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Dimitrov, Luciana Duenha. "Uma leitura de The bluest eye, de Toni Morrison." Universidade Presbiteriana Mackenzie, 2007. http://tede.mackenzie.br/jspui/handle/tede/2143.
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Previous issue date: 2007-01-30In this study, racial prejudice is the basis of Toni Morrison s The bluest eye, despite not being the only aspect evidenced in the novel. What should be spotlighted as well is how the time is deconstructed; the evident presence of several discourses that can rise racism up, or bring it down; and the strong influence of colors in the conception of scenes that, in some of the narrative moments, can be associated with pictorial images. When the facets mentioned among many others are put together, there is the achievement of a great result in the novel s aesthetics. The main goal of this study is to exploit those aspects, looking forward to establishing those inseparable relations between the novel s main theme and its form, in order to consolidate their relevance both to the romance s construction and constitution.
Neste trabalho, o preconceito racial que fundamenta The bluest eye, de Toni Morrison, não é o único aspecto em destaque no romance; merece ser ressaltada igualmente a forma como se desconstrói o tempo, a coexistência de discursos que ora enaltecem, ora abominam o racismo, a forte influência de cores na concepção de cenas que, em muitos momentos, podem ser associadas a imagens pictóricas. A confluência desses e de outros tantos aspectos sem dúvida contribui para o excelente resultado estilístico alcançado na narrativa. O objetivo, aqui, é explorar tais aspectos, buscando essas relações indissociáveis entre o tema central e a forma, no intuíto de comprovar sua relevância para construção e constituição do romance.
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Light, Susan A. "The political practice of home : the Bluest eye, Beloved, and feminist standpoint theory." Thesis, McGill University, 1991. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=60584.
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The larger issue of the relationship between theory, fiction and experience provides the backdrop for a study of constructions of home in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye and Beloved. Feminist standpoint theory contends that knowledge is socially and historically constructed. Using the home as a category of analysis, I show how Morrison's constructions of home are located within specific socio-economic, racial, and political contexts which mold the novels' characters. Both feminist standpoint theory and the novels develop a notion of "positionality"--one's location within a larger social and historical network. Differences in focus do exist, however, which stem from their respective developmental and experiential contexts--one being primarily theoretical and scholarly, and the other being the complex literary and fictional mediation of a political experience. Unlike the theoretical articulation of concepts of the standpoint, fiction offers a complex perspective that may, in turn, be used to inform discussions of political and epistemological concepts.
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Leung, Chuen-lik Rachel. "Identity, part and whole : Toni Morrison's Beloved and the Bluest Eye /." Hong Kong : University of Hong Kong, 1999. http://sunzi.lib.hku.hk/hkuto/record.jsp?B21161392.
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Evensson, Ulla. "Self-hatred and Its Consequenses in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye." Thesis, Högskolan i Halmstad, Akademin för lärande, humaniora och samhälle, 2017. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hh:diva-34043.
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Toni Morrison's novel The Bluest Eye from 1970, shows how the upbringing and society's norms can affect a young girl in an African-American society, where racism and a feeling of inferiority is the standards. Pecola's wishes for blue eyes since that may make her part of a world where she has never belonged. Her wish is not only a futile attempt to be looking differently but also a wish for a better life.
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Lopes, Mirna Leisi Coelho. "À MARGEM EM THE BLUEST EYE, DE TONI MORRISON: NEGRITUDE, IDENTIDADE E CRÍTICA SOCIAL." Universidade Federal de Santa Maria, 2009. http://repositorio.ufsm.br/handle/1/9807.
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The contemporary North American fiction (African American) presents concerns regarding the identity of African-Americans. There is a need, through the literary text,
to establish a dialogue with the myths and historical models for the legacy tradition of slaves from Africa. The aim of this study is to analyze how, through the composition of the characters and through the eyes of the witness-narrator, the questions about the construction of an African-American identity are presented and discussed, and how it is possible to perceive in the novel The Eye Bluest, (1970), the resumption about the discussion about the concept of blackness. One of the interests in this
analysis is to investigate the way oppression is imposed on a black community, established in the north of the US. Both blackness and Afro-American identity are represented in Morrison´s fiction through the voice of the witness-narrator that builds a critical point of view on the white north american society and on the black community, which in many ways, reduplicates the prejudiced look launched on itself and on its members. The criticism is also established through the representation of the main character, Pecola. The research is based on analysis of the novel of the American writer Toni Morrison. The Bluest Eye is the first novel published by the author and constitutes itself as a report of the witness-narrator ´s experiences, and as the social and cultural representation of a certain community in a very precise socio-historical moment. To perform the analysis, it was necessary to establish the concepts of cultural identity, blackness, subjectivity and (Afro) American history, taking into account the fictional discourse.A ficção contemporânea norte-americana (Afro-americana) apresenta preocupações referentes à identidade dos Afro-americanos. Há uma necessidade de, através do texto literário, estabelecer um diálogo com os mitos históricos e modelos legados pela tradição dos escravos vindos de África. O objetivo desse trabalho é analisar de que maneira, através da composição das personagens e através do olhar da narradora-testemunha, são apresentados e discutidos questionamentos acerca da construção de uma identidade Afro-americana, e como se percebe, no romance The Bluest Eye, (1970), a retomada da discussão acerca da noção de negritude . Um dos interesses nesta análise foi o de perceber como a opressão é exercida sobre uma comunidade negra estabelecida no norte dos E.U.A. As questões de negritude e identidade Afro-americanas são estabelecidas na ficção morrisoniana através da voz da narradora-testemunha que constrói um ponto de vista crítico sobre a sociedade branca norte-americana e sobre a própria comunidade negra, que em muitos sentidos, passa a reduplicar o olhar preconceituoso lançado sobre si mesma e sobre seus membros. E também, através da caracterização da personagem principal, Pecola. The Bluest Eye é o primeiro romance publicado por Toni Morrison e constitui-se como um relato de vivências de Claudia, a narradora-testemunha, e como a representação social e cultural de uma dada comunidade, em um dado momento sócio-histórico. Para efetuar a análise, fez-se necessário estabelecer conceitos de identidade cultural, negritude, subjetividade e história (Afro) americana, levando em consideração a ficcionalidade e o discurso.
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Lindberg, Linnea. "How Narrative Devices Convey the Theme of Love in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye." Thesis, Karlstads universitet, Institutionen för språk, litteratur och interkultur, 2015. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kau:diva-37508.
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This essay focuses on the way in which three narrative devices expand upon three types of love depicted in Toni Morrison’s novel The Bluest Eye. The three narrative devices examined in this essay are narrator, paratext and the irony of the Breedlove family name. These devices all serve the purpose of conveying different types of love in Morrison’s novel and how these types of love affect the characters of the novel, especially the protagonist Pecola Breedlove. Narrator plays an important role because the narrative voice changes throughout the novel, shifting between Claudia MacTeer and a third-person omniscient narrator. This shifting perspective shows the reader how the types of love affect Pecola both through a child’s perspective and as well as through third-person narration. The Dick and Jane paratext contrasts the Breedlove family to white American ideals of familial love and happiness. Finally, the lack of familial love within the Breedlove family truly shows the irony of the Breedlove family name. The lack of love forces Pecola to internalize her self-hatred while the destructive, distant and judgmental relationship between Mrs. Breedlove and Pecola causes both characters to become delusional and dissatisfied with their sense of self. Friendship is the only place where Pecola finds love, shown to her by Claudia and Frieda; however, Pecola has already descended too far into madness for their love to help her. Although Pecola should find solace in the three types of love that are presented through the novel’s narrative devices, they all contribute to her disillusionment and, ultimately, her descent into madness.
