What are the two major metaphors used in The Bluest Eye?-II-Toni Morrison the first black woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, was born Chloe Anthony Wofford on February 18, 1931 in Lorain, Ohio. She was the second of four children to George and Ramah Wofford. Her parents moved to Ohio from the South to escape racism and to find better opportunities in the North. Lorain was a small industrial town populated with immigrant Europeans, Mexicans and Southern blacks who lived next door to each other. Chloe attended an integrated school. In the first grade she was the only black student in her class and the only one who could read. Chloe attended the prestigious Howard University in Washington, D.C., where she majored in English with a minor in classics. Since many people could not pronounce her name correctly she changed it to Toni, a shortened version of her middle name. Toni Wofford graduated Howard University in 1953 with a B.A. in English. She attended Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, and received a masters degree in 1955. After graduating, Toni was offered a job at Texas Southern University in Houston where she taught introductory English. In 1957, she returned to Howard as a member of the faculty. At Howard she met and fell in love with a young Jamaican architect, Harold Morrison. They married in 1958 and had her first son in 1961. Toni continued to teach while taking care of here family, she also joined a small writers group as a temporary escape from an unhappy married life. Each member was required to bring a story or poem for discussion. One week, having nothing to bring, she quickly wrote a story loosely based on a girl she knew in childhood who had prayed to have blue eyes. The story was well received by the group. Toni put it away thinking that she was done with it. When her sons where asleep, she started writing. She dusted off the story in which she had written for discussion in her writers group and decided to make it into a novel. She drew on her memories as a child and expanded on them with her imagination so the characters developed a life of their own. The Bluest Eye was published in 1970, too much critical acclaim, although it was not commercially successful. The Bluest Eye is a novel of initiation set in Lorain, Ohio. Pecola Breedlove, a young black girl, desperately wants blue eyes, thinking that they would make her beautiful. She drinks several quarts of milk at the home of her friends Claudia and Frieda McTeer just to use their Shirley Temple mug and glaze at young Temples blue eyes. One day Pecola is raped by her father, when the child the she conceives dies, Pecola goes mad. She comes to believe that she has the bluest eyes of anyone. In the novel, The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison incorporates various techniques, such as her use of metaphors, the ironic use of names, and the visual images that she uses. The theme of The Bluest Eye, revolves around African Americans conformity to white standards. A woman may whiten her skin, straighten her hair and change its color, but she can not change the color of her eyes. The desire to transform ones identity, itself becomes an inverted desire, becomes the desire for blues eye, which is the symptom of Pecolas instability. The Bluest Eye opens with a Dick and Jane paragraph, a white American Myth far removed from the realities illustrated in the novel. Thereafter, the black narrator Claudia MacTeer relates much of the story, and the reminder, which concerns events that Claudia could not have witnessed, is narrated mostly by an unidentified voice. Claudias narrative reveals the guilt that for a long time plagued her and her sister in connection with another girls miscarriage. The girl, Pecola Breedlove, was pregnant with her own fathers child in the fall of 1941. Told by the different narrators, the understanding of events up to her tragedy is organized according to the four seasons. In the Autumn, the tense shifts form present to past, indicating shifts between the nine year old Claudia and the adult Claudia acting as narrators. The story begins with the arrival of Mr. Henry Washington, a border who will live with the MacTeers. At the same time, Pecola Breedlove comes to live with the MacTeers. She has been put outdoors by her father who has gone to jail and not paid the rent on the apartment. Frieda and Pecola talk about how much they each love Shirley temple. Claudia rebels. She does not like Shirley Temple nor the white dolls that she receives each Christmas with the big blue eyes. To the dismay of the adults, she dismembers these dolls, trying to see if it was that all the world said was lovable. The text shifts to the third person omniscient point of view and gives the reader a brief of the inside of the Breedloves two-room apartment. The whole family shares one bedroom and there is no bath, only a toilet. At the same time the Breedlove family is introduced . The family is described as ugly. Pecolas only refuge from her life is with the three prostitutes who live upstairs and who treat her with affection the only people who do so. Legalization Of Marijuana Analysis EssayThe Dick and Jane snippets show just how prevalent and important the images of white perfection are in Pecolas life. Morrisons strange typography illustrates how irrelevant and inappropriate these images are. Names play an important part in The Bluest Eye, because they are often symbolic of conditions in society