A Deviation of Expectations in Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye” - Literature Essay Samples

Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye depicts a chilling tale of a young girl’s experience with racism following The Great Depression. While the span of the novel is divided into four seasons, â€Å"Autumn,† â€Å"Winter,† â€Å"Spring,† and â€Å"Summer,† it is through the characters’ experiences that we see its failure to actually meet the traditional expectations of these seasons. Morrison’s framing of time through the use of natural seasons serves as a juxtaposition to illuminate the unnaturalness of her characters’ lives.Morrison begins the novel with the season of â€Å"Autumn,† a traditional time of crisp air, harvesting, and beautifully coloured leaves falling from tree limbs, however these expectations are quickly undermined through the experiences of her characters. We can first notice a juxtaposition of the beauty of autumn which, in this case, serves to illuminate the Breedlove family’s ugliness. In a r evealing introduction of the Breedlove family, Morrison’s primary narrator, Claudia MacTeer, remembers the appearance of the Breedloves’ storefront house which would â€Å"foist itself on the eye of the passerby in a manner that is both irritating and melancholy† (32). Claudia suggests that the storefront was not a temporary place of residence for the Breedloves, but rather one of permanence because â€Å"they were poor and black, and they stayed there because they believed they were ugly† (38). While the Breedloves’ ugliness, as a whole, is â€Å"unique† (38), their lack of beauty is most obviously demonstrated through the character of Pecola Breedlove, the youngest member of the Breedlove family whose self-esteem we can see slowly diminishing as the natural cycle of the seasons advance. Pecola’s ugliness and her obsessive longing for blue eyes in hopes that â€Å"she herself would be different† (46), provide a striking contra st between the expectation of beauty in autumn and the beauty that Pecola so desperately yearns for, but severely lacks. In this way, Morrison uses the season of â€Å"Autumn† not only as a division of the narrative, but as a tool to underline the Breedloves’ unnatural lack of beauty, specifically through Pecola, against the expectations of a traditionally beautiful season.The plot continues to deviate from the expectations of what autumn typically symbolizes when Claudia recalls the beginning of Pecola’s sexual maturation in which she starts â€Å"ministratin† (31). Pecola’s coming of age in the â€Å"raw October wind† (57) proves to be somewhat ironic in that her newly adopted maturity carries with it the possibility of pregnancy and new life, characteristics not usually symbolized by autumn, yet something that leads to the beginning of her loss of innocence and foreshadows her ultimate demise. We can also note the discrepancy between what is expected of autumn and what actually happens through Claudia’s sickness; â€Å"I cough once, loudly, through bronchial tubes already packed tight with phlegm† (10). Remembering her mother looking after her during her illness, Claudia recalls: â€Å"When I think of autumn, I think of somebody with hands who do not want me to die† (12). Morrison uses Pecola and Claudia’s unnatural experiences to draw attention to the discrepancy between what would typically be expected in the natural cycle of autumn as compared to what actually happens. As â€Å"Autumn† transitions into â€Å"Winter,† so too does Pecola’s rapidly declining self-esteem. As the course study guide discusses, Pecola’s gradual â€Å"rejection of herself† (16) can most clearly be seen through the alienation she experiences by her peers, especially Maureen Peal, â€Å"a high yellow dream child with long brown hair braided into two lynch ropes that hung down her back† (62). Claudia remembers winter as something that â€Å"had stiffened itself into a hateful knot that nothing could loosen† (62) except for Maureen Peal, a â€Å"disrupter of seasons† (62). After befriending Pecola for a very short period of time, Maureen is quick to turn on Pecola and the girls, and in a spat calls them â€Å"black and ugly black e mos† (73), serving to effectively break down Pecola’s already weak exterior of