Academic Journal of Humanities & Social Sciences, 2022, 5(6); doi: 10.25236/AJHSS.2022.050616.
Yong Junying
North Sichuan Medical College, Nanchong, Sichuan, China
In her first novel The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison tells the tragic fate of a black girl named Pecola Breedlove. Simultaneously, the healthy life of the narrator, another black girl called Claudia, is also presented in the story. Though they are black-skinned, their fates are totally different. By exploring the causes, this paper aims to reveal the major themes embodied in this work: the white voice is inappropriate to dictate the contours of African-American life and it is their ethnic culture that can bring them a better future.
The Bluest Eye, Themes, Self-identity, Ethnic Culture
Yong Junying. Same Color, Different Fates: On the Themes in The Bluest Eye. Academic Journal of Humanities & Social Sciences (2022) Vol. 5, Issue 6: 83-85. https://doi.org/10.25236/AJHSS.2022.050616.
[1] Peach, Linden. Macmillan Modern Novelists: Toni Morrison. London: Macmillan Publishers Ltd, 1995.
[2] Taylor, P.C. “Malcolm’s Conk and Danto’s Colours; or Four Logical Petitions Concerning Race, Beauty, and Aesthetics”. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 1999 (57), 16-20.
[3] Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eyes. Washington, WA: Washington Square, 1970.
[4] Collins, P. H. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the politics of Empowerement. New York, London: Routledge, 1991.
[5] Moses, Cat. “The Blues Aesthetic in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye”. African American Review, 1999 (33), 623-637.