The novel itself intensifies rather than deflects the reader’s sense of Morrison’s anger. Morrison’s scale of anger about racism parallels with the characters and what happens to them in the book, meaning that as Claudia gets angry or upset with Pecola at times, us as readers should too. Morrison’s anger does not just come about to write a good story but out of frustration, she wants readers to understand that race is an ideologically construction.
Throughout the history of African-Americans, their skin color has naturally indicated ra-cial identity. The most prominent type of racialize ranking represents blackness as a condition to be despised, their crinkly hair, big round noses, and thick lips have been, mostly negative, de-scriptions of …show more content…
The uneasiness with identity of the characters in the novel causes their attention to remain truly focused on that; their appearance undermines the pursuit of whiteness that they want to achieve, “They wash themselves with orange-colored Lifebuoy soap, dust themselves with Cashmere Bouquet talc, clean their teeth with salt on a piece of rag, soften their skin with Jergen’s Lotion” (Morrison 1972, 82). Morrison describes the actions these girls take to show what should be considered cultural practices. While doing certain things and holding certain val-ues might abstractly define membership in a culture, the text devalues such membership in favor of an identitarian, body-based, essentialist “culture” which has its origin and true value in race (Douglas). The girls are growing up believing that in order for one thing to happen, they must follow what others have already done. In other words, in order to obtain beauty the girls must do things that the white people do or close to it. For instance, Pecola is so enthralled by the image of Mary Jane on the candy wrapper, she spends her precious pennies on candies to worship rather than to eat. She is so mesmerized by the image of Shirley Temple and the doll that she drinks three quarts of milk in order to hold the cup adorned with Temple’s face
Throughout the history of African-Americans, their skin color has naturally indicated ra-cial identity. The most prominent type of racialize ranking represents blackness as a condition to be despised, their crinkly hair, big round noses, and thick lips have been, mostly negative, de-scriptions of …show more content…
The uneasiness with identity of the characters in the novel causes their attention to remain truly focused on that; their appearance undermines the pursuit of whiteness that they want to achieve, “They wash themselves with orange-colored Lifebuoy soap, dust themselves with Cashmere Bouquet talc, clean their teeth with salt on a piece of rag, soften their skin with Jergen’s Lotion” (Morrison 1972, 82). Morrison describes the actions these girls take to show what should be considered cultural practices. While doing certain things and holding certain val-ues might abstractly define membership in a culture, the text devalues such membership in favor of an identitarian, body-based, essentialist “culture” which has its origin and true value in race (Douglas). The girls are growing up believing that in order for one thing to happen, they must follow what others have already done. In other words, in order to obtain beauty the girls must do things that the white people do or close to it. For instance, Pecola is so enthralled by the image of Mary Jane on the candy wrapper, she spends her precious pennies on candies to worship rather than to eat. She is so mesmerized by the image of Shirley Temple and the doll that she drinks three quarts of milk in order to hold the cup adorned with Temple’s face