self-confidence and self-worth even further. While winter is a season that is traditionally associated with hibernation and an unchanging state of being, Pecola’s changing and steadily declining psychological state is reflected in the snowflakes she sees â€Å"falling and dying on the pavement† (93) following her exit from Geraldine’s house after being called a â€Å"nasty little black bitch† (92) over a crime she did not commit. Like the dying snowflakes on the pavement, so too is Pecolaâ €™s self-esteem dying. The course study guide confirms Pecola’s mental deterioration when it explains that â€Å"what the change from ‘Autumn’ to ‘Winter’ means for Pecola is [a] gradual shift to a vision of herself that is as unforgiving as the shift of seasons is inevitable† (17). Morrison uses the change in Pecola’s mental state to contrast the expectations of a characteristically changeless winter season, again drawing attention to the discrepancy of what is expected of natural seasons by providing the opposite of these expectations through her character’s experiences. While the connotations of spring usually consist of rebirth and renewal, happiness and awakening, Morrison’s â€Å"Spring† time frame in the novel wildly deviates from its traditional expectations of the season and is severely tainted by a series of a horrific set of events. The reader is first given an idea of Claudia’s disposition tow ards spring when she remembers the branches of the trees that â€Å"beat us differently in the spring† (97); â€Å"Instead of a dull pain of a winter strap, there were these new green switches that lost their sting long after the whipping was over† (97). Claudia depicts the negativity that still remains in her memory of spring when she states, â€Å"Even now spring for me is shot through with the remembered ache of switchings, and forsythia holds no cheer† (97). The negativity does not end here; Morrison’s interpretation of spring proves to be full of disappointment, corruption, and death for her characters. In the chapters telling of Cholly Breedlove’s childhood, we see him remember his Aunt Jimmy’s death: â€Å"It was in the spring, a very chilly spring, that Aunt Jimmy died of peach cobbler† (135). Cholly also experiences disappointment when after travelling to Macon to find his father, he is ultimately rejected and treated in a ho stile nature upon their only encounter. Pecola, too, experiences disappointment when after accidentally spilling the berry cobbler, â€Å"Mrs. Breedlove yanked her up by the arm, slapped her again, and in a voice thin with anger, abused Pecola directly† (109), in which she â€Å"could hear Mrs. Breedlove hushing and soothing the tears of the little pink-and-yellow girl† (109). The events that take place in â€Å"Spring† are significant because their negative nature serves to highlight their unnaturalness in correlation with the expected characteristics of the season. The corruption of â€Å"Spring† first manifests itself in the character of Soaphead Church, a once priest who practices perversion through touching little girls, and the corruption only continues when Frieda, Claudia’s sister, is inappropriately touched by their house guest, Mr. Henry. However, the most unnatural act that occurs in the entirety of the novel is when Pecola is raped by h er father, Cholly, â€Å"on a Sunday afternoon, in the thin light of spring, [after] he staggered home reeling drunk and saw his daughter in the kitchen† (161). We later learn that this is the first of two times she will be assaulted by her father, and as a result is impregnated with her father’s child. Despite Pecola’s pregnancy actually following the pattern of the spring season through the expectations of rebirth and renewal, the act itself still functions as a deviation from the norm because it is tainted by the unnaturalness of the act. In this case, what is expected of â€Å"Spring† is completely opposite of what happens. Morrison creates a juxtaposition to highlight the horrific and unnatural events that occur simultaneously with the naturally occurring cycle of the seasons. The final season of the novel, â€Å"Summer,† concludes the one year span of the story while serving to depict the exact opposite of what the season would typically char acterize. The expectations of a fruitful