and in the context on the story. The name if the novel, The Bluest Eye, is meant to give the reader thinking about how much value is placed on blue eyed little girls. Pecola and her family are representative of the larger African American community and their name Breedlove is ironic because they live in a society that does not breed love. In fact, it breeds hate, hate of blackness and the hatred of oneself. The name MacTeer, can have an argument to be made, that it refers to the fact that the MacTeer girls are the only ones who shed a tear for Pecola. Soaphead church represents as his name suggests the role of the church in African American life. The implication is that the churchs promise that if you worship God and pray to him that everything will be alright is no better than Soapheads promise to Pecola that she will have blue eyes. Morrison reveals the significance of Pecolas name through the character of Maureen Peal. Maureen confuses Pecolas name with the name of the character in the movie Imitation of Life. I just moved here. My name is Maureen peal. Whats yoursPecolaPecola? Wasnt that the name of the girl in Imitation of Life?I dont know. What is that?The picture show, you know. Where this mulatto girl hates her mother cause she is black and ugly but then cries at the funeral. It was real sad. Everybody cries in it. Claudette Colbert too.Oh Pecolas voice was no more than a sigh. Anyway, her name was Pecola too. She was pretty. When it comes back, Im going to see it again.(Morrison56-57)Maureens reference to the film illustrates how white cultural values shape the black communitys idea of physical beauty. But Maureens discrepancy, was that the name of the girl in Imitation of Life, is not in fact Pecola, but Peola. The irregularity is appropriate because it denotes Pecolas failure to be like her cinematic double. Maureens mistake is relevance as well, for Morrison in her act of (mis)naming signifies the communitys power to deny an individual autonomy and to use people for its own needs. In The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison uses metaphors, in which she wants the reader to think one way, but in reality she is talking about a whole other subject. The definition of a metaphor is a figure of speech in which a word or phrase literally denoting one kind of object or idea is used in place of another subject to suggest a likeness or an analogy between them. She uses metaphors in The Bluest Eye to describe the conditions under which African Americans in general and Pecola are forced to live. There are two major metaphors in The Bluest Eye, one of marigolds and of dandelions. Claudia, looking back as an adult says, at the beginning of the book, there were no marigolds in the fall of 1941(Morrison 9). She and her sister (Frieda) plant seed with the belief that the marigolds seeds would grow and survive, and so would Pecolas baby (Morrison 149). Morrisons scope to all African Americans on the last page I even think that the land of the entire country was hostile to marigolds that year. Certain seeds it will not nurture, certain fruits it will not bear(Morrison160). The implication is that Pecola like so many other African Americans never had the chance to grow and succeed, because she lived in a society (soil) that was inherently racist, and would not nurture her. The other metaphor, the dandelion is also an important metaphor that Morrison uses because it represents Pecolas image of herself. See, Pecola passes some dandelions going into Mr. Yacobowskis store. Why she wonders, so people call them weeds? She thought that they were pretty(Morrison 41). After leaving the store and being humiliated by Mr. Yacobowski, she again passes the same dandelions and thinks; They are ugly. They are weeds (Morrison 43). Pecola has transferred societys dislikes of her unto the dandelions. In all of Toni Morrisons novels, she uses a systematic use of color imagery to promote particular responses or sensual experiences. The following is a list of the colors that she uses to create visual imagery in her novels and also what they stand for. Red = alarmGreen = tranquillityBlue = pleasure nurturingWhite = mysticalBoth the blue and the white used together in her imagery stands for, positive life-giving forces, peaceful, non-violent death or even insanity. Toni Morrison is a very successful African American woman, who in her life has overcome a lot, not only in her personal life, but also in the world of being a writer. She has won the Nobel Prize in Literature in which she was the first African American woman to do so. The various writing techniques that she uses not only in The Bluest Eye, but also in all of her novels, are extraordinary. I hope that many people have shared the experience that I have by reading her books by getting an insight to the many ways in which not only a writer but also anyone can incorporate in his or her writings. Works CitedBakerman, Jane. The Seams Cant Show: An Interview with Toni Morrison. Black American Literature forum. 12(1978): 56-60. Dittermar, Linda.Will the Circle be Unbroken? The Politics of Form in The Bluest Eye.Novel. 23.2 (Winter1990): 137-55. Leflore, Fannie,Author Morrison uses fiction to challenge prevailing images, Milwaukee (Wisconsin) Journal, October 20,1990Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Washington Square Press-Pocket Books, 1970. Stepto, Robert B. Intimate Things In Place A Conversation with Toni Morrison. Massachusetts Review. 18(1977): 473-89