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Things Fall Apart Critical Lens Quotes

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The repetition of the word “funkiness” made this particular quote stand out to me, and it forced me to go back and reread the last paragraph to see exactly what this quote signified. The context is given before the quote is referring to the mother of a minor character in the novel, a mother who was raised well and enjoyed a fairly nice life for a colored woman, especially compared to Claudia and Pecola. However, although Geraldine (the mother) was granted this better lifestyle, more was expected out of her, so this must be taken into account before I just assume that her life was automatically better than the main characters’. The narrator states that Geraldine was taught “the careful development of thrift, patience, high morals, and good manners” throughout her schooling (Morrison 83). This jumps out at me because it accentuates the correlation between her upbringing and the way she views herself now. For example, Pecola has no access to such teachings as Geraldine, indicating that this now may make her more inferior to her due to her lack of social mannerisms. Because of this, Pecola views herself as …show more content…

Although Pecola sees herself as the inferior, at least she has human-like aspects and has not completely lost all feeling and nurturement as a human. To eliminate this “funkiness” means to banish all thoughts, ideas, and social mobility of a female. She has become apathetic to all the emotions presented around her, to where not even her own child or husband could bring a twinge of joy to her. Does this quote signify that all whites and others living that type of lifestyle have been robbed of their emotions? Anything that made Geraldine seem real has been eliminated; she now resembles a robot that is simply going through her day to day tasks instead of a

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