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Sultan, Hazar. "Att bära historien i sin kropp : Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome i Toni Morrisons roman The Bluest Eye." Thesis, Södertörns högskola, Litteraturvetenskap, 2017. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:sh:diva-34591.
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To Carry History in One’s Body – Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome in Toni Morrison’s Novel The Bluest Eye. The world in which we live in is dominated by ideology. This essay will explore the ideology of racism and investigates how it operated during and after the slave trade in the USA. The main focus is how the racist ideology has affected the black community in the USA during the first decades of the twentieth century. When the traumatic events of the slave trade ended the black community never got the chance to heal from the several hundred years long trauma. Toni Morrison’s novel The Bluest Eye depicts a community in pain due to the racist society that surrounds them. It is set in a time after the First World War when black families aimed to establish a stable life but were hindered due to various reasons. Therefore, this essay uses Joy DeGruy’s thoughts on the matter of trauma in the black community in the USA. By using her book Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America’s Legacy Of Enduring Injury and Healing along with Frantz Fanon’s iconic text Black Skin, White Masks this essay investigates how the legacy of slavery has affected the black community after the slave trade. This essay looks into the following behavioral patterns, formulated by DeGruy: Vacant Esteem, Ever Present Anger and Racist Socialization.Världen domineras av ideologier. Denna uppsats utforskar rasismens ideologi både under och efter slavhandeln i USA. Uppsatsens huvudfokus är hur den rasistiska ideologin har påverkat den svarta befolkningen i USA under nittonhundratalets första årtionden. När slaveriets trauma tog slut fick det svarta samhället aldrig chansen att bearbeta och läka det flera hundra år långa traumat. Toni Morrisons roman The Bluest Eye skildrar ett samhälle som präglas av smärta till följd av en rasistisk omgivning. Romanen utspelar sig efter första världskriget, en tid då svarta familjer ämnade etablera ett stabilt liv men som av olika anledningar hindrades. Denna uppsats använder Joy DeGruys tankar om trauma hos det svarta samhället i USA. Hennes bok Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America’s Legacy Of Enduring Injury and Healing tillsammans med Frantz Fanons nyckeltext Black Skin, White Masks används i denna uppsats för att undersöka hur slaveriet påverkat det svarta samhället efter dess avskaffande. Uppsatsen tittar närmare på följande beteendemönster, som formulerats av DeGruy: Vacant Esteem, Ever Present Anger och Racist Socialization.
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Leung, Chuen-lik Rachel, and 梁川力. "Identity, part and whole: Toni Morrison's Beloved and The Bluest Eye." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 1999. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B31952094.
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De, Freitas Sandra. "A Psychoanalytical Study on the Importance of Skin Tone in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye." Thesis, Högskolan Dalarna, Engelska, 2019. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:du-30521.
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Ranström, Ingrid. "Black Community in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, Sula and Song of Solomon." Thesis, Högskolan i Halmstad, Sektionen för humaniora (HUM), 2010. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hh:diva-5206.
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Using the novels, The Bluest Eye, Sula and Song of Solomon, the purpose of this essay is to examine Toni Morrison’s characters in the setting of the black community with emphasis on gender, participation in society and the class differences which exist within the black collective. All of the characters in the narratives exist in communities which are defined by the racial barriers formed by the surrounding white societies. Due to her concern with the inter-relatedness of race, gender and class as they are lived by the individuals, Morrison gives her characters physical and psychological qualities which enhance their chances for survival and fulfillment, thus leading to the survival of the black community. Through her characters in The Bluest Eye, Sula and Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison portrays the black community with reference to blackness and the inner struggles of the individual as well as the class differences and social structures within the collective. It can be concluded that the black community is an important part of today’s society as the contemporary individual must embrace his/her culture and heritage, which is found in the unity of the collective.
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Watson, Khalilah Tyri. "Literature as Prophecy: Toni Morrison as Prophetic Writer." Digital Archive @ GSU, 2009. http://digitalarchive.gsu.edu/english_diss/50.
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From fourteenth century medieval literature to contemporary American and African American literature, researchers have singled out and analyzed writing from every genre that is prophetic in nature, predicting or warning about events, both revolutionary and dire, to come. One twentieth-century American whose work embodies the essence of warning and foretelling through history-laden literature is Toni Morrison. This modern-day literary prophet reinterprets eras gone by through what she calls “re-memory” in order to guide her readers, and her society, to a greater understanding of the consequences of slavery and racism in America and to prompt both races to escape the pernicious effects of this heritage. Several critics have recognized and written about Morrison’s unique style of prophetic prose. These critics, however, have either taken a general cursory analysis of her complete body of works or they are only focused on one of her texts as a site of evidence. Despite the many critical essays and journal articles that have been written about Morrison as literary prophet, no critic has extensively investigated Morrison’s major works by way of textual analysis under this subject, to discuss Morrison prophetic prose, her motivation for engaging in a form of prophetic writing, and the context of this writing in a wider general, as well as an African-American, tradition. This dissertation takes on a more comprehensive, cross-sectional analysis of her works that has been previously employed, concentrating on five of Morrison’s major novels: The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon, Beloved, Jazz and Paradise, in an order to assess how Morrison develops and infuses warnings and admonitions of biblical proportions. This investigation seeks to reveal Morrison’s motivation to prophecy to Americans, black and white, the context in which she engages with her historical and contemporary subjects, and the nature of the admonitions to present and future action she offers to what she sees as a contemporary generation of socially and historically oblivious African Americans, using literary prophecy as the tool by which to accomplish her objectives. This dissertation also demonstrates—by way of textual analysis and literary theory—the evolution through five novels of Morrison’s development as a literary prophet.
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Nylin, Kristina. "Why Read Fiction in the English Language Classroom? : Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye." Thesis, Högskolan i Gävle, Avdelningen för humaniora, 2012. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hig:diva-12828.
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The essay makes a case for the use of the Nobel Prize-winning (1993) author Toni Morrison's novel The Bluest Eye (1970) in the English language classroom. The essay argues that the novel is an excellent reading choice and to what is appropriate according to the learning goals stated in Gy11's course syllabus English 6. Since the course English 6 syllabus is new some aspects different from previous course syllabus English B are mentioned by way of comparison. In order to develop the arguments for using the novel, different perspectives of reading and the learning process are discussed and how they match the curriculum Gy 11. Some points about how Morrison has managed to voice the former unspoken experiences of African American society are made to make it clear why reading The Bluest Eye is such a superb text in relation to the learning goals that are outlined in Gy11.The essay focuses mainly on mother - daughter relationships because most pupils will easily relate to this theme since they have experiences of this relation themselves, and therefore they will find it easy to find issues to discuss after reading the novel.
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Mathis, Rondrea Danielle. "'She Shall Not Be Moved': Black Women's Spiritual Practice in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, Beloved, Paradise, and Home." Scholar Commons, 2015. http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/5737.
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‘She Shall Not Be Moved’: Black Women’s Spiritual Practice in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, Beloved, Paradise, and Home argues that from The Bluest Eye, Morrison’s debut novel, to her 2012 novel, Home, Morrison brings her female characters to voice, autonomy, and personal divinity through unconventional spiritual work. The project addresses the history of Black women’s activist and spiritual work, Toni Morrison’s engagement with unconventional spiritual practice, and closes with a personal interrogation of the author’s connection to Black women’s spiritual practice.
