(no subject)
Brittany Snell
Mrs. Arsenau
AP 11-4
26 May 2005
The Bluest Eye
Beauty
"Safe on the other side, [aureen Pearl screamed at us, "I am cute! And you ugly! Black and ugly black e mos. I *am* cute!"...We were sinking under the wisdom, accuracy, and relevance, of Maureen's last words. If she was cute--and if anything could be believed, she *was*--then we were not. And what did that mean? We were lesser. Nicer, brighter, but still lesser. Dolls we could destroy, but we could not destroy the honey voices of parents and aunts, the obedience in the eyes of our peers, the slippery light in the eyes of our teachers when they encouraged the Maureen Pearls of the world. What was their secret? What did we lack? Why was it important? And so what? Guileless and without vanity, we were still in love with ourselves then. We felt comfortable in our skins . . . And all the time we knew that Maureen Pearl was not the Enemy and not worthy of such intense hatred. The Thing to fear was the Thing that made her beautiful, and not us"(Pg 62).
Comment: The thing to fear was society and how your standings are in society can make or break whether or not your beautiful. What ever society believed and stood for was taken to be correct.
"It had occurred to Pecola some time ago that if her eyes, those eyes that held the pictures, and knew the sights-if those eyes of hers were different, that is to say, beautiful, she herself would be different" (page 53).
Comment: Pecola believes that if her eyes were blue that she would be treated better. But not only that, she believed her parents wouldn't fight in front of "beautiful" eyes. She would see a beautiful world with beautiful eye, whereas she is seeing an ugly world because she has ugly eyes.
"She be lucky if it don't live. Bound to be the ugliest thing walking."
"Can't help but be. Ought to be a law: two ugly people doubling up like that to make more ugly. Be better off in the ground"(Pg 148).
Comment: This quote talks about the standard of beauty. Two ugly people doubling up was unheard of. The standard of beauty is two beautiful people having a beautiful child with blonde hair and blue eyes.
Racism
"Junior considered the playground his own, and the schoolchildren coveted his freedom to sleep late, go home for lunch, and dominate the playground after school. He hated to see the swings, slides, monkey bars, and seesaws empty and tried to get kids to stick around as long as possible. White kids; his mother did not like him to play with niggers"(Pg 71).
Comment: This book is full of interracial racism. Junior's mother looks down on people blacker then her and does not consider them worthy to be spoken to or taken as a human being because she is superior to them.
"Up north white people was everywhere--next door, downstairs, all over the streets--and colored folks few and far between. Northern colored folks was different too. Dirty-like. No better than whites for meanness. They could make you feel just as no-count, 'cept I didn't expect it from them. That was the lonesomest time of my life. I remember looking out them front windows just waiting for Cholly to come home at three o'clock"(Pg 15).
Comment: Mrs. Breedlove had experienced black on black racism for the first time and it made her sad. She found that it was black people that were more racist towards her in the south than white people in the north. She then knew that they felt they were low class and they could do nothing about it if their own race didn't accept them.
"Soaphead Church had been reared in a family proud of its academic accomplishments and its mixed blood--in fact, they believed the former was based on the latter"(Pg 132).
Comment: The white race was said to be superior. To be proud of your family you always had to "marry up", meaning marry someone with more white in them than you. Black people would never settle for marrying lower class or people with less white in them than what they had.
Food
"Love, thick and dark as Alaga syrup, eased up into that cracked window. I could smell it--taste it--sweet, musty, with an edge of wintergreen in its base--everywhere in that house"(Pg 14).
Comment: Love is talked about throughout the course of the novel but not in the way it is brought up in this quote. This quote says that love is easing into the windows as if it were all around but in the novel Pecola does not receive any love with the exception of Cholly. I believe the love is being compared to Cholly when Pecola cannot escape his unhealthy ways of showing love by saying it was everywhere in the house.
"Sometimes their words move in lofty spirals; other times they take strident leaps, and all of it is punctuated with warm-pulsed laughter--like the throb of a heart made of jelly"(Pg 15).
Comment: This quotes imagery has you flowing from one spot to the next. It compares inanimate things such as words to moving actions such as lofty spirals. The quote depicts images that can be seen by only being described. The heart of jelly being compared to laughter brings the image of a scoop of jelly pulsating as if it were laughing
"It was O.K. when I put it on the truck. The store can't do anything about it once it's on the truck." Listerine and Lucky Strike breath"(Pg 32).
Comment:Morrison summed up the character of the person in those last five words. This was not just a man who smoked, but it was a man who smoked and wanted to hide it. Maybe he smoked on the job and wasn't supposed to. Whatever the reason, the fact he is trying to hide his cigarette breath insinuates he is hiding other things as well (like how the couch got the rip in the back).
Abandonment
"When Cholly was four days old, his mother wrapped him in two blankets and one newspaper and placed him on a junk heap by the railroad . . . He gathered from [Aunt Jimmy] that his mother wasn't right in the head. But he never had a chance to find out, because she ran away . . . He had four years of school before he got courage enough to ask his aunt who and where his father was"(Pg 105).
