Scientific Essay from the year 2015 in the subject American Studies - Literature, , language: English, abstract: The Bluest Eye is simple yet a difficult narrative of a twelve year old black girl Pecola’s desire to have blue eyes. The question arises why does a black girl want blue eyes? Why does she want to look differently? What causes this desire in her? As the story unfolds we get answers to these questions and also a realization that how the simple things like cup images or candy wrappers can be a strong factor in influencing an individual’s psychological response to beauty and his/her own self importance. The present paper while building on existing criticism tries to explore the popular culture, for instance children items (cups, dolls, candies) and movies and its individual psychological response. These commercial products play a pivotal role in establishing beauty aesthetics. Regular exposure to these ideals results in their idealization and a longing in people to have these defining physical features of beauty. It creates an environment of superiority and inferiority. People who possess the defining features (physical) are considered superior to those who don’t have these physical features. This adversely affects their psyche and becomes a reason for their downfall.

Scientific Essay from the year 2015 in the subject American Studies - Literature, language: English, abstract: The Bluest Eye is simple yet a difficult narrative of a twelve year old black girl Pecola's desire to have blue eyes. The question arises why does a black girl want blue eyes? Why does she want to look differently? What causes this desire in her? As the story unfolds we get answers to these questions and also a realization that how the simple things like cup images or candy wrappers can be a strong factor in influencing an individual's psychological response to beauty and his/her own self importance. The present paper while building on existing criticism tries to explore the popular culture, for instance children items (cups, dolls, candies) and movies and its individual psychological response. These commercial products play a pivotal role in establishing beauty aesthetics. Regular exposure to these ideals results in their idealization and a longing in people to have these defining physical features of beauty. It creates an environment of superiority and inferiority. People who possess the defining features (physical) are considered superior to those who don't have these physical features. This adversely affects their psyche and becomes a reason for their downfall.

Discusses the writing of The bluest eye by Toni Morrison. Includes critical essays on the work and a brief biography of the author.

Toni Morrison's visionary explorations of freedom and identity, self and community, against the backdrop of African American history have established her as one of the foremost novelists of her time; an artist whose seriousness of purpose and imaginative power have earned her both widespread critical acclaim and great popular success. This guide to Morrison’s work offers: an accessible introduction to Morrison’s life and historical contexts a guide to her key works and the themes and concerns that run through them an overview of critical texts and perspectives on each of Morrison’s works cross-references between sections of the guide, in order to suggest links between texts, contexts and criticism a chronology of Morrison’s life and works. Part of the Routledge Guides to Literature series, this volume is essential reading for all those beginning detailed study of Toni Morrison and seeking a guide to her work and a way into the wealth of contextual and critical material that surrounds it.

A breathtaking tale of family secrets, from the international bestselling author of An American Marriage AN OBSERVER BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR A SAINSBURY'S MAGAZINE CHRISTMAS GIFT LISTING A GUARDIAN 'BEST BOOK OF 2020 TO SUPPORT INDEPENDENT PUBLISHERS' A BOOKSELLER SMALL PUBLISHERS 2020 TOP 20 A Most Anticipated Book for 2020 according to The Sunday Times, the FT and the Guardian 'My father, James Witherspoon, is a bigamist.' SECRETS Dana and Chaurisse are sisters, bound together by the life-changing secret of their father's double life. LIES Only one of them knows the truth. When they do finally meet and form a friendship, the fragile balance of ignorance and silence that has kept James' secrets safe for so long threatens to explode. HOPE This soulful story of friendship and sisterhood paints an unforgettable picture of the messy knots that bind families together, from the prize-winning author of An American Marriage.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A New York Times Notable Book • This fiery and provocative novel from the acclaimed Nobel Prize winner weaves a tale about the way the sufferings of childhood can shape, and misshape, the life of the adult. At the center: a young woman who calls herself Bride, whose stunning blue-black skin is only one element of her beauty, her boldness and confidence, her success in life, but which caused her light-skinned mother to deny her even the simplest forms of love. There is Booker, the man Bride loves, and loses to anger. Rain, the mysterious white child with whom she crosses paths. And finally, Bride’s mother herself, Sweetness, who takes a lifetime to come to understand that “what you do to children matters. And they might never forget.” “Powerful.... A tale that is as forceful as it is affecting, as fierce as it is resonant.” —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Toni Morrison’s Beloved is a spellbinding and dazzlingly innovative portrait of a woman haunted by the past. Sethe was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has borne the unthinkable and not gone mad, yet she is still held captive by memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. Meanwhile Sethe’s house has long been troubled by the angry, destructive ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved. Sethe works at beating back the past, but it makes itself heard and felt incessantly in her memory and in the lives of those around her. When a mysterious teenage girl arrives, calling herself Beloved, Sethe’s terrible secret explodes into the present. Combining the visionary power of legend with the unassailable truth of history, Morrison’s unforgettable novel is one of the great and enduring works of American literature.