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Torsell, Starud Alexandra. "Shopping for an I : Consumer identities in The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison and The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas." Thesis, Linnéuniversitetet, Institutionen för språk (SPR), 2019. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:lnu:diva-79563.
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This thesis investigates to role consumerism plays when young, black, underclass characters try to build their identities in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye (1970) and Angie Thomas’ The Hate U Give (2017). Through implementing intersectional analysis and postcolonial theory this essay discusses how social positions are read and understood in a mass culture that heavily favours the visual. In this culture we are all judged by our appearance and I will argue that for the poor, black, female characters in the novels, that means being the underdogs of consumer culture. Although the two novels are published half a century apart, both relate to consumer culture and how it affects the African-American community. In addition, each of the novels are produced during a wave of black uprising and strong civil rights movements. In Morrison’s novel the characters are left longing for the looks and lifestyle of white Americans, emphasising the need of the social movement’s claim ‘Black is Beautiful’. In Thomas’ novel there are a multitude of consumer objects that are coded black, such as Jordan sneakers and hip hop-music. Yet, the police shooting of young Khalil cannot be avoided by the success ‘Black is Beautiful’ brought in terms of commercialising blackness. The shooting instead brings attention to 2017’s great campaign ‘Black Lives Matter’. What is similar in both novels is that the characters, who find themselves othered in Western discourse, strive to become someone recognised as a subject, a Self. In the quest to move beyond the stereotypes ascribed to them, almost all the characters long for goods that signal their social position as someone who has succeeded, living the American Dream. Yet, in Morrison’s novel there is a critique against capitalism and consumerism, an idea that you cannot consume a subject position in a racist society. That kind of critique against capitalism is absent in Thomas’ novel.
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Ullrich-Ferguson, Loretta N. "The beauty of her survival : being Black and female in Meridian, The salt eaters, Kindred, and The bluest eye /." View online, 2008. http://repository.eiu.edu/theses/docs/32211131464907.pdf.
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Fulton, Lara. "An unblinking gaze, readerly response-ability and racial reconstructions in Toni Morrison's The bluest eye and Beloved." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1997. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk2/ftp04/mq24377.pdf.
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Jackson, Veda Kimber. "It's all about color: an analysis of color symbolism in Toni Morrison's Sula and the bluest eye." DigitalCommons@Robert W. Woodruff Library, Atlanta University Center, 2011. http://digitalcommons.auctr.edu/dissertations/204.
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This study examines Toni Morrison’s use of symbolism in Sula and The Bluest Eye, especially archetypal and color symbolism, in an effort to recover the culture that has been lost to Diasporic Africans. Moreover, the color symbolism and symbolic archetypes that Morrison employs in both novels, but to a greater extent Sula, are a direct reflection of her awareness of the African ancestral heritage and spirituality associated with those colors and archetypes. A vast majority of the literary critiques of Sula have focused on either Sula as a scapegoat for the community, Morrison’s use of race, gender, and sexual themes, or the characterizations throughout the novel. The literary criticism of The Bluest Eye has mainly focused on issues of race, class, and gender and the effects that these issues have upon black and white societies in America. Although these themes warrant the attention that has been given them, little or no focus has been given to the prevalence of color symbolism that Morrison employs in both novels. Therefore, this paper will attempt to provide a focus on color symbolism that has not been explored in other literary reviews.
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Fernandes, Alessandra Coutinho. "Mother-daughter relationships and the search for identity in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, Sula and Beloved." reponame:Repositório Institucional da UFSC, 1996. https://repositorio.ufsc.br/handle/123456789/111349.
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Hayes, Martina Louise. "Legacy of Shame: A Psychoanalytic History of Trauma in The Bluest Eye." Cleveland State University / OhioLINK, 2015. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=csu1450374298.
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Fadel, Lina. "An exploration into the semiotic rationale for gender shifts in English-Arabic literary translation : the case of Toni Morrison's 'The Bluest Eye'." Thesis, Heriot-Watt University, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/10399/2975.
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The present doctoral thesis is an investigation into the underlying semiotic and socio-cultural connotations of gender shifts in literary translation from English into Arabic, thereby simultaneously addressing the research question of whether these shifts are norm-governed, optional, or obligatory, that is, dictated by the rules of Arabic. Drawing on research into translational shifts, descriptive approaches to translation, as well as semiotics and sociology, the research employs a comparative and analytical methodology, which is based mainly on van Leuven-Zwart’s shift model, for the analysis of the primary corpus which incorporates Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and its two Arabic translations. It also utilizes a confirmatory corpus-based approach for the understanding of how norms and rules of gender are manifested in the Arabic literary tradition(s). Different patterns of shift are identified as regards the gender preferences or obligations on the part of the translator which contribute to his gender choices, which both demonstrate the problematic nature of gender relations in Arabic as well as highlight the translator’s active role in the act of translation. This project aims to make a useful contribution to existing research in the areas of descriptive translation studies and shifts analysis, as well as corpus-based approaches to translational shifts in general and gender shifts in particular. The analysis reveals the challenges facing translators when gender issues are concerned and suggests that gender shifts are more affected by norms and idiosyncrasies than grammatical rules.
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Brownlee, Jonathan J. "Being and Otherness: Conceptualizing Embodiment in Africana Existentialist Discourse (The Bluest Eye, The Fire Next Time, and Black Skin, White Masks)." Bowling Green State University / OhioLINK, 2020. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1594134915974717.
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Storey, Helen Caroline. "Gris-gris : a novel ; and, Contextualising research : crafting the rape scene: an exploration of how Toni Morrison and Isabel Allende write rape scenes in The Bluest Eye and The House of Spirits and how their approaches influence the crafting of those in Gris-gris." Thesis, Bath Spa University, 2015. http://researchspace.bathspa.ac.uk/6567/.
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The creative component of this thesis, the novel Gris-gris, explores how a mother's betrayal of her daughter and the resulting rape of that daughter is reiterated through three following generations of women within the same family. In the contextualizing component, I explore approaches to effectively crafting the pivotal rape scenes in Gris-gris to avoid reducing the novel, in the reader's mind, to being primarily one "about rape". I did not want the scenes to be pornographic or voyeuristic, metaphorical or ambiguous. I wanted them to be honest and truly affecting - but not hijack the novel's central narrative, which is how one mother's betrayal reverberates through following generations. Two popular, literary novels with plots that hinge on rape scenes are Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye and Isabel Allende's The House of Spirits. The architecture and positioning of the rape scenes in these works has much to do with each novel's unique narrative power. My original contribution to knowledge, therefore, is a study -- from the point of view of a practicing creative writer -- of 1) how these two writers craft rape scenes in these novels and 2) how, in the writing of Gris-gris, I situate and develop my own practice in terms of craft, while responding to personal and social considerations. This study will inform the creative writer who is assessing how to modulate scenes of rape in literature as one novelist's considered approach to the delicate balances involved in crafting such scenes.
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Holmes, Michele. "The quantum eye looking and identity formation in African-American fiction /." Laramie, Wyo. : University of Wyoming, 2007. http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=1483331841&sid=11&Fmt=2&clientId=18949&RQT=309&VName=PQD.
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Abdalla, Fardosa. "Resistance of Female Stereotypes in The Bluest Eye : Destroying Images of Black Womanhood and Motherhood." Thesis, Södertörns högskola, Institutionen för kultur och lärande, 2014. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:sh:diva-24581.
