The Importance Of Setting And Imagery In Toni Morrison

In this book, the society treats the white race better than the black race. For example, in part 2 of “The Bluest Eye”, Pecola is tricked by a boy named Louis Junior when he invites her back to his house and gets his cat to attack her. After unintentionally killing his own cat, Junior's mother returns home and treats Pecola with extreme disgust and hatred, immediately blaming her for the death of his cat. Junior’s mother act this way because of the society. In their society, the people call the Black race “niggers”(Morrison 87), ugly, and dirty. They blame everything on the Blacks and that’s why Pecola was blamed for the death of the cat. Junior’s mom doesn’t even know if Pecola kills or did not kill the cat, but since she’s black, she will be blamed. The society teaches the Blacks to hate their own race since this society teaches people to treat the Blacks badly with disgust while treating the Whites or light-color Blacks better with praise. People are races because the society is racist. Pecola envies the white race and that’s how she develops her self-image. She also thinks of herself as inferior, unwanted, and ugly when the society thinks of her and her race that way. The society also teaches the people that the Whites are more superior than the Blacks. For example, a little girl “calling Mrs. Breedlove Polly when even Pecola called her mother Mrs. Breedlove” (Morrison 108), showing that the white little girl is superior so she gets to call the black race by their name. Similar to this situation, when Pecola accidentally makes the pie fell to the floor, Mrs. Breedlove “yanked (Pecola) up by the arm, slapped her again, and… abused Pecola directly” (Morrison 109) and cares for the little girl when she cried for the fallen pie. This is also because of the society’s racist. The society teaches the people to treat the white race better than black race. Mrs.Breedlove follow the society’s racist and

            Pecola's friend Claudia is angry at the beauty of whiteness and attempts to dismember white dolls to find where their beauty lies.  There is a sarcastic tone in her voice when she spoke of having

Toni Morrison, the infamous novelist, took the stand as a concerned citizen of the United States when she wrote a public letter to presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama. At the time, the country was divided with contrasting opinions on George W. Bush, which seemed to block the focus of the candidates’ elections. Morrison mentioned this issue as one of her reasons for writing the endorsement, when she wrote, “One reason is it may help gather other supporters; another is that this one one of those singular moments that nations ignore at their peril.” Morrison addressed her personal thoughts on the two presidential candidates, and gave reasoning as for why she chose Barack Obama rather than Hillary Clinton. Overall, Morrison created a very concerned tone regarding the United States and its political future, using phrases such as “multiple crisis facing us” and “peril” to describe the issues that faced the country. Furthermore, when describing Obama’s political future, the tone was much more optimistic and light. Morrison used phrases such as

The affiliation between beauty and whiteness limits the concept of beauty only to the person’s exterior. The characters are constantly subjected to images and symbols of whiteness through movies, books, candy, magazines, baby dolls and advertisements. Another example of the images and symbols in the novel is when the black protagonist, Pecola, feasts on a ‘Mary Jane’ candy.

Besides the inherent self-confident issue, the outside voice from community is also affecting Pecola’s view. For example, in the “accident” when Pecola went into Junior’s house, Junior killed the cat and impute to Pecola. His mother, Geraldine, saw Pecola was holding the dead cat. Without any thought and didn’t even ask for the truth, Geraldine simply called Pecola a “nastylittle black bitch.” This event, again, reinforces Pecola’s view of what beauty means.

It is evident in the novel that Pecola is treated by others as an ‘inconvenience’. She possesses no voice or physical integrity. Other than accepting her ethnic identity as a black girl, she assumes a false identity. She is not happy with her appearance and yearns for blue eyes only – a symbolic of American White beauty. Morrison, here, uses a contrast between Sharley Temple and Pecola. Pecola goes literally crazy by the disparity between her existence and the epitome of beauty set by the dominant White culture. Pecola’s psyche has been deformed by the oppressing White culture. Hence, she rejects her original identity and craves for a false notion of beauty.

Toni Morrison was born “Chloe Ardelia Wofford” on February 18th, 1931 in Lorain, Ohio. Chloe earned her nickname “Toni” in college and took Morrison as her married name. She was born in an predominantly African American town, to a poor family, which was like most of Lorain’s residents. Her parents always emphasized the importance of education. “The world back then didn’t expect much from a little black girl, but my father and mother certainly did.” In 1949 she attended college at the Howard University in Washington, DC, which was an historically black college. In 1953 Toni graduated from Howard University with her bachelor’s degree in English. Continuing her education at Cornell University, she earned her master’s degree in 1955. Morrison is an Pulitzer Prize and Nobel Prize winning American novelist but among those awards she also received many more such as the American book award and the F. Kennedy book award. She also had publications of major works such as Song of Solomon, Beloved, and Paradise to name a few.

