How does imagery and symbolism used to illustrate colorist and racism? And how is it used when telling Pecola’s story?

Hunter College Libraries. (n.d.). Retrieved November 16, 2020, from https://go-gale-com.proxy.wexler.hunter.cuny.edu/ps/retrieve.do?tabID=T002

This article is called “Representation of Child Abuse and Treatment of Colourism in Toni Morrison’s God help the Children and the Bluest Eye” the author of the peer review article is R. Muthuselvi. The reason why I chose this article was because it used two of Toni Morrison’s works I felt like by using both novels helps to have a greater understanding of colorisim and racism and how it affects children. The article explains how there are four main types of child mistreatment and they are physical abuse, emotional abuse, emotional abuse, and neglection. It mentions how in God help the children how African Americans suffered many types of alienation and victimization at the hands of oppression. This trauma transfers to children as well. This article uses references from Dubois, Alice Walker, and James Baldwin to illustrate the affect of oppression on African American Children. This article focuses on how Morrison uses history and integrate it into her novel in the form of similes and creative analogs. I also used this article because of the multiple amount of sources that this article used. This will help me by looking into he historical aspect of colorisim and how it affects African Americans. I was also thinking about connecting it to the present day if possible.

Hunter College Libraries. (n.d.). Retrieved November 16, 2020, from https://search-alexanderstreet-com.proxy.wexler.hunter.cuny.edu/view/work/bibliographic_entity|bibliographic_details|4385713

This article is called “Your History from the Beginning of Time to the Present” published by Pittsburg Courier Publishing Co. This illustrates multiple picture of Black History and gives the significance of those pictures I focused on Panel 7. Panel 7 illustrates a picture of a white woman and an African American Woman. In the Panel the white woman is drawn significantly larger than the African American Woman. I used this because it relates to some of the factors that caused Pecola to turn mad. This article focuses on prominant African American people who defied the odds in white society. But I interpreted Panel 7 that way because Panel 7 was the introduction to a new page in the article and this is the first picture. One problem I noticed here was that sometimes the images did not connect to description for example it would speak about. The credibility of this source is questionable and I may not use this.

(n.d.). Retrieved November 16, 2020, from https://indivisible.commons.gc.cuny.edu/etexts/blair-on-ellison-and-photography/

I wanted to use Blair on Ellison and photography because it mentions how photography is used to show the prejudice and racism that occurred during the time. My thought process while I was choosing this article was that my research wanted to focus on symbolism, and I want to add pictures from that time period to illustrate how symbolism is used to illustrate racism and colorisim. There is a moment that I look at in this article that makes me want to use this article as evidence and that is when it states “It is worth taking seriously the nexus this passage proposes: between Ellison’s identity as a writer, struggling to articulate a place for himself in an American cultural genealogy, and the instruments of photographic looking,” (Blair, Blair on Ellison and photography). This is important because it looks into the struggle that Pecola has where she struggles with her identity and how society determines what is beautiful and what is ugly. Although photography relies more on imagery I still wanted to use this because of the reasons behind the use of photography align with the symbolism in The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison.

(n.d.). Retrieved November 16, 2020, from https://indivisible.commons.gc.cuny.edu/etexts/eversley-ellison/

This article Eversley Ellison and female iconography speaks about how women are viewed in a male dominant society. I wanted to use an article that uses Ellison’s works because the invisibility that the invisible man experiences is the same invisibility that Pecola experiences and is the most shown in the ending of the novel. Pecola believes that she has blue eyes and that in turn makes her invisible. People ignored what was happening to Pecola and they ignored her when she believed that she was invisible, this drove her unto her madness. This brought upon a path where no one cared for her, nor thought she was sane. What makes this story sad is that all of this could have been prevented because the downfall of Pecola occurred in the presence of many adults. In the article it mentions. “Here, both the narrator and the women appear as nameless types. Their mutual and their individual challenge is to achieve an identity, one independent of the stereotypical images that conceal the truth”. This illustrates one of the main ideas illustrated in the novel and that is the invisibility of women.

Toni Morrison’s a Bluest Eye

This is one of my sources because this is where I will be getting most of my sources. The reason why this will be my main source is because I need to be able to look into the symbolism in the novel in order to illustrate the colorism and racism that is portrayed unto Pecola. Some of the Symbolism that I want to use would be Pecola’s blue eyes,  and the Marigolds. Pecola is fascinated by the idea of having blue eyes, and she yearns to have them because she feels that she will finally be beautiful if she had blue eyes. But when she has blue eyes in the end of the novel she becomes insane. The Marigolds is connected to nature, and if the environment isn’t safe for the Marigolds or if the soil is rotten than the Marigolds don’t grow; they are tainted. The symbolism here is Pecola, she is the Marigold and her father represents the environment, when he sexually abuses her she becomes tainted.

How does racism affect children?

How does beauty standards affect how we treat other people?

How does symbolism and imagery connect to Pecola’s life?

Paralysis occurs when you lose a function in an area of your body, or even your entire body. Your muscles slowly wither away. Physical therapy can help prevent muscle deterioration, but it still doesn’t help with your mobility most of the time. In Frantz Fanon’s “The Fact of Blackness” he speaks of his anger towards the world that view him as ‘the other”,  he shows anger to the fact that the world judge him based on his color,  shows anger to the world that views him as something “wrong”; because he is a black man in a white man’s world. And Fanon also shows sadness, sadness because the world he lives in won’t change, at least not in his lifetime. The white man’s world paralyzed him in every aspect possible, paralyzed in his mind to be subjected as only  a “negro”, paralyzed because of the box bestowed to him from birth. That he must act on the basis forced upon him and only them.