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Stereotypes and myths are created by media to simplify and mystify reality. The two are used to form negative stereotypical images that are used as tools of social oppression in today’s white patriarchy. This essay will focus on how Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye depicts black womanhood and motherhood and resists the reductive images of black women through the narrative technique. In the text we find the stereotypical images of the Mammy and the Matriarch in the character Pauline "Polly" Breedlove, both simplifying and mystifying black motherhood but also condescending towards African-American family constellations. The text resists these images by making readers inhabit Polly who at first fits in to the two archetypes, only to then give us additional information and use an engaging narrative technique that invites the reader to decide if Polly really is the Mammy and the Matriarch.
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Spottke, Nicole. "Coffins, Closets, Kitchens, and Convents: Women Writing Of Home In Gendered Spaces." [Tampa, Fla] : University of South Florida, 2009. http://purl.fcla.edu/usf/dc/et/SFE0003233.
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Smith, Whitney Renee. ""Quiet as it's Kept": Secrecy and Silence in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, Jazz, and Paradise." Thesis, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/1805/2714.
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Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI)Secrets and silence appear frequently in the work of Toni Morrison. In three novels, The Bluest Eye, Jazz, and Paradise, she repeats a specific phrase that acts as a signal to the reader. Morrison three times writes, “Quiet as it’s kept” in her novels to alert readers to the particular significance secrets and silence play in these novels. Morrison portrays this secrecy and silence as a barrier to building strong communities and even a strong self-identity. While the phrase appears in the same form, with each subsequent appearance, Morrison takes the idea a step further. In each novel she demonstrates how breaking the silence and refusing to keep quiet is an act of healing or salvation and she expands this healing to be increasingly inclusive. What begins as a single voice breaking the silence in The Bluest Eye becomes a group of people sharing their secrets in Jazz, and finally an entire town coming to terms with the power of speaking up. This thesis looks at the secrets and their impact on characters in each novel and explores the progression of the power in refusing to keep quiet.
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Silva, Luis Manuel Prata Dias Teixeira da. "Re-inserting Africa into African American : the roots of Toni Morrison's narrative technique in the Bluest Eye." Thesis, 2002. http://hdl.handle.net/10500/744.
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Dan, Han-tzu, and 但漢慈. "Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye : A Platonic Reading." Thesis, 2010. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/46567929987295055613.
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碩士高雄師範大學
英語學系
98
In these technology-intensive modern times, those so called “higher”, or “better” value standards, or images are not neutral any more, but are actually molded and popularized by the dominant power system through different kinds of mass media, including newspapers, magazines, commercial advertisement, or even education at school. While in the process of ideological construction done by the ruling power, the weaker part is instructed at the same time the idea of self-denial and self-hatred. In Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, which was written in 1979, the most poignant victims in probably all of her works, Pecola Breedlove and her family, blindly accept all the dominant ideals of beauty and goodness, deny their own black background, and finally come to destruction in their end. This thesis aims to take Plato’s famous “Allegory of the Cave” as a reading method, by elaborating the relationship between the four elements: the cave, shadows, prisoners, and the puppeteers, to demonstrate how the dominant power system, or the western standard of goodness confines the black women in the novel. And at the same time, the thesis recognizes another black girl, Claudia, as one to escape successfully from the cave, and reminds the reader that one can still regain his identity or autonomy with the support from family and the community. Therefore, in Chapter One, there is a brief discussion over Plato’s Allegory of The Cave, and a connection between the allegory and The Bluest Eye. Then the first section in Chapter Two utilizes the important element from the allegory—the cave, to explain how the dominant power confines its prisoner geographically and psychologically within the novel. . And in this chapter also, we try to connect the “shadows” projected on the wall of the cave with the ideological symbols presented in the novel to examine how those artificial images structure the female characters’ value system. In Chapter Three, one can recognize some characters from The Bluest Eye as the “prisoners” of Plato’s cave, and can try to explain why these characters fail to escape from the imprisonment. Besides that, Chapter Three inevitably tries to explore the existence and identity of the puppeteers in the cave or that “mysterious all-knowing master” in the novel which brings the horrible misery to those black women. Poignantly but still promisingly, Chapter Four focuses on some characters that provide all the prisoners with hope and courage under the perpetual and unceasing darkness and imprisonment. And the conclusive chapter still focuses on the conception about imprisoning and escaping, to acknowledge Morrison’s The Bluest Eye as a reminder which not only notifies her black people to value their own culture and identity, but also suggests to her every reader a re-thinking of all those too-easily-attainable images provided by all kinds of mass media.
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Huey-jen, Fu, and 傅慧珍. "Escape from the Fabricated Identity: A Study of Toni Morrison''s The Bluest Eye." Thesis, 1998. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/14315151931849730777.
Full textAbstract:
碩士國立中興大學
外國語文學系研究所
86
Since the Sixties, woman''s "consciousness-raising"--awareness of "her" unfair situation--has been growing prosperously in American society society. Many writers graudally present family violence from which many women have suf fered in order to protest agaisnt the long-existent patriarchal ideology, whi ch has nurtured the prevalence of family violence. Toni Morrison''s The Bluest Eye is a novel full of the black''s self-denial and "invisibility," both of whi ch are definitely the product of commodity culture. The purpose of this thesi s is first to foreground the black''s identity crisis due to their unconscious internalization of the white''s value from the feminist and postcolonial appr oaches, centering around the issue of family violence, and then to propose a f easible solution for the survival of the black. This thesis is divided in to five chapters. In Chapter One I briefly explain Betty Friedan''s "feminine mystique," which limimts women''s potentiality and strengthens the men''s domin ant authority over women in subtle mystique. Through the operation of the ma ss media and the advertising of the commodities, the "feminine mystique" root s firmly in everybody''s mind. In Chapter Two, the major concern is the m anipulation of the female body, another result of the patriarchal ideology. The issue of family violence, especially rape, will be analyzed from radical f eminist theory: rape is the manifestation of power located at the core of the "desexualizAtion" will be apporpriated in order to provide solution for the rape victims from the humiliation of the rape. Chapter Three is concerned with the white dominant ideology operating through powerful advertising of co mmodities. The black''s self-denial and self-hatred are coutcome of their com plicity with the "disinterested" white culture. With the "invisible" force of mass media, the commodity makes judgment over various spheres of life and set s up "false standard" which people often follow blindly. Moreover, because of the commodity fetishism, the distinction between humans and inanimate objects has become obscure. Humans'' value tends to be objectified, and the objects take on animate qualities. No wonder that the heroine Pecola thinks that the blue eyes-- symbol of prestigious cultural status--are accessible to a black g irl like her. Chapter Four emphasizes that "breaking the silence" and "uttering one''s voice" are the important strategies to counter the cultural he gemony. From the case of Claudia, the black woman should walk out of the "fem inine mystique" defined by the white discourse, and cast the "White Masks" of f their "Black Skin." In Chapter Five, after diagnosing the black women''s pain in the white culture, three survival steps for the black women are presc ribed: first, to become more aware of conniving manipulation of gender and ra cial ideology; second, to take back the ownership of one''s body; the last, to speak out/utter one''s voice loud. Only when the prescription is put into p ractice by women themselves will it be possible for the realization of the eq ual treatment for both sexes and different races.
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Hsu, Nien-Tzu, and 徐念慈. "The Destiny of Pecola: Racism and Sexism in Toni Morrison''s The Bluest Eye." Thesis, 2001. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/65540816907486247940.