How does it feel when a Roberta, a white girl, who is very enthusiastic and lively will be sent away to an orphanage and there she will meet someone, a little black girl named Twyla, who does not want to be with her in the same room because she was told by her mother to not be with or be friends with a person with a white race? They are just a little girls---black and white---who Toni Morrison portrays in her short story “Recitatif.” An analysis of both the black and white girl shows that because of them belonging to different races, their experiences are way more different but despite their differences they still managed to be friends with each other. Another is why does Maggie, the girl with legs like parentheses, played a big role in this

In all of Toni Morrison’s writing, race is a present theme. In “Recitatif,” she challenges the reader to question what they see as actions commonly done by one race. She accomplishes this by giving Twyla and Roberta stereotypical traits from both races in her story. For example, when their mothers come to visit St. Bonny’s, Roberta’s mother is portrayed as physically large, as well as by the religious symbols she carries. In contrast, when the two characters meet again, the racial stereotypes have been flipped. Morrison states, “I was dying to know what happened to her, how she [Roberta] got from Jimi Hendrix to Annandale, a neighborhood full of doctors and IBM executives. Easy, I thought. Everything is so easy for them” (9). The whole story

Pecola Breedlove, is an eleven-year-old black girl whom the story revolves around. She is abused by almost everyone in the novel and eventually suffers being raped by her father, Cholly Breedlove. Pecola's experiences, however, are not typical of all black girls who have to grow up in a hostile society. But who is to blame? One could easily argue that it was Mr. and Mrs. Breedlove. But who is to blame for how they treat their child? The white supremacy is the main cause of Cholly’s past, Pecola’s rape and the psychological mindset the mother is in. Pauline is Pecola's mother, and her character allows the reader to see how cultural conceptions of beauty can play themselves out in a more affectionate, but still unfortunate, form than Pecola's

Initially, as I read this quote, I began to sympathize with Pecola and the plight she faces as an African American female. This is the first time in the novel we are exposed to the desire Pecola vehemently prays for daily, this desire being blue eyes. The reason I sympathized for the girl beyond the fact that attaining blue eyes for her would be impossible, is because she blames her blue-lacking eye color, or her ugliness as she classifies it as, as a way to justify everything that has gone wrong in her life. Take, for instance, Cholly, her dad, and her mother, Mrs. Breedlove’s fights. Even though their fights arise from the problems they have between themselves, Pecola continues to believe that her ugliness has struck her with not only undesirable

The author Toni Morrison uses a tree to symbolize Sethe’s back to show her past as a slave. The author also uses allusion to Christianity, because Denver drank from Sethe’s breast to fed but not only did she drink breast milk but also beloved’s blood. Sethe’s flashbacks started when Paul D. came back into her life. This literally devices were intertwined into the story to have an understanding about what happened in Sethe’s past as a slave and to know why her daughter Beloved is still in her life as a spirit.

Toni Morrison’s Beloved explores the lives of slaves during the Antebellum era and the repercussions of their actions during the Reconstruction. The novel has been interpreted by many and its symbolism and metaphors are endless. Morrison uses the tree to symbolize cultural and religious beliefs and tree-like diction to describe her characters.

-A few lines before, Pecola is wondering why people think that Dandelions are weeds and ugly, when they are so pretty. She then wonders maybe because “there are so many, strong, and soon” (Morrison 47), and I think that these Dandelions are connected to black people during this time. Both groups are made up of many strong people who are beautiful in their own ways. However, just as the white people only take the leaves of the Dandelions and throw the pretty part away, they do the same with the colored people, they use them to do jobs that they don’t want and still look down upon them. When Pecola goes to the candy store and buys her Mary Janes, the white cashier is disgusted when he touches her hand, and after this, she thinks she is ugly for some reason. She is confused at why she is ugly, and becomes angered at the Dandelions, which are just like her.

The discussion of the motif “silence” in this essay attempts to reveal that while it may appear to some readers that the black community’s cold-blooded exclusion is partially held responsible for Pecola’s tragedy and should be reprimanded, what is really happening is that the balance emphasized in the African Cosmology is disturbed by Pecola’s severely crippled family and the foreign notion of white supremacy, and this fatal imbalance leads to a lack of essential spiritual power, which makes Pecola - not the other members in the black community - the victim. Moreover, Pecola’s duality of knowing the reason of her exile