Examples Of Spirituality In The Sound Of Silence

Pecola obsesses over all things white because the town makes fun of her blackness. Pecola is alone due to her lack of beauty. In one scene Pecola is laughed at called “e mo” and other names as other black children make fun of her blackness. Morrisons uses collective voice to show the racial segregation at the time was not only white people, but it was the different shades of black. Something that someone cannot control. The boy bullying Pecola “had extemporized a verse made up of two insults about matters over which the victim had no control: the color of her skin”(Morrison, check page#). Pecola, only a young girl begins to become outcasted from society especially after

How Africa Shaped the Christian Mind: Rediscovering the African Seedbed of Western Christianity By Thomas C. Oden Downers Grove, Ill: Intervarsity Press, 2008, 204 pp, $ 19.00 hardcover. Thomas Oden, an accomplished scholar in systematic and historical theology, and retired professor at Drew University, has offered a compelling and positively provocative work in How Africa Shaped the Christian Mind. A work of scholarly repentance, he ably repudiates the posture of western theologians and historians (i.e. Harnack, Bauer, Schleiermacher) toward Africa’s theological legacy (pp. 57-59). His present work is the fruit of thirty years of reading the early African fathers, and in the last fourteen, he has served as the general editor of the

Africa, being the second largest continent on earth, has always enticed foreigners to exploit their land and way of life. The biggest offender of trying to diminish their way of life is the western presence, always attempting to alter their normality into their own because they see it as the best way to live, which is not always the case. Throughout history, Africa has been under the impression of the white man and their customs, which can be demonstrated in the novels The Posionwood Bible, by Barbra Kingsolver, and The Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad. Both Conrad and Kingsolver display the futile efforts of the western presence to “civilize” Africans with their numerous points of view, clever symbolism, and conveying diction.

Throughout all of history there has been an ideal beauty that most have tried to obtain. But what if that beauty was impossible to grasp because something was holding one back. There was nothing one could do to be ‘beautiful’. Growing up and being convinced that one was ugly, useless, and dirty. For Pecola Breedlove, this state of longing was reality. Blue eyes, blonde hair, and pale white skin was the definition of beauty. Pecola was a black girl with the dream to be beautiful. Toni Morrison takes the reader into the life of a young girl through Morrison’s exceptional novel, The Bluest Eye. The novel displays the battles that Pecola struggles with each and every day. Morrison takes the reader through the themes of whiteness and beauty,

History shows that both Africans and African Americans alike faced unique problems prior to and during the 1800's, particularly prior to 1865. One such problem is the issue of Diaspora and how culture and slavery has affected the choice of religion. It is the purpose of this paper to expose comparatively the extent to which individuals have been influenced by these issues. One such individual is Olaudah Equiano. By following and analyzing some of the key moments of faith in his life, this paper seeks to expose the extent to which the series of controversial dialectical incidents that happen throughout his early life, i.e., his cultural African religious traditions

Toni Morrison’s novel, The Bluest Eye, presents the lives of several impoverished black families in the 1940’s in a rather unconventional and painful manner. Ms. Morrison leads the reader through the lives of select children and adults, describing a few powerful incidents, thoughts and experiences that lend insight into the motivation and. behavior of these characters. In a somewhat unconventional manner, the young lives of Pauline Williams Breedlove and Charles (Cholly) Breedlove are presented to the reader. Through these descriptions, the reader comes to understand how they become the kind of adults they are. Background information is given not necessarily to incur sympathy but to lend understanding.

The rape of Pecola is a tragic occurrence. In The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison focuses heavily on the topic of her rape. Morrison shows how the rape has affected Pecola by creating a powerful and compelling tale, allowing the reader to connect with Pecola and better empathize with her. Morrison’s stylistic choices and use of powerful language make her story even more commanding and eye-catching and further the reader’s understanding of Pecola’s misery and their sympathy towards her.

In a time where being black is equated with being ugly, Pecola Breedlove struggles to find beauty in herself and the world around her due to her race. With the beauty standards reinforced to her since birth through the media and the society she lives in, she sees no option but to conform to them. In “The Bluest Eye”, Toni Morrison uses the characterization of the black women in her novel to show how society has caused the black community to internalize white beauty standards.