Comment: This quote gives you some of the information to describe how and why Cholly acts the way he does. Cholly was abandoned and alone before he was a week old. Cholly is curious yet hostile at the same time at his real mother and father leaving him with many questions to ask them.
"Cholly sat on the back porch waiting. It had occured to him that Darlene might be pregnant. It was a wildly irrational, completely uninformed idea, but the fear it produced was complete enough. He had to get away. Never mind the fact that he was leaving that very day. A town or two away was not far enough, especially since Darlene's mother could surely find him. Cholly knew it was wrong to run out on a pregnant girl, and recalled, with sympathy, that his father had done just that. Now he understood. He knew then what he must do--find his father. His father would understand"(Pg 120).
Comment: Cholly is being compared to his father in this quote. Being abandoned when he was younger Cholly now understands his dad's reasons for leaving. Being in a similar situation, Cholly hopes his dad would understand him.
"In those days, Cholly was truly free. Abandoned in a junk heap by his mother, rejected from a crap game by his father, there was nothing more to lose. He was alone with his own perceptions and appetites, and they alone interested him. (Pg 126)
We tried to see [Pecola] without looking at her, and never, never went near. Not because she was absurd, or repulsive, or because we were frightened, but because we had failed her. Our flowers never grew . . . So we avoided Pecola Breedlove--forever.
And the years folded up like pocket handkerchiefs. Sammy left town long ago; Cholly died in the workhouse; Mrs. Breedlove still does housework. And Pecola is somewhere in that little brown house she and her mother moved to on the edge of town"(Pg 158).
Comment:This quote tells how being abandoned took it's toll on everyone. It says that Pecola lives on the outskirts of town just as Hester Prinn did in The Scarlet Letter. It shows that being abandoned really kind of means that you are rejected and unwanted.
Colors
"Orange patched sky of the steel mill section never reached this part of town; this sky was always blue" (Pg 105).
Comment: This quote is saying that town is always, "Perfect" on the outside. That even the weather and God, move out of the way for the white folks.
"His light green words repeated color to the day"(Pg 75).
Comment:By saying light green it means that the words are fainty there throughtout the day repeating themselves and their importance.
"Dying fire lights the sky with a dull orange glow..staring at the patch of color surrounded by black" (Pg 10).
Comment: In this quote the colors resemble the white and black people. The black people are black and the white people are orange. The black people are surrounding the white people because they want to be like them so they copy and critque them.
Mrs. Arsenau
AP 11-4
26 May 2005
The Bluest Eye
Beauty
"Safe on the other side, [aureen Pearl screamed at us, "I am cute! And you ugly! Black and ugly black e mos. I *am* cute!"...We were sinking under the wisdom, accuracy, and relevance, of Maureen's last words. If she was cute--and if anything could be believed, she *was*--then we were not. And what did that mean? We were lesser. Nicer, brighter, but still lesser. Dolls we could destroy, but we could not destroy the honey voices of parents and aunts, the obedience in the eyes of our peers, the slippery light in the eyes of our teachers when they encouraged the Maureen Pearls of the world. What was their secret? What did we lack? Why was it important? And so what? Guileless and without vanity, we were still in love with ourselves then. We felt comfortable in our skins . . . And all the time we knew that Maureen Pearl was not the Enemy and not worthy of such intense hatred. The Thing to fear was the Thing that made her beautiful, and not us"(Pg 62).
Comment: The thing to fear was society and how your standings are in society can make or break whether or not your beautiful. What ever society believed and stood for was taken to be correct.
"It had occurred to Pecola some time ago that if her eyes, those eyes that held the pictures, and knew the sights-if those eyes of hers were different, that is to say, beautiful, she herself would be different" (page 53).
Comment: Pecola believes that if her eyes were blue that she would be treated better. But not only that, she believed her parents wouldn't fight in front of "beautiful" eyes. She would see a beautiful world with beautiful eye, whereas she is seeing an ugly world because she has ugly eyes.
"She be lucky if it don't live. Bound to be the ugliest thing walking."
"Can't help but be. Ought to be a law: two ugly people doubling up like that to make more ugly. Be better off in the ground"(Pg 148).
Comment: This quote talks about the standard of beauty. Two ugly people doubling up was unheard of. The standard of beauty is two beautiful people having a beautiful child with blonde hair and blue eyes.
Racism
"Junior considered the playground his own, and the schoolchildren coveted his freedom to sleep late, go home for lunch, and dominate the playground after school. He hated to see the swings, slides, monkey bars, and seesaws empty and tried to get kids to stick around as long as possible. White kids; his mother did not like him to play with niggers"(Pg 71).
Comment: This book is full of interracial racism. Junior's mother looks down on people blacker then her and does not consider them worthy to be spoken to or taken as a human being because she is superior to them.