Full textAbstract:
碩士淡江大學
西洋語文研究所
89
Being a black female writer profoundly concerned with the plight of black women, Toni Morrison sensitively exposes the impact of sexism and racism on black women in her novel The Bluest Eye, with a view of making the world aware of sexual and racial inequality and finding a voice that belongs to black women. By applying the theories of radical feminists such as Kate Millet, Marilyn Frye and Susan Brownmiller; and black feminists such as Patricia Hill Collins, Mae Gwedolyn Henderson and Frances Beale, the present study proposes to investigate how Morrison subverts the social and literary conventions and, through the omniscient narrator, Claudia, emphasizes the importance of their own culture belonging to the blacks themselves. The first chapter deals with the invasion of the dominant white culture and the myth of the white beauty that lead to self-denial and self-hatred of many black women in The Bluest Eye. Morrison condemns those blacks who blindly conform to the white values. Chapter Two examines the gender issue in the novel. Some of the black men who suffered from childhood traumatic experiences inflicted by the white sexually violate or insult their women (black) to gain self-assertion. Thus black women have to cope with not just racial but also sexual discrimination. Chapter Three explores how patriarchy and racism lead to the silence of black females and pose a threat to the formation of self-identity. The implied power behind women’s silence is also analyzed in this chapter. Morrison seems to take use of the passive role, Pecola, whose story is described by a rebellious character, Claudia, to voice for all the black females, to help them to assert their self identity and find their cultural identity back.
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林侑青. "On The Translations of Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye." Thesis, 2010. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/30650366463860038665.
Full textAbstract:
碩士國立臺灣師範大學
翻譯研究所
98
Translation is not done in a vacuum, but rather influenced by varied factors. By studying the factors that manipulate the translated text we can examine how a translation comes into being. In the veins of cultural translation approach, the thesis examines mainly two translations of Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye published in China and Taiwan. The main body of the thesis will be divided into three sections by three important factors noted by André Lefevere, namely patronage, ideology, and poetics. Chapter One will be an overview on Toni Morrison and her major works, and delineate the translating history of The Bluest Eye in the Chinese world. A brief translation commentary on Chen Su-dong’s and Ceng Zhen-zhen’s Chinese versions will be provided as well. Chapter Two will discuss the influence of patronage, which affects and shapes the final image of the translated text. Patronage also plays a significant role in the delay of translating Morrison’s works into Chinese and helps to establish her image through the academic circle. Chapter Three then will analyze how the translator’s (sub)conscious ideology influences his/her translation strategies, particularly focusing on Ceng Zhen-zhen’s intension of applying Taiwanese to translate Black English. The next chapter compares Chen’s and Ceng’s translations to see how the translators represent the Black America in Morrison’s novel or her idiosyncratic language and style. The aesthetic effect of Ceng’s attempt of fusing modern Chinese with Twaiwanese will be further investigated. Chapter Five will be the conclusion.
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Lin, Chieh-Ju, and 林潔茹. "Capitalism and Cultural Politics: Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye." Thesis, 1997. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/18417686803638785683.
Full textAbstract:
碩士國立臺灣大學
外國語文學系
85
In The Bluest Eye, in addition to exposing sexual and racial tribulationsAfro-Americans encounter, more significantly, Toni Morrison also reveals that black suffering from sexism and racism is closely related to capitalism whichplays an important role in the process of the shaping of black-white powerrelations. In this dissertation, Marxist analysis of class society is appropriated to explain the forming of sexism and racism.
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Basbinar, Melike, and 梅莉可. "Pecola’s Impossible Dream in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye." Thesis, 2015. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/46181621604645296221.
Full textAbstract:
碩士中國文化大學
英國語文學系
103
Abstract In this thesis the author focuses on the role of the African-American character Pecola in Toni Morrison’s novel The Bluest Eye, and in particularly on her dream of having blue eyes so that she can be both white and beautiful, and thus be accepted by the dominant white society in a small city in Ohio in 1941. Pecola’s obsession with being white is also set, in novel and in the thesis, in the context of Pecola’s problematic relationship with both her mother and father, who themselves often argue and, due to their own sense of being discriminated against, apparently give neither Pecola nor her brother the love they need. In fact, in a shocking scene late in the novel the father rapes his daughter out of love, hatred, anger and guilt. Pecola’s case is analyzed in the thesis in relation to the dominant white “Barbie doll” beauty standards that prevail in Middle America in the early 1940s, and her concern about her own face, her own self-image, is also discussed in the context of Lacan’s theory of the mirror stage, at which point an infant first realizes that he/she IS also that “other person” in the mirror, a stage followed by the imaginary stage in which the child has a sense of his/her imaginary and ideal “I”—where now we might think of the latter in relation to Pecola’s split (black-and-white) identity. The thesis then discusses at length the psychology and history of racism and slavery in Europe and particularly in the USA, which includes Marx’s capitalist explanation of the slave trade and the terrible treatment of black slaves—the ancestors of Morrison and Pecola—by white plantation owners in the southeastern USA in the 17th-19th centuries. The psychological feeling of extreme humiliation that African-Americans bring with them out of their past is then related to the gender-based issues of American black women’s mistreatment at the hands of both black and white men in the late 20th century and to some extent still today, and the issue of African-American women’s rights. Pecola’s rape by her own father, Cholly, is discussed in Chapter 2 and then looked at again in Chapter 5, which focuses on Morrison’s description of Cholly’s freewheeling and “chaotic” character in terms of the freedom and improvisation of jazz music and the blues, both of which were created by African Americans. This chapter then also looks briefly at Morrison’s own use of an “open” or “discordant” style that has been called jazz-like in many of her novels, and even in her first one, The Bluest Eye. Perhaps, it is suggested, this “bluest” catches the meaning of “feeling blue” as well as that of “beautiful blue eyes.”
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Lin, Jie-Ru, and 林潔茹. "Capitalism and Cultural Politics: Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye." Thesis, 1997. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/35605185233121623494.
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Min, Huang Hsiao, and 黃曉敏. "Multiple Subversion: Narrative Strategies in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye." Thesis, 1993. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/93505800637484272374.
Full textAbstract:
碩士淡江大學
西洋語文研究所
81
This thesis demonstrates that the narrative strategies in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye can be deemed as devices the author uses to subvert the white dominant American culture in the 1940s in different aspects. This thesis is divided into three interrelated chapters focusing on narratives, structure, and characters and settings in The Bluest Eye. Chapter One points out the inter-relationship between the oppressed and the dominant voices and the intimacy built up by these voices between the author, the reader, and the text. Chapter Two examines the inverted time sequence Morrison uses to present the inability of the natural environment and the vulnerable black individuals oppressed under the white manipulating society. Chapter Three discusses the distorted vision of black women and the black community in terms of the characters' moving from a southern black neighborhood to a northern white urban society.
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Liu, Shu-hui, and 劉淑蕙. "Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and Sula:Black Communities－Within and Beyond." Thesis, 2003. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/20553884449830786227.