earth, growth, and fulfillment, are negated by the unyielding nature of the earth and unexpected death. Claudia’s introduction of the season foreshadows the negativity that is to follow: â€Å"I have only to break into the tightness of a strawberry, and I see summer, its dust and lowering skies. It remains for me a season of storms. The parched days and sticky nights are undistinguished in my mind, but the storm, the violent sudden storms, both frightened and quenched me† (187). While â€Å"the earth itself might have been unyielding† (introduction) in the case of Claudia and Frieda’s marigolds that ceased to grow, so too was Pecola’s â€Å"plot of black dirt† in which Cholly Breedlove â€Å"dropped his seeds† (introduction). Claudia recalls that though â€Å"the baby came too soon and died† (204), it was Cholly â€Å"who loved [Pecola] enough to touch her, envelop her, give something o f himself to her. But his touch was fatal, and the something he gave her filled the matrix of her agony with death† (206). The unnaturalness of unyielding earth paralleled with the death of Pecola’s baby is followed by her ultimate loss of sanity in which â€Å"she spent her days, her tendril, sap-green days, walking up and down, up and down, her head jerking to the beat of a drummer so distant only she could hear† (204). A critic of the novel, Sharon Gravett, provides an interesting perspective when she explains that Claudia â€Å"sees the cycle of the year moving from the dying season of fall to fall again, which serves as an ironic counterpoint to the tale of Pecola Breedlove, who comes of age, is raped and impregnated by her father Cholly, goes mad, and loses her baby. [Morrison] uses the seasons with their patterns and changes to comment on similar or ironic developments within the human community† (89). Gravett also comments on the unfruitful nature of the season and its deviation away from what one would expect of summer, explaining that the novel â€Å"ends in the blasted hopes of a life that has failed to bloom. Focusing on the death of life and hope rather than the rebirth† (94). Through the symbolism of the marigolds resistance to grow and the death of Pecola’s baby, Morrison almost suggests signs of a disruption in the natural order of the seasons. It is through these unnatural events and the characters’ subsequent experiences that we see Morrison’s juxtaposition of the natural cycle of the seasons. While seasons occur in an unchanging and predictable pattern, the lives of Morrison’s characters do not appear to follow the same linear order of predictability. The four main sections of the novel, â€Å"Autumn,† â€Å"Winter,† â€Å"Spring,† and â€Å"Summer,† not only serve as a means of framing time, but as a way of drawing attention to the discrepancy between the natural expectations of each season and what actually happens regarding the development of the story and the characters’ experiences. Through her characters’ lives, especially that of Pecola Breedlove, Morrison provides a significant distortion of the natural order of the seasons which parallel the characters’ experiences. Pecola begins sexual maturation in the fall, is alienated by her peers and loses all self-esteem in the winter, is raped and impregnated by her father in the spring, and loses her baby and eventually loses sanity as a result in the summer. A critic of the novel, Thomas Fick, explains Morrison’s technique of framing time through the use of seasons as a device which â€Å"marks off a parody of rebirth and growth† (10). In this way, it is through the natural cycle of the seasons that we are able to see just how unnatural the events and experiences that effect Morrison’s characters are. Works CitedCastricano, C. â€Å"Un it 7: The Bluest Eye.† ENGL 4351: Modern American Fiction. Kamloops, BC: TRU Open Learning, 2008Fick, Thomas. â€Å"Toni Morrison’s ‘Allegory of the Cave’: Movies, Consumption, and Platonic Realism in ‘The Bluest Eye’†. The Journal of the Midewest Mordern Language Association, 22(1), 1989.Gravett, Sharon. â€Å"Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye: An Inverted Walden?† Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye. Harold Bloom, 2009. Google Books. Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. 1970. New York: Plume, 1994. Print.