"Up north white people was everywhere--next door, downstairs, all over the streets--and colored folks few and far between. Northern colored folks was different too. Dirty-like. No better than whites for meanness. They could make you feel just as no-count, 'cept I didn't expect it from them. That was the lonesomest time of my life. I remember looking out them front windows just waiting for Cholly to come home at three o'clock"(Pg 15).
Comment: Mrs. Breedlove had experienced black on black racism for the first time and it made her sad. She found that it was black people that were more racist towards her in the south than white people in the north. She then knew that they felt they were low class and they could do nothing about it if their own race didn't accept them.
"Soaphead Church had been reared in a family proud of its academic accomplishments and its mixed blood--in fact, they believed the former was based on the latter"(Pg 132).
Comment: The white race was said to be superior. To be proud of your family you always had to "marry up", meaning marry someone with more white in them than you. Black people would never settle for marrying lower class or people with less white in them than what they had.
Food
"Love, thick and dark as Alaga syrup, eased up into that cracked window. I could smell it--taste it--sweet, musty, with an edge of wintergreen in its base--everywhere in that house"(Pg 14).
Comment: Love is talked about throughout the course of the novel but not in the way it is brought up in this quote. This quote says that love is easing into the windows as if it were all around but in the novel Pecola does not receive any love with the exception of Cholly. I believe the love is being compared to Cholly when Pecola cannot escape his unhealthy ways of showing love by saying it was everywhere in the house.
"Sometimes their words move in lofty spirals; other times they take strident leaps, and all of it is punctuated with warm-pulsed laughter--like the throb of a heart made of jelly"(Pg 15).
Comment: This quotes imagery has you flowing from one spot to the next. It compares inanimate things such as words to moving actions such as lofty spirals. The quote depicts images that can be seen by only being described. The heart of jelly being compared to laughter brings the image of a scoop of jelly pulsating as if it were laughing
"It was O.K. when I put it on the truck. The store can't do anything about it once it's on the truck." Listerine and Lucky Strike breath"(Pg 32).
Comment:Morrison summed up the character of the person in those last five words. This was not just a man who smoked, but it was a man who smoked and wanted to hide it. Maybe he smoked on the job and wasn't supposed to. Whatever the reason, the fact he is trying to hide his cigarette breath insinuates he is hiding other things as well (like how the couch got the rip in the back).
Abandonment
"When Cholly was four days old, his mother wrapped him in two blankets and one newspaper and placed him on a junk heap by the railroad . . . He gathered from [Aunt Jimmy] that his mother wasn't right in the head. But he never had a chance to find out, because she ran away . . . He had four years of school before he got courage enough to ask his aunt who and where his father was"(Pg 105).
Comment: This quote gives you some of the information to describe how and why Cholly acts the way he does. Cholly was abandoned and alone before he was a week old. Cholly is curious yet hostile at the same time at his real mother and father leaving him with many questions to ask them.
"Cholly sat on the back porch waiting. It had occured to him that Darlene might be pregnant. It was a wildly irrational, completely uninformed idea, but the fear it produced was complete enough. He had to get away. Never mind the fact that he was leaving that very day. A town or two away was not far enough, especially since Darlene's mother could surely find him. Cholly knew it was wrong to run out on a pregnant girl, and recalled, with sympathy, that his father had done just that. Now he understood. He knew then what he must do--find his father. His father would understand"(Pg 120).
Comment: Cholly is being compared to his father in this quote. Being abandoned when he was younger Cholly now understands his dad's reasons for leaving. Being in a similar situation, Cholly hopes his dad would understand him.
"In those days, Cholly was truly free. Abandoned in a junk heap by his mother, rejected from a crap game by his father, there was nothing more to lose. He was alone with his own perceptions and appetites, and they alone interested him. (Pg 126)
We tried to see [Pecola] without looking at her, and never, never went near. Not because she was absurd, or repulsive, or because we were frightened, but because we had failed her. Our flowers never grew . . . So we avoided Pecola Breedlove--forever.
And the years folded up like pocket handkerchiefs. Sammy left town long ago; Cholly died in the workhouse; Mrs. Breedlove still does housework. And Pecola is somewhere in that little brown house she and her mother moved to on the edge of town"(Pg 158).
Comment:This quote tells how being abandoned took it's toll on everyone. It says that Pecola lives on the outskirts of town just as Hester Prinn did in The Scarlet Letter. It shows that being abandoned really kind of means that you are rejected and unwanted.
Colors
"Orange patched sky of the steel mill section never reached this part of town; this sky was always blue" (Pg 105).
Comment: This quote is saying that town is always, "Perfect" on the outside. That even the weather and God, move out of the way for the white folks.
"His light green words repeated color to the day"(Pg 75).
Comment:By saying light green it means that the words are fainty there throughtout the day repeating themselves and their importance.
"Dying fire lights the sky with a dull orange glow..staring at the patch of color surrounded by black" (Pg 10).
Comment: In this quote the colors resemble the white and black people. The black people are black and the white people are orange. The black people are surrounding the white people because they want to be like them so they copy and critque them.