Full textAbstract:
碩士國立成功大學
外國語文學系碩博士班
91
Abstract Toni Morrison (1931~) is a significant contemporary Afro-American woman writer in the U. S. Her first two works, The Bluest Eye and Sula, focus on the Afro-American communities in the Ohio state during the forties, a time when the life within the black communities was faceted by race, class, and gender hardships. The purposes of this thesis are two-ford: first to investigate how the sense of community becomes a unifying power to strengthen the Afro-American people against the dominant white culture; second to evaluate how the sense of community, in its old fashion, could be possibly contradict to the new generations. Morrison is inventive enough to create eccentric protagonists in the two works, Pecola Breedlove in The Bluest Eye and Sula Peace in Sula. Through the tracing the two girl protagonists’ growth, Morrison illustrates the dilemma of the Afro-American people in front of white hegemonic ideology, their anxiety and powerlessness on the economical inferiority, and the black women under double oppressions of race and gender. Through the two girl protagonists, moreover, Morrison explores the interacting forces between individuals and communities. The first chapter focuses on the Afro-American communities, Lorain in The Bluest Eye and the Bottom in Sula. This chapter tries to give a geographical presentation of the black communities, the streets, schools, shops, and neighbors. By bringing forth the interplay of place and people, this chapter attempts to illustrate the diverse Afro-American life distinguished by the northward-migrating experience during the forties. The second chapter extends the focus onto the Afro-American families. This chapter emphasizes the black families’ racial and economical hardships in the dominant white society. To probe the hardships, this chapter examines the various Afro-American family types, the interrelations between parents and children. This chapter also presents how Morrison sees through the social injustices and how she redefine black motherhood and fatherhood. The third chapter attempts to explore the eccentricity of Morrison’s black female protagonists, Pecola and Sula. By tracing backward the growing of these two girls, this chapter intends to bring lights upon the social realities circumscribing black women’s lives. This chapter also traces how black women could possibly come to appreciation of being black and being female. Finally, the concluding chapter looks at the impacts of Morrison’s eccentric protagonists on their black communities. By discussing how Morrison ends the two novels, this chapter stresses on the wrestles between black individuals and black communities. In addition, as the sense of diversity pervades through Morrison’s portrayals of Afro-American communities, families, and individuals, this chapter brings forth an investigation of how Morrison possibly simplifies the white society in her presentation.
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Ma, Ai-lin, and 馬艾苓. "Discipline, Power/Knowledge and Madness in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye." Thesis, 2011. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/37325895067977061245.
Full textAbstract:
碩士世新大學
英語學研究所(含碩專班)
99
This thesis attempts to explore tension existing in Pecola, Pauline Breedlove and Claudia MacTeer by examining their representation of blacks' desire, dreaming and suffering in The Bluest Eye. This thesis will be divided into three chapters with a main focus on the blacks' articulation, representation, identity, oppression and resistance within the Foucauldian terms: firstly, the notion of discipline; secondly, the notion of power/knowledge; and thirdly, the notion of madness. To begin with, within the framework of Discipline and Punish (1975), I will examine the notion of discipline to explore the victim—Pecola and the collective consciousness as represented by the carceral society and beauty industry. Secondly, along with Foucault's critique of power/knowledge, we can understand that his critical insight serves to interpret the unexplainable and unequal phenomenon: always already Western reality. Knowledge is produced in the relations of power, and vice versa. When people hold either knowledge or power, people also hold the power of discourse and of interpretation of the world. Lastly, I am interested in the concept of madness revealed in the case of Pecola, and I also focus on the operations of silence and madness as demonstrated in Pecola's insane dialogue. Chapter IV demonstrates the range of Foucauldian terms and post-colonist approaches that are employed to examine madness inscribed in the whole society, Ohio. The black girl's madness and silence could be read as an emancipation space and survival for black community. By rereading Pecola's madness on a philosophic level, we can find out that there are constantly undiscoverable secrets under the constructed Euro-centric history. And this analysis of power and madness will portray those internal and external forces as the instrument of oppression and resistance through Pecola, Claudia and others; namely, all these characters let the almost silent voice of the hidden truth speak.
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Cheng, Kai-chung, and 鄭凱中. "The (De)Formation of African American Subjectivity in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye." Thesis, 2004. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/42969606323079131209.
Full textAbstract:
碩士國立中山大學
外國語文學系研究所
92
Title: The (De)Formation of African American Subjectivity in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye Institute of Foreign Languages and Literature, National Sun Yat-sen University Date: June 17, 2004 By: Kai-chung Cheng Advisor: Professor Shu-li Chang Abstract: This thesis aims to examine Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye with Michel Foucault’s concept of discipline, the notion of ownership, and the impotence of manhood to explore how Morrison textualizes the (de)formation of African American subjectivity. To begin with, I will justify the feasibility of setting up such a dialogue between Toni Morrison and Michel Foucault. Both the racial oppression Morrison textualizes and the disciplinary process Foucault contextualizes operate in such a subtle way that the subject is not aware of it and thus does not fight back. Therefore, Morrison and Foucault draw attention to how people are implicitly oppressed and disciplined in the construction of their docile subjectivity. In addition, Morrison emphasizes how she worries about the effect of ownership on the construction of African American subjectivity by pervading The Bluest Eye with African Americans’ desire to own properties. Their craze to own properties indicates their desire to acquire something that they believe can be found in ownership. Morrison points out implicitly that what African Americans truly desire in their desperate pursuit of ownership is their own self. However, in Morrison’s textualization, such a strategy employed by African Americans to own their self almost always ends up in failure. Based on such a failure, Morrison posits the success of owning a self, specifically an African American female self, requires one to continue in the struggles to achieve one’s self identity and to build up a healthy and intimate relationship with one’s community. Moreover, Morrison’s portrayal of the dehumanization of African American men aims not to place blame on how brutal they are, but to arouse attention as well as pity to their suffering. It is impossible to construct a wholesome African American subjectivity without paying attention to the frustration African American males confront, for, feeling impotent in achieving their manhood, they turn to the oppression of African American females. Though Morrison projects African American females and males in different ways, she devotes her writing to both of them. To sum up the structure of my thesis: In Introduction, I will justify the feasibility of examining Morrison’s The Bluest Eye with Foucault’s discipline; in Chapter One, I will present how Foucault’s concepts of gaze, norm, and Panopticism explain the reason why African Americans do not fight against the white value that oppresses them but adopt and practice it in their daily lives; in Chapter Two, I will focus on how the notion of ownership impinges upon their subjectivity and what Morrison puts forth to about how African Americans may begin to own their self; in Chapter Three, I will elaborate the significance of the process in which African American males are made impotent and dehumanized; in Conclusion, I will summarize the main arguments in previous chapters to conclude this thesis.
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Pan, Emmy, and 潘靜漪. "Derailing the Child: Toni Morrison's Dark Vision in The Bluest Eye and Sula." Thesis, 1998. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/46043788615448105400.
Full textAbstract:
碩士國立中正大學
外國語文學系
86
over time there have been many ideas of what a child is because the problems of children in literature are interesting and important; Toni Morrison is one American writer whose depiction of children is "unthinkable," but important, because she presents in The Bluest Eye and Sula an image of children "different" from our normal perceptions In the Introduction, I examine several theories of children: in the general terms of the social constrution of reality, wordsworth' s child, Locke's child, Freud's child, children in hinese society and william Golding's child, to illustrate that the child is a very complex peraception, as is the child' world. The child is not "one" thing; a child has multiple realties. Thus, "the child" and "the child's world" should not be taken for granted. The purpose for presenting the richness of possibilities for "child" is to help the reader understand Toni Morrison's children in these two novels. In order to deal with the problems of children, and with children in Toni Morrison, I define Morrison's children in chapter Two and Three as "Violent" and "knowing" butterflies (imagos) to show the skewed and bizarre world Morrison has created in The Bluest Eye and Sula. Violence and knowledge help create Morrison's child imagos in these two novels. In the Conclusion, I claim that these children are derailed by Morrison's "unusual" and "abnormal" forms of imagination. This "dark vision" presents a new view of the child in literature.
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Yao, Hui-mei, and 姚慧美. "Binary Oppositions in Toni Morrison's Novels--Sula, The Bluest Eye and Tar Baby." Thesis, 2008. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/65629506040281261053.
