Toni Morrison

Larkin, Ann Stephanie Tsank ENGL: 1200 28 April, 2017 The Bluest Eye and Glass Menagerie: The Impacts Race and Disability had on Beauty Standards The Bluest Eye written by Toni Morrison in 1970 and The Glass Menagerie, written by Tennessee Williams in 1944, have become staples in American literature. Although written in different time periods, both stories reflect the same social norms and beauty standards that are too often thrust upon women of the same decade. The Bluest Eye and The Glass…

When I hear Toni Morrison, I think of an author whose books involves people who have serious issues because of what I thought after reading The Bluest Eye last year. Song of Solomon and The Bluest Eye have many similarities. For example, the books are focusing the lives of an African American, Pecola and Milkman. In the books, sex is described in a disgusting and weird way. By this I mean, Morrison writes the parents of the main characters having sex in an unusual way involving mostly foreplay…

people do not know is that you can also find similarities in stories of different genre. In this essay, I will be comparing and contrasting two short stories of different genre. Those stories are The Jewelry by Guy De Maupassant and Recitatif by Toni Morrison. I will mostly focus on the concept of plot. Guy De Maupassant wrote The Jewelry in the 1800’s. The story is about M. Lantin and how he falls in love with a woman whom he marries. Throughout the story it talks about how his wife manages…

Ronald Reagan famously said in his inaugural speech in 1981, “Those who say that we're in a time when there are no heroes, they just don't know where to look.” This was during the peak of Toni Morrison’s active years as a fiction writer. The protagonists Morrison writes about are almost all heroes. It is oftentimes difficult to determine this, however, because their heroism is masked by unconventional qualities, making them anti-heroes. Confronted with conflict, they eventually come to a…

The novels Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulker and Beloved by Toni Morrison both tell elliptical, multigenerational stories of families that are impacted by the struggle of slavery. As demonstrated in both novels, this concept is a never-ending hardship that affects each character mentally, physically, and emotionally. Through the lens of each characters’ words and behaviors, they are able to display the impact that slavery has on each generation. It not only leaves a permanent scar on each…

In “Beloved”, author Toni Morrison uses these reoccuring mentionings of milk that are always followed by a description or dialogue of Sethes need to nurture her child. Sethe, first, refers to it as “stolen” when speaking to Paul D about what happened in the barn with “schoolteacher.” It is brought up again, when nurturing Denver after the killing of Beloved. As well as later in the novel, when Sethe could no longer bear milk in her breast, but instead provides warm glasses of milk for Denver…

clearly, thus, believing she has blue eyes. Overall, the blue eyes symbolically did not just mean she wanted to be white, but she wanted a better happier one. People may say she is crazy now that she is insane, but she has obtained her own nirvana; Toni Morrison is telling the reader that there is nothing wrong with any African Americans appearance;even though she believes she is white, she remains just as perfect as she started…

The two texts read this end of the semester have demonstrated both the lack of heritage and the importance of heritage. In Toni Morrison’s novel “Song of Solomon,” Milkman Dead finds his own identity by discovering his heritage. In Sherman Alexie’s novel “The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven,” the characters struggle with their Native American heritage, whether to embrace it or create a new life. In the novel the “Song of Solomon,” Milkman desires to learn about his past. Milkman is…

In Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, Cholly, driven by multiple factors, rapes his daughter, and this scene is included for a certain purpose, as well. Cholly, the father, engages in nonconsensual intercourse with his daughter because of his alcoholic stupor and sense of freedom. Cholly is alcoholic because of the emptiness that cannot be filled with anything drink, seen when he describes, “Nothing, nothing, interested him now. Not himself, not other people. Only in drink was there some break,…

When determining the age of a tree one knows that they must look no further than at the number of tree rings, each ring representing a new year, and this idea of aging marks is paralleled with human skin in Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved. Morrison’s Beloved focuses on characters who experience the struggles of being a slave in America. Although not all of the characters experienced slavery firsthand, each character has a connection to the horrific consequences that come with both being a slave…