English 2000 Perspectives in Literature

Claudia narrates parts of The Bluest Eye, sometimes from a child’s perspective and sometimes from the perspective of an adult looking back. She suffers from racist beauty standards and material insecurity, but she has a loving and stable family which makes all the difference for her. Claudia is a fighter. When Claudia is given a white doll she does not want, she dissects and destroys it; she does not see it as a role model. When she finds a group of boys harassing Pecola, she attacks them. When she learns that Pecola is pregnant, she and her sister come up with a plan to save Pecola’s baby from the community’s rejection. Claudia explains that she is brave because she has not yet learned her limitations most important, she has not learned the self hatred that plagues so many adults in the community.

What is beauty? White skin, blue eyes, thin boy, and blonde hair.  Pecola is an African-American girl (ages 10-13) and  she is from a lower class family. Pecola hates herself for being  black and she believes that having white skin and blue eyes like Shirley Temple and Mary Jane can make her look beautiful. Everyone called her ugly, including her parents, friends, classmates, teachers and the society. First example, One day “A group of boys was circling and holding at bay a victim, Pecola Breedlove… Black e mo. Black e mo” “Pecola edged around the circle crying”.  Second example, Mr. Yacobowski’s candy store looks down on Pecola because she is black and he didn’t want to touch her palm to get the 3 pennies. Because of the rejection, it causes Pecola to feel isolated and lonely. How do these elements contribute to our understanding of the text’s themes?  Many people are not satisfied with their looks, colors, and appearances, like Pecola. She thinks being white is beautiful? Nowadays, Many people do cosmetic surgery to look younger, especially teens “203,308 teens under 18 had cosmetic procedures in 2009” ( (American Society of Aesthetic PlasticSurgeryy 2009-2010). Therefore, why beauty so important to society?

Love first appears in this novel when Claudia’s mother has to take care of her when she got sick. “Great Jesus. Get on in that bed. How many times do I have to tell you to wear something on your head.” Though Claudia and her mother’s love was more like tough love then anything. Her mother would always take care of her but was always complaining about it. “Now, look at what you did. You think I got time for nothing but washing up your puke?” In this novel there is also a lack love. Pecola does not experience love in her house hold or at school. Her mother and father were too busy fighting with each other to worry about her. Everytime they fought she wanted to disappear. In school she was ignored and despised for being ugly. For Pecola this lack of love makes her wish that she was beautiful, it makes her want blue eyes. She thinks if she had blue eyes everything would be different and her parents would change and say things like, ” Why, look at pretty-eyed Pecola. We mustn’t do bad things in front of those pretty eyes.”

The theme of love is explored in the novel through morbid and volatile family relationships. It isn’t showed in the conventional ways we would typically see love. For example with hugs, kisses, laughter and joy; a happy and loving family relationship. Instead Claudia’s mother shows her love by attending and “caring” for her daughter when she is sick. She roughly rubs Vicks on her chest when she is sick,”She takes two fingers’ full of it at a time, and massages my chest until I am faint (Morrison 11)”. the love her mother shows her is rough, harsh and humiliating, because when Claudia pukes her mother yells and gets angry at her. “My mother’s anger huniliates me, her words chafe my cheeks, and I am crying (Morriosn 11)”. This example of love is mean, bitter and hurtful. however we do see a more conventional form of love when Frieda comes in the room and sings to Claudia after she vomits.

There is also a lack of love in Pecola’s family. Her mother and father are physically abusively to one another, and their volatile relationship becomes the norm for Pecola. There is a lack of family unity and most definitely love in their household. This lack of love makes it difficult for Pecola to understand what love really is becausee her parents aren’t modeling it for her. It makes her vulnerable, insecure and sad because she internalizes these relationships and thinks that she isn’t worthy of love. It also misconstrudes her ideas about love and forces her to try to figure it out for herself, through very poor examples of love and relationships, like the prostitutes above her family’s apartment.

We are introduced to Pecola by a third person narrative giving us a view of her physical features as a young black girl, estimated age would be 12. She is from a poor violent household who in regards to society are ugly beings. Due to Pecola’s family and class we notice the way people/students treat her like a disease they do not want to touch or a girl they wish never to associate with in terms of love. “But her blackness is static and dread. And it is the blackness that accounts for, that creates, the vacuum edged distaste in white eyes. ” The elements contribute to our understanding of the texts theme by allowing us to to understand the girls wish to understand how to love and be loved. She believes having blue eyes will change her life when in reality that will never happen, you must love yourself to be loved rather then self loathe which is what she does.

“Being a minority in both caste and class, we moved about anyway on the hem of life, struggling to consolidate our weaknesses and hang on, or to creep singly up into the major folds of the garment” (pg.17). Morrison is writing of the struggles of being a minority in which they are lower ranked class/group. Being so, meant that their life was confined in boundaries which were placed upon them for being a minority. However, there are those that accepted their social status and just tried to make a living to continue on, but there were also those that tried to get out of that life and tried to become part of a higher class than the own they grew up in. This is the same as the American dream because it consists of people trying to move up in their social status by working and getting the nice cars, houses, clothes, all of the things that are seen by society, as the things that are what an American should have. The same applies in The Bluest Eye, because Pecola thinks that if she had lighter skin, blue eyes, and straight blond hair she would be beautiful. Being beautiful meant that everyone would appreciate you/ love you instead of being a little black girl which everyone looks away from and ignores/mistreats.

“Two or Three things I know for sure” by Dorothy Alison is very different from the other books we have read in class because of its authenticity. Most of the other Books we have read were all fiction, but the stories were very close to being non fiction. In “on the road” by Jack Kerouac we read about a man who goes back and forth all over the U.S, but we also knew that the author had done something similar to this. He had also traveled the states back an forth. But its still not as real as Dorothy Alison, because he changed the names and we don’t know for sure if everything happened the way he claimed it. But in Dorothy Alison’s book we know it happened and she has some amount of proof to show.  Knowing that this book is real and that it all really happened make a big difference then when I read a book I know is fiction. You create an image when it’s fiction , when it’s non-fiction like a memoir the image is already created for you .

Dorothy childhood is similar to Esperanza and Sally because they both was poor working class. People made fun of their house. Dorothy and Esperanza both fantasize about a better life that would make them happy. The difference in Dorothy home, she lives with her mother,step father, sisters and aunt and she lived in the country. I dont think her mother was an immigrant and she did not know who her father is. In Esperanza house, she, her parents and siblings sleep in one room and they lived in the city. Also they moved alot.

Jodi Grant

In the novel Two or three things i know for sure by: Dorothy Allison, she explains that woman should first learn to love themselves before anything else can be loved. Woman should also not seek beauty through a mans perspective, because true acceptance comes from within. Once one has learned to accept themselves they can live in society no matter the class, because when someone loves themselves others begin to feel the aura of positive vibes emitting from them. Which allows them to live a life of happiness.

Both stories The House on Mango street and Two or Three things I know for sure have both simalarities and differences.They are similar in the way that they both talk about their childhood and their dreams and goals for the future. They both live in an environment where things just do not come easy to them and they must work for it. The differences being thatt their race is completely different and where they live. Both have different goals , Esperanza wishes to have more money and a nice house and Dorothy just cares to be free and see the world and places she hasnt seen yet.