Full textAbstract:
博士國立高雄師範大學
英語學系
96
The 1993 Nobel Prize Winner Toni Morrison’s fiction has always been a focus of discussion since she is regarded as the leading pioneer of African-American writer and feminist. Over the past decades, Toni Morrison has become a household name in both the eastern and the western literary world. A Toni Morrison’s encyclopedia has exclusively been published due to her great influence upon the world. This dissertation attempts to provide an in-depth discussion of Morrison’s three novels, including Sula, The Bluest Eye and Tar Baby, through an approach of one of Derrida’s key concepts of deconstruction, particularly the janus-faced and double-sided idea of différance, meaning both to differ and to defer. The first chapter deals with the introductory part, which explains and explicates Derrida’s lingo, terms like signified vs. signifier, différance (or différence in French), signéPonge vs. signe éponge, pharmakon, supplement, hymen (non-concept), (n)either/(n)or, and binary oppositions to clarify and specify Derrida’s neologism. Then the concept of binarism will be adopted and applied to Morrison’s fiction in the subsequent chapters. Besides, the narrative technique, the complicated question of race, gender and politics in her representative works will be (re)examined one by one. The second chapter focuses on Morrison’s second novel, Sula, in which she explores the friendship between two black girls, Sula and Nel, since childhood. The (un)resolved binary oppositions in Sula are a testimony of Morrison’s primary concern in the inequality of the black and the white. The third chapter tackles The Bluest Eye, concerning a similar topic about a 5-year old black girl who yearns for a pair of blue eyes. Built upon an inverted world, The Bluest Eye demonstrates how the black gradually and eventually immerse and assimilate themselves to the white European standards by imposing the so-called white norm to the less fortunate of their own race, the black and the weak Pecola. Chapter Four will analyze Morrison’s treatment of a love story about a black couple, Jadine and Son, when they encounter cultural-racial-and-social related issues in Tar Baby. Finally, a conclusion will be drawn from the detailed examination of Morrison’s three novels when the traditional binary oppositions are employed to prove that meaning, or any text in Derrida’s ideas, is constantly unfixed and unfinalized. From this aspect, Morrison’s three novels, linking both the structurism and poststructurism by neither affirming nor denying the traditional binarism, proves to be one the greatest African-American writers in the world.
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伍麗怡. "Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and Alice Walker’s The Color Purple:A comparative analysis." Thesis, 2016. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/36854450707169355798.
Full textAbstract:
碩士逢甲大學
外國語文學系
104
Toni Morrison, a Nobel Laureate, and Alice Walker, a Pulitzer Prize winner, are leading Afro-American female writers. Their literary works often involve issues on race, class and gender. This thesis compares and analyzes two novels, The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison and The Color Purple by Alice Walker as they are able to reveal the oppressed lives of African-Americans. Though written by two different authors, the literature showed significant similarities. My aim is to identify and explain these similarities and to discuss the common themes of sexism and racism, I also explore why the two authors used different approaches to represent their narratives of oppression. Such differences are explained with the authors’ real life experience and their viewpoints on the racist and sexist oppressions. It is concluded that racial and sexual oppressions are interlocking problems resulting from the leftover attitudes of slavery. The novels shared similarities because the authors were writing about the same historical background when slavery was abolished and discrimination was most severe in the Southern United States. Both Pecola’s tragic story in The Bluest Eye and Celie’s tragic-comic story in The Color Purple highlight the traumatic effects of racial and sexual oppressions, through which Morrison and Walker encourage black females to give recognition to their black identity.
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Lee, Chieh-lan, and 李潔嵐. "The Musical Urn: Structure and Style as Content in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye." Thesis, 1998. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/02576383186777888056.
Full textAbstract:
碩士淡江大學
西洋語文研究所
86
The problem of formal analysis is, historically and logically, to escape the trap of the old form-content distinction for this distinction tends to be simplistic and reductive, separating form from content and seeing content as the important thing and form as the wrapping. Hence, to apply such a method to analyze Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye and at the same time to make the analysis more complex, I intentionally involve, besides the two old ones, another two elements into my discussion-- the novel's design of viewpoints and the author's writing style. By examining the text from such a traditional analytic perspective, I hope to find another critical aspect (which was less focused on) of the works of a modern or even postmodern writer. In the first chapter, I briefly introduced the story lines and characters of The Bluest Eye and explained the method applying to offer both textual and critical backgrounds. Then in the second chapter, emphasizing on the three versions of Dick-and-Jane story which is one of the important elements of the novel's formal arrangement, I discussed the close connection between the primer and the subject matter of the novel. Furthermore, the relationship between the scheme of shifting points-of- view as well as printing patterns and the themes of the work was brought into expatiation in Chapter Three. Finally, in Chapter Four, the coordination of Morrison's writing style and the thematic content was listed to complete this four-element-involving analysis on The Bluest Eye. After this analysis, we may find those multiple elements interacting themselves and sharing a certain unity to make the novel as a self-defining body and a work of art. Accompanied with a sense of mobility and a certain musical quality brought by the continuous letters of the third version of the primer in the prologue, the novel can be considered a "musical urn" in which the components integrating with each other finely. And Morrison, by creating for all of her subjects formal features which fuse so inseparably with the matter that an artwork comes into being, makes herself both an imaginative artist and a successful novelist.
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Huang, Ching-fen, and 黃沁芬. "Shame, Trauma and Healing in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye and Song of Solomon." Thesis, 2012. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/67534289013895134118.
Full textAbstract:
博士國立高雄師範大學
英語學系
100
This dissertation aims at investigating how inter-racial and intra-racial shame traumatizes the souls of African-Americans in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and Song of Solomon. Through family and society, racist discourses and racial violence leave toxic shame in the depth of black people’s heart. The internalized toxic shame not only destroys its victims’ psychological structures but also harms their human relationships. They are tormented by post-traumatic symptoms and shame-induced affects. They also suffer fragmentation of selfhood. Due to toxic shame, they cannot accept and love themselves as who they are. Their self-contempt and self-loathing are so unbearable that they create a variety of cover-ups to fend them off. Furthermore, since their true selves are sent into hiding, the victims suffer from an unauthentic existence as well as broken relationships. Since traumatizing social norms are the focus of my study, I apply Foucault’s theories concerning normations to analyze how racist discourses and norms operate through family and society to dominate blacks in American society. Moreover, I turn to various psychological theories to study how internalized toxic shame traumatizes African-Americans and to find out how healing may occur. Surprisingly, in the two novels mentioned above, Morrison proposes the same notions about shame, trauma and healing as those psychologists do. For Morrison, once the racist discourses or racial violence are internalized, they become toxic and brings demonic destructions to one’s selfhood as well as to one’s relationships. However, just as some psychologists’ belief, Morrison also proposes that love is the antidote for toxic shame. In her novels, Morrison reveals that only unconditional love can heal people of their traumatic shame and can integrate their traumatized and fragmented selfhood. Besides, through compassion and supportive actions, their dissociated relationships can be reconstructed. The Breedloves and the Deads are the two major families under investigations in The Bluest Eye and Song of Solomon, respectively. Although they are on the two polars of social hierarchy, both black families suffer from internalized racial shame. Members from both families lose contact with their own true self, and they suffer from breached relationships with their family, friends and community. In The Bluest Eye, Pecola, the main character, has never experienced any healing in her life because love is completely absent in her world. She is rejected, shamed, and abused by her own parents, peers, and community members. Nevertheless, Milkman, the main character of Song of Solomon, gets healed by love. At the end of the novel, he is transformed to an integrated and loving individual. He is even willing to lay down his own life for his beloved aunt as well as his spiritual guide, Pilate. The first chapter of my thesis is a brief introduction to its major themes. Then, how family and social shame are internalized by African Americans is thoroughly probed in Chapter Two. In Chapter Three, I reveal how internalized racial shame traumatizes African Americans and what the aftermaths of the shame-induced trauma are. Chapter Four mainly deals with healing, and I propose that unconditional love is the only cure for toxic shame. In Chapter Five, to conclude my dissertation, I not only restate my arguments, but also do demonstrate how Morrison’s writing techniques correspond to them.