Fanon starts out straight to the point stating  “‘Dirty N*****!’ Or simply, ‘Look, a negro!’ I came into the world imbued with the will to find the meaning in things, my spirit filled with the desire to attain to the source of the world, and then I found that I was an object in the midst of other things,” (Fanon, p.1). Here, Fanon illustrates how in a white man’s world all that they see is a negro, but Fanon criticizes that, he questions it because he knows it isn’t right. Because why is it right that a person can be stripped of their humanity and described as an object because of their skin color? Fanon shows dreams and aspirations, but you see that he comes to a realization that those dreams are blocked because of how the world views him. Fanon states “My body was given back to me sprawled out, distorted, recolored, clad in mourning in that winter day. The Negro is an animal, The Negro is bad, the Negro is mean,” (Fanon, p. 3). Fanon illustrates descriptions that were put into people just because they have a dark complexion. No one is born with these thoughts; it was society that put those conceptions in place. Similar to Du bois he explains his confusion on how it is possible that he is a problem he states  “And yet, being a problem is a strange experience, peculiar even for one who has never been anything else,”(Dubois). Fanon, states how the white man’s world views black people, but he repeats these words as if he knows deep down they’re wrong. As he waits  for someone to say that he is beautiful, that he is a person, and everything that makes him who he is, makes him good. 

Fanon constantly tries to show that his color doesn’t define him, but society wants to put him in that box. It wants to keep him there because that’s where he should be. Fanon states “ The crippled veteran of the Pacific war says to my brother, ‘Resign yourself to your color the way I got used to my stump; we’re both victims.’ Nevertheless, with all my strength I refuse to accept that amputation. I feel in myself a soul as immense as the world, truly a soul as deep as the deepest of rivers, my chest has power to expand without limit. I am a master and I am advised to adopt the humility of the cripple…I wanted to rise, but the disemboweled silence fell back upon me, its wings paralyzed. Without responsibility, straddling Nothingness and Infinity, I began to weep,”(Fanon, p.9). This illustrates that Fanon wants to fight the prejudice, he wants to be able to prove to the world that he is more than his color, he can soar into the sky and accomplish the unlimited because he can. But the world, and even some black people want him to accept the world for what it is, and stay in the box so we don’t become a problem. Fanon later weeps in defeat, because no one was there to tell him that he doesn’t have to stay in the box, he’s trapped; he’s paralyzed. 

Have you ever seen a caged bird? People have birds to look at them, stand still in that cage; paralyzed. Clip their wings to prevent them flying; so they can sit and sing for them. The bird does the same thing every day, 

“good bird”.

You’ve never allowed the bird to fly for so long that when it does you get surprised. 

“It’s soaring!It’s flying! Look it’s flying!” 

It continues to fly, it flaps its wings, it breathes the air of freedom, and it continues to fly. 

“Wait! Come back!” 

The bird continues to fly. The next week, you get a different bird and you put it in the cage,

 “This time you won’t leave.”

How can you be free, when you are constantly reminded that you are less because of the color of your skin?  And why does it matter? 

Why does his appearance and the appearance of other people that look like him treated differently?

In W.E.B De Bois’s  The Souls of Black Folk, he asks…

De Bois describes his life as someone who lives  between two worlds; his own, and a white man’s world. Stating “Between me and the other world there is ever an unasked question… ‘How does it feel to be a problem'”(De Bois).  A problem, by definition, is something that you want to solve/fix/get rid of/control. But a person can’t be a problem. This is shown when De Bois describes living a life as a “problem” strange. Thus, showing that he acknowledges that the idea of a person being a problem due to their appearance, is not right. As a young boy, De Bois had to realize that he was indeed different when a fun experience of exchanging visiting cards quickly changed to be a daunting one once a girl refused his card off of a glance. But De Bois liked exchanging cards, and he continued to pursue what he liked by later by reading law, or healing the sick. But no matter what he did he still felt what he describes to have a “double conscience”. Stating ” It is a peculiar sensation, this double-conscienceness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others”(De Bois). Because De Bois is black, he has the conscience of a black man, but he also has the conscience of an American. But, De Bois doesn’t want to have a double-conscience, he wants to proudly be both but the systematic racism, and discrimination(which still occur to this day) create this in between world. That brings me to question what was the purpose of creating a world where African Americans live “in between worlds” when the United States of America is supposed to be the land of the free? But everyone isn’t free, and everyone isn’t equal.

“To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships. He felt the weight of his ignorance- not simply of letters, but of life, of business, of the humanities; the accumulated sloth and shirking and awkwardness of decades and centuries shackled his hands and feet. Nor was his burden all poverty and ignorance,”(De Bois) 

De Bois later discusses what African Americans have to experience every time they speak up that something is wrong, and that they should not be treated differently. When African Americans fought for the right to vote, their civil rights, when the abnormally high rate of disease in African American communities was discussed, and the fight for a better education. All human rights issues that are still prevalent to this date.