Throughout history man has developed wrong conceptions of things mainly because man lacks correct knowledge. Such becomes the case for European culture’s ideas of Africa. Chinua Achebe combats these preconceived notions through their Greek like society, the language in which the book is written, and the beliefs of the people both religious and moral.

The Bluest Eye is a 1970 novel written by American author Toni Morrison. The novel depicts a year in the life of an 11 year-old black girl named Pecola who believes that having blue eyes would make her beautiful and worthy of the love of others. Throughout the novel, Morrison takes us through the perspectives of important figures in Pecola’s youth, including her father, Cholly, who drunkenly rapes her and leaves her pregnant. Morrison explores the psychological repercussions of a young black girl who is raised in a society that base their ideals of beauty on “whiteness”. I will be using a blend of Frye’s fictive modes and Hero From Across the Sea and Female Archetypal Imagery in order to demonstrate how Toni Morrison in her novel The Bluest

The value of Morrison’s Bluest Eye lies not only in its eloquent prose or elegant stylistic approach, but in the dimension that it adds to second wave feminism. Taking a departure from the orderly world of the white households we have read so much about in feminist literature of the time, the story of Pecola and Pauline introduces us to a world that is vastly unfamiliar, but no less significant in its existence and validity; a world that is a stark contrast from the Dick-and-Jane world in the preamble or those we have seen in the worlds crafted by Levin or Kaufman; instead of focalizing around the challenges that White adult females face in a White patriarchal society, she turns the lens to black girlhood not only to highlight its peripherality

In the novel The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison portrays the psychological murder of the most vulnerable and fragile member of society, a little black girl, in order to criticize and condemn the influence of racial discourses upon the self, to the extent that they can demolish the sense of identity. These discourses are based on stereotypes which in the novel take the form of the canon of white beauty, being the blue eyes the epitomized image. In order to make the reader aware of this fact, Morrison brings a powerless and voiceless figure, Pecola Breedlove, to the centre of attention in order to condemn why and how she considers rejection (of herself, and it implies her identity too) as legitimate. As a consequence, she is unable to cope with reality and, therefore, she needs to construct an invented world to survive, which leads her to live in madness.

Racial oppression, the definition of beauty, internalized racism, and sexual violence are a few of the recurring themes that women experience throughout Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye” and while some emerge from oppression, there is one character who remains a victim of various characters until the very end. Lois Tyson defines in “Critical Theory Today”, that a suspended woman is “the victim of men and society as a whole, with few or no options, ‘suspended’ because she can’t do anything about her situation” (390). Pecola Breedlove throughout the duration of the novel finds herself the victim of judgment from society, but the victim of male power both mentally and physically.

While Latin American theology wanted to set itself apart, African theology wanted to prove its theology coincided within the Bible. In some instances African theology was viewed as different and inadequate from the ideas of Western theology. One of the documents I reflected on was by John Mbiti. He expressed, “The Bible is very much an African book, in which African Christians and theologians see themselves and their people reflected and in which they find a personal place of dignity and acceptance before God.” Unlike Latin America, theology was a deep connection in the lives of individuals in Africa. It was a personal reflection of life and a worldview they felt enhanced the Bible.

African Traditional Religions are still practiced today, along with Christianity and Islam. The original religions of Africa “are not static”; according to Mayo, “contacts with Christian and Islamic traditions have brought about transformations and syncretism of all three” a perfect example of the triple heritage of Africa[5]. Christianity made its way into African culture before Islam did, with its first roots dating back to the first century. In present time, Christianity is actually the largest religion in sub-Saharan Africa[6]. Many scholars of Africa view Christianity as a devastating blow to the continent; as Jomo Kenyatta, Kenya’s first president, accurately stated “When the missionaries came the Africans had the land and the Christians had the Bible. They taught us to pray with our eyes closed. When we opened them they had the land and we had the Bible”[7]. What Kenyatta says is true, making the European contribution of Christianity seem completely deplorable, but what the European Christian missionaries did not predict was the birth of “awareness among oppressed black people that before God they were of equal value with their oppressor”[8]. In this way, Christianity may not be as negative as Kenyatta indicated. Either way, it is a major part of African culture today, as well as Islam. The eighteenth century wave of Islam in the presently majority Islamic western and northern Africa was carried through jihad, but not solely. Islam contrasts