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Gagean, Alexandra Maria de Vasconcellos Conde. "The Gothic and Grotesque in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye and Song of Solomon." Dissertação, 2020. https://hdl.handle.net/10216/130828.
Full text
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Chu, Li Ta, and 鞠立達. "The Black Female Selfhood in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye and Song of Solomon." Thesis, 1995. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/43591545100576495808.
Full text
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Gagean, Alexandra Maria de Vasconcellos Conde. "The Gothic and Grotesque in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye and Song of Solomon." Master's thesis, 2020. https://hdl.handle.net/10216/130828.
Full text
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Liao, Ying-Hua, and 廖瑩華. "Differences in Race, Class and Gender: A Critical Study of Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye." Thesis, 1998. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/11182829704027555617.
Full textAbstract:
碩士國立彰化師範大學
英語學系
86
In a white-male dominated literary field, the works by and about non-white women writers are ignored. In America, due to the specific historical and cultural contexts, black women have been suffering from the oppression of racism, classism and sexism. Their voices have been silenced. Nowadays, more and more black women writers are articulating their voices and claiming their rights for humanistic existence. Toni Morrison, a black woman writer, is a representative figure. This thesis aims to investigate how the issues of race, class and gender are reflected in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye. It explores how these three elements interact to oppress black people. The thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter one introduces Toni Morrison's literary career and her contribution to American literature. Chapter two explores how the dominant white ideology distorts the black's sense of self in the novel. It criticizes the institutionalized racism which devastates African-Americans. Chapter three focuses on classism. It investigates class distinctions among black wonen themselves and their cultural experiences in relation to class and race factors. Chapter four examines black feminine issues and unfolds sexism as the oppressive system for black women in America. Chapter five recapitulates the major arguments of the thesis.
48
Wu, Mei-Ling, and 吳梅玲. "Revisiting Trauma for Restoration of Love in Toni Morrison''s The Bluest Eye and God Help the Child." Thesis, 2019. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/6xae93.
Full textAbstract:
碩士國立中山大學
外國語文學系研究所
107
This thesis aims at analyzing Afro-Americans historical trauma and alienated self-identity in Morrison’s first novel and her latest one—The Bluest Eye and God Help the Child—with the lens of trauma theory and the metaphorical process. Both novels share similar themes including child abuse, trauma experience, alienated selfhood, and metaphor of the body. Though both novels have explored the similar traumatic experience Afro-Americans undertake, their endings are opposite to each other because they interpret love in different ways. At the end of The Bluest Eye, Pecola loses self-identity and gets lost in the illusion of blue eyes; on the other hand, the end of God Help the Child presents that Bride has retrieved the lost self-love through reviewing her traumatic past. Thus, I believe Morrison’s novels attempt to guide Afro-Americans to reclaim the power of love through revisiting and reinterpreting the historical trauma they share. This thesis is structured in five parts. In the introduction, I will illustrate the major themes of The Bluest Eye and God Help the Child and the relationship between white culture/white consciousness and Afro-Americans’ self-identity. Then, I would brief about the literature review, research topics, and related theory of two novels. In chapter one, my discussion aims to provide a further understanding of trauma theory, collective memory, and the metaphorical process so to construct my theoretical framework. In chapter two, I examine Pecola’s sufferings in The Bluest Eye and reveal how the black community defines love under the traumatic shame in the twentieth century. In addition, I would analyze the oppression of white culture on Afro-Americans’ self-identity in chapter two. For example, the Breedloves internalizes the white standard of beauty and regard themselves as ugly; thus, Pecola imagines a pair of blue eyes one herself to fit into white culture for survival. On the other hand, the use of Morrison’s metaphors also implies Afro-Americans’ desire for love and ideal forms of love in white culture. Through the review of another black girl Claudia, Morrison attempts to critique the black community’s distorted definition of love. In chapter three, I will examine the transformation and metaphor of Bride’s body. Also, I would illustrate how Bride restores the ability of love and self-love through interpreting her childhood trauma in her shrinking body. Even though God Help the Child sets in the twenty-first century when racial shame and colorism are no longer the mainstream cultures, Bride inherits the racial trauma of last century from her mother Sweetness. Thus, Bride dresses herself with cosmetic products to earn approval from white consciousness. Bride’s body is the essential signifier for her to update her past interpretation of love. Her body not only keeps shrinking after breaking up with her lover but repeatedly damages. When she is touched and tendered by others, she will learn to be a child who is loved by others as well as a loving mother. Moreover, Bride will review the mothering she has lost in childhood and becomes the caretaker to perform the essences of love. Morrison also inserts metaphors in God Help the Child to reflect Afro-Americans’ self-identity in the post-racial era. Morrison even complicates her narratives and employs the call-and-response narrative for readers not only to engage the process of meaning-production but to review the historical contexts. Most importantly, Morrison calls readers to challenge the established notion of love. In the concluding chapter, I restate my thesis statements and compare the difference of narrative structure between The Bluest Eye and God Help the Child. What distinguishes God Help the Child and The Bluest Eye does not just rely on the call-and-response narrative but the way of exploring love. Morrison attempts to critique the form of love she established in her earlier works with her late novels. Most importantly, Morrison reveals that love could be reinterpreted and restored only by revisiting and reviewing trauma.
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Carey, Cecelia V. "Bildungsroman in contemporary black women's fiction." Thesis, 2001. http://hdl.handle.net/1957/33313.
Full textAbstract:
Bildungsroman in Contemporary Black Women's Fiction is a study of Toni
Morrison's The Bluest Eye and Alice Walker's The Color Purple. Both of these writers
implement a newer version of the genre of Bildungsroman to reveal the complexities
involved in coming of age for a young woman of color. Both novels have protagonists
that struggle with racism, sexism, and classism as barriers to their identity formation.
This study aims to reveal the ways in which multiple layers of oppression inhibit the
progress of contemporary African-American female heroines in modem Bildungsroman.Graduation date: 2002
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Hsu, Chun-Ching, and 許純晶. "The Identity Politics of African-Americans in Alice Walker's The Third Life of Grange Copeland and Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye." Thesis, 1996. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/08566452879814411636.
Full textAbstract:
碩士靜宜大學
外國語文研究所
84
Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye and Alice Walker's The Third Life of Grange Copeland exemplify black women writers' severe critique of black communities for the first time during the 1970s. They both "insist that they [black communities] have deeply internalized racist stereotypes that radically affect their definitions of woman and man" (Christian, "Trajectories" 178). The two novels assert to their readers that black communities should directly take the responsibility for the tragedies of the main characters--for the insanity of Pecola Breedlove, for the self-destruction of Margaret Copeland, for the execution of Grange Copeland, and for the assassination of Mem Copeland by her husband. In my analysis of the identity politics of the major characters in the two novels, I focus on the ambiguous problem of African-American identities by applying feminist and post- colonialist gender ideology to the issue. Gender ideology refuses the natural determinism of essentialism and emphasizes the changeable quality of identity, which corresponds to Morrison's and Walker's viewpoints in the two novels. Thus, applying the concept to these novels effectively contributes to our understanding of black women writers during the 1970s.