Analysis of Plays, Fences and A Raisin in the Sun Essay

Jose Morales English 164 Dr. Kidd 08/03/2012 â€Å"Fences† and â€Å"A Raisin in the Sun† Plays, â€Å"Fences† and â€Å"A Raisin in the Sun† share similar plots. They take place in the mid-western United States in the 1950’s and explore the family dynamics of the African-American Family and the paradigmatic shift it experienced between two generations. The older generation, who could remember slavery by first-hand experience or by being born during a time when success for the average African-Americans was systematically stifled by racist and unconstitutional laws that were put in place when slavery was legal, and the young generation that began to show some sense of entitlement, had begun to overcome institutional barriers to succeed and empower†¦show more content†¦Although she is happy with mama’s decision to buy a house, Ruth is more concerned with receiving the affection of her husband and keeping him happy than the consequences or the moral implications his decisions will have. Ruth maintains the apartment they live in and mos t of the time, goes along with whatever Walter says. This is where Ruth and Mama differ; Mama wants Walter to be happy but not at the cost of doing something morally wrong, Ruth will do whatever it takes to make Walter happy. We see this when Ruth is contemplating having an abortion in order not to complicate living arrangements in the apartment and to allow Walter the financial means to pursue his goals. She also intends to keep it from Walter so spare him the burden of having to make a decision like that. When Mama find out about the abortion, she is appalled and says, â€Å"†¦we a people who give children life, not who destroys them.† Mama also succeeds in expressing her rich values and nurturing nature in Act III, Scene Three, when it is discovered that Walter has lost the remainder of the insurance money when his liquor store investment partner disappears with the money. Beneatha goes into a rage and openly expresses her hatred and contempt for her brother, a nd says, â€Å"He’s no brother of mine.†(Hansbury 3.3) And Mama says, †There is always something left to love. And if you aint learned that, you aint learned nothing. (Looking at her) HaveShow MoreRelatedComparing Themes of To Kill a Mockingbird and A Raisin in the Sun1962 Words   |  8 PagesTo Kill a Mockingbird and A Raisin in the Sun are books both written during a time of racial tension and inequality. Harper Lee and Lorraine Hansberry lived through the civil rights movement and saw the physical and verbal harassment against African Americans. This experience is evident in both works as the theme of fighting prejudice shines through. The goal of this paper is to compare and contrast the theme in both books and how it affected both of the families. Also, throughout the paper I willRead MoreCompare/Contrast Willy Loman (Death of a Salesman) and Walter Lee Younger (a Raisin in the Sun)2823 Words   |  12 Pagesâ€Å"May I never wake up from the American dream.† Carrie Latet describes the most sought after dream: the d ream of a house surrounded by a white picket fence, the dream people work their entire lives for, the dream people fight wars for: the American dream. However, America’s rise to industrialism in the 19th and 20th centuries replaced this dream with the desire to get rich fast. This change led people to believe that it is possible, common even, to obtain wealth rapidly; yet this is not the case.Read MoreBrand Building Blocks96400 Words   |  386 PagesAmerican express, Life insurance corporation (LIC) and Taj group of hotels have the branded services associated with their names. c) Co-Brands: Co-branding occurs when brands from different organizations combine to create an offering in which each plays a driver role. The impact of co-branding can be greater than expected when the associations of each brand are strong and complementary. A research study of Kodak showed that for a fictional entertainment device 20% of the prospect said that they wouldRead MoreDeveloping Management Skills404131 Words   |  1617 PagesLine 58 Understanding and Appreciating Individual Differences Important Areas of Self-Awareness 61 Emotional Intelligence 62 Values 65 Ethical Decision Making and Values 72 Cognitive Style 74 Attitudes Toward Change 76 Core Self-Evaluation 79 SKILL ANALYSIS 84 Cases Involving Self-Awareness 84 Communist Prison Camp 84 Computerized Exam 85 Decision Dilemmas 86 SKILL PRACTICE 89 Exercises for Improving Self-Awareness Through Self-Disclosure 89 Through the Looking Glass 89 Diagnosing Managerial Characteristics

Opinion Editorial Syles of the Leadership

