Literature, Social Conditions and Effects on Children
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Sandra Cisneros' The House on Mango Street, written in 1984, and Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, first published in 1970, are both aimed at adolescent audiences but deal with deep, often disturbing themes about serious social conditions and their effects on children. Both books are told in the first person; both narrators are young girls, living in destitute neighborhoods, who witness the harsh realities of life for those who are poor, abused, and hopeless, although the narrators themselves manage to survive their tough environments with their wits and strength intact. The books are more than simple literary exercises written merely to amuse or delight their audiences; both authors attempt to provoke their readers to think about the social issues their novels present. This research will discuss the specific goals of each of these novels and the effectiveness of each author's attempt to attain them among both adolescent and adult audiences. The plot in The Bluest Eye is the tragedy of Pecola Breedlove, an African-American girl whose fondest wish is to miraculously awaken one day with blue eyes, thinking that perhaps it will make her mother attentive and her father loving: It had occurred to Pecola . . . that if those eyes of hers were different, that is to say, beautiful, she herself would be different . . . If she looked different, beautiful, maybe Cholly would be different, and Mrs. Breedlove too. Maybe they'd say, "Why, look at pretty-eyed Pecola. We mustn't do
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later I was still wondering about how one learns that. Who told her? Who made her feel that it was better to be a freak than what she was? . . . The
novel pecks away at the gaze that condemned her (Morrison 210).
We know from Morrison herself, therefore, that the motivating force behind her novel was the desire to explore how society could so twist a young girl's self-image that she would believe that changing the color of her eyes would solve her problems. Morrison never offers an answer to the question her novel raises, but arguably the mere act of proposing the question is as or more important than providing the answer.
Although Morrison's primary purpose in writing The Bluest Eye was to explore issues of race and class, the book is also fascinating and effective from a purely literary standpoint. Morrison's characters and settings are potent and vividly drawn. The furnishings in the desolate Breedlove home are "anything but describable, having been conceived, manufactured, shipped, and sold in various states of thoughtlessness, greed, and indifference" (Morrison). Maureen Peal, a girl whom Claudia despises because she is the focus of the inexplicable fascination her world has with the fair-skinned, is described a
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1473
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)
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