"Catchphrase"
Transcript: "We had defended ourselves since memory against everything and everybody, considered all speech a code to be broken by us, and all gestures subject to careful analysis; we had become headstrong, devious, and arrogant. Nobody paid us any attention, so we paid very good attention to ourselves. Our limitations were not known to us—not then." ~Claudia "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." ~Pecola Love is never any better than the lover. Wicked people love wickedly, violent people love violently, weak people love weakly, stupid people love stupidly, but the love of a free man is never safe. There is no gift for the beloved. The lover alone possesses his gift of love. The loved one is shorn, neutralized, frozen in the glare of the lover’s inward eye." ~Cholly "She was never able, after her education in the movies, to look at a face and not assign it some category in the scale of absolute beauty, and the scale was one she absorbed in full from the silver screen." ~Pauline Born on February 18, 1931, in Lorain, Ohio, Toni Morrison is a Nobel Prize- and Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, editor and professor. Her novels are known for their epic themes, vivid dialogue and richly detailed black characters. Among her best known novels are The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon and Beloved. Morrison has won nearly every book prize possible. She has also been awarded honorary degrees. Main Characters The setting is in Lorain, Ohio, in the following years of the Great Depression, and it tells a story about an eleven-year old girl named Pecola Breedlove. Pecola's one wish to have blue eyes so she can be as beautiful and beloved as the blonde, bye-eyed children. She believes if she has blue eyes she'll be able to see the world as a better place and everything in her life will be different from what it is now. In the autumn of 1941, the marigolds in Pecola's family garden did not bloom. The absence of the marigolds signifies the drastic changes about to happen in Pecola's life. Theme: Race and that white skin is greater. It is portrayed through the lives and stories told by the characters, especially the three girls Claudia, Pecola and Frieda. Through the struggles those people have endured, Morrison shows us the destructive effect of this internalized idea of white beauty on the individual and on society. Meaningful Elements: Number of elements that relate closely to Toni Morrison’s own personal life. Her hometown, Lorain Ohio Shows how vulnerable a young black girl, such as herself, is as she is exposed to this implied white beauty and superiority and racism through subtle messages throughout the book Toni Morrison I chose The Bluest Eye because it depicts the struggles of a young girl's life and how she had this outrageous wish for her eyes to turn blue. I wanted to read this novel so I could grasp her reasoning to why she wanted eyes to be blue so badly. Plus when Mr. Pk described it, it sounded like great book. "Catchphrase" The Bluest Eye By: Toni Morrison Taslima Bacchus Pecola Breedlove: Protagonist, passive, and a mysterious character Claudia MacTeer: Narrator of some parts either in the perspective of child or in the perspective of an adult looking back Cholly Breedlove: Pecola's father, sympathetic figure, negative form of freedom Pauline Breedlove: Pecola's mother, inflicts a great deal of pain on Pecola
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