Question: Discuss about theOpinion Editorialfor Syles of the Leadership. Answer: Introduction As rightly put forward by Mintz (2014), the human dignity can be regarded as the foundation of the fundamental human rights. The human rights can be regarded to be uninfringeable that needs to be respected and shielded. Therefore, the human dignity is not only a fundamental right in itself but also the foundation of different fundamental rights in international directives. However, there is considerable contribution of human relations towards the purpose of development of different behavioural research in accounting that essentially comprises of the human needs, motivation, individual differences in opinions as well as attitudes, emotions of the employees, styles of the leadership, participative management along with control, overall value system and dignity, effectiveness and different concepts of performance (Bampton and Cowton 2013). There are several strands of human relations theory that stems from different accounting studies that are essentially founded on the Human relations approach. The effectiveness of different accounting procedures relies upon the way the particular accounting process affects the people in the organization. As rightly put forward by Sorensen et al. (2015), the accounting system is never said to have run in the vacuum. Therefore, it is important to handle the complex human behaviour, as the formulation as well as operation of an accounting system cannot be carried out based on the technical expertise. Thus, there exists an issue of management of different processes of standard setting, budgetary planning among many others that are essentially social in nature. Utilizing the human relations theory, the researchers reflects the way budgets can persuade an active and at the same time compel an organizational environment that might result in the betterment of the performance. In addition to this, it can be said that both productivity as well as satisfaction are expected to be greater. The human relation based accounting research divulges top down controlling mechanisms that includes budgeting (Canning and O'Dwyer 2016). This process of budgetary planning can discourage employees despite pote ntial advantages. Therefore, it is important to understand the human relations based accounting as it can affect the accounting practice of an accounting professional. However, in order to rise above the problem and to resolve the issue, the management of organizations can create a desirable environment through participative budgeting. This participative approach of budgeting can prove to be more effective than the authoritarian approach and uphold the human dignity (Mintz 2016). In addition to this, several ethical issues affect the individuals in the accounting profession. An accountant or else finance professional encounters different ethical facets regardless of business sectors and have the need to remain persistently vigilant to lessen the overall chances of material misstatements in the financial declarations that in turn can lead to both ethical and at the same time criminal infringement. In addition to this, the omissions of financial records might paint the overall busines s in a very bad light to different users of the financial information especially the public as well as the investors although it might not be a significant violation of the accounting ethics as it does not necessarily involve manipulation of accounts. However, these omissions might also lead to material misstatements in the financial statements and adversely affect the common good. Therefore, as a professional it is important to remain very much ethically vigilant to avert the possibility of falling in such a trap. In addition to this, an accountant might possibly face an ethical problem of reporting exposed accounting infringement (Mintz 2014). Assessment of financial records of the company as well as the bad press caused by any scandal can lead to the rapid decline of the company and also bring about layoff of thousands of members of the staff of the business. Furthermore, the executives as well as other corporate administrators might possibly face different criminal prosecution i n addition to heavy fines plus imprisonment. Therefore, as a future accounting professional it is essential to understand the accounting practices in order to avoid violation of pertinent standards for the common good. With the objective of achievement of common good, the learners need to recognize with ethical issues associated to accounting and potential dilemmas by being sensitive to all the stakeholders who are affected by the decision, understand the action plans that can affect the interests of the stakeholders and assess the choices by utilizing different concepts of universalism, utilitarianism as well as social norms (Carrington et al. 2013). References Bampton, R. and Cowton, C.J., 2013. Taking stock of accounting ethics scholarship: A review of the journal literature.Journal of Business Ethics,114(3), pp.549-563. Canning, M. and O'Dwyer, B., 2016. Institutional work and regulatory change in the accounting profession.Accounting, Organizations and Society,54, pp.1-21. Carrington, T., Johansson, T., Johed, G. and hman, P., 2013. An empirical test of the hierarchical construct of professionalism and managerialism in the accounting profession.Behavioral Research in Accounting,25(2), pp.1-20. Mintz, S., 2014.Accounting for the public interest. New York, NY: Springer. Mintz, S., 2016.Ethical obligations and decision-making in accounting: text and cases. McGraw-Hill Higher Education. Sorensen, D.P., Miller, S.E. and Cabe, K.L., 2015. Developing and Measuring the Impact of an Accounting Ethics Course that is Based on the Moral Philosophy of Adam Smith.Journal of Business Ethics, pp.1-17.