Xin Cong
ENG 102
Mrs. Matayabas
Tree quotes from Bluest Eye
From page 84, while he moves inside her, she will wonder why they did not put the necessary but private parts of the body in some more convenient place—like the armpit, for example, or the palm of the hand. Some place one could get to easily, and quickly, without undressing. She stiffens when she feels one of her paper curlers coming undone from the activity of love; imprints in her mind which one it is that is coming loose so she can quickly secure it once he is through. She hopes he will not sweat—the damp may get into her hair; and that she will remain dry between her legs—she hates the glucking sound they make when she is moist. …………..to page 85, when she stands cooking at the table, he will circle about her shanks, and the trill of his fur spirals up her legs to her thighs, to make her fingers tremble a little in the pie dough.
I think here it involves graphic language for sexuality and an implication of bestiality. The purpose of the language arrangement is to provide a shocking and contrast effect. The author is using such language to show readers true feelings of the characters inside the novel. According to the First amendment, people have the right for free of speech. However, she did not consider the audience who are too young for this sensitive topic.
From page 162, the tenderness welled up in him, and he sank to his knees, his eyes on the foot of his daughter. Crawling on all fours toward her, he raised his hand and caught the foot in an upward stroke. Pecola lost her balance and was about to careen to the floor. Cholly raised his other hand to her hips to save her from falling. He put his head down and nibbled at the back of her leg. His mouth trembled at the firm sweetness of the flesh. He closed his eyes, letting his fingers dig into her waist. The rigidness of her shocked body, the silence of her stunned throat, was better than Pauline’s easy laughter had been……………………..to page 163, so when the child regained consciousness, she was lying on the kitchen floor under a heavy quilt, trying to connect the pain between her legs with the face of her mother looming over her.
Still, the language, it is too graphic and includes issue that challenges the bottom line of social ethics. She is doing so to express her feelings of anger and using the fact to show us how prejudice changed a person from inside. It focuses on the effect and shocking purpose, but neglect the protection for certain audience group. It is clear that it is different to read the word incest than perceiving the whole process of it from the graphic language.
From page 181, the little girls, the little girls are the only things I will miss. Do you know that when I touched their sturdy little tits and bit them—just a little—I felt I was being friendly? I did not want to kiss their mouths or sleep in the bed with them or take a child bride for my own. Playful, I felt, and friendly. Not like the newspapers said. Not at all. Remember how so many of them came back? No one would even try to understand that. If I had been hurting them, would they have come back? Two of them, Doreen and Sugar Babe, they’d come together. I gave them mints, money, and they’d eat ice cream with their legs open while I played with them………..to there wasn’t any odor, and there wasn’t any groaning—just the light white laughter of little girls and me.
It also involves the way of how Toni Morrison arranged her characters and designs the language to describe or depict her characters. With the same purpose to create a shocking effect; Instead of just using pedophile to tell what type of person Soaphead Church is, she explains in details using graphic words to portray this character that you can actually understand and see him as a real person with flesh.
The three quotes from the bluest eye involve implication of bestiality, incest, and pedophile. Author use such strategy to show her anger toward a limitation for the standard of beauty and how such standard influenced attitude of people with one color and treatment toward the people with another color, who are under prejudice. She uses graphic language to portray every character in the novel to make the readers better understand and feel the thoughts at the back of those characters’ heads, which is vivid. According to First Amendment, the whole book cannot be considered obscenity as it is a novel also written with literature. However, with concerns for people under eighteen, it is not a proper reading material. Since, a study that conducted by the Rand Corporation, which showed that kids who are exposed to explicit sex on television are more likely to experience what they see. Moreover, exposing to graphic language of sexuality, incest, pedophile in reading material can create fu
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Rebecca Shaffer
4/14/2013 10:59:39 am
Morrison i notice wants her readers to be part of the book and not just be reading it, and that's why i think she goes into such gruesome details about the rape of Pecola Breedlove. While it is very disturbing you get more imagery of the situation you feel her pain and suffering and even the humiliation that Pecola goes through. While it was very hard to read the book because of such details it also helps you understand. She is bearing Witness to dangers of potential sexual abuse and incest. Morrison doesn't want her readers to escape this book without bearing witness and i think she did a phenomenal job at doing this. But since she did bring out so much detail it is sometimes unbearable to read as a college student so i can just imagine for a student in high school or below would be mortified and even scared. Xin you make some excellent points on how gruesome her work can be. There is freedom of speech in this country, but i do not think it is suitable for children to read such gruesome and horrifying content at an age where they can not truly understand the meaning that Morrison is trying to portray.
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XIn Cong
4/14/2013 01:32:59 pm
I agree with your understanding on the book too. They are great books. It is clear that there is literature in both books which distinguish them from those books that offend relevant legislation. She is using graphic words to make us feel the pain and force us to think what makes these characters becomes evil. They are just as innocent as all of us. they deformed inwardly because the prejudice. I think this is what the author was trying to make you think and realize. However, such graphic words can hurt those minors who are not mentally prepared.
Before the first chapter starts, an introduction on page 9 says: "Quiet as its kept, there were no marigolds in the fall of 1941. We thought, at the time, that it was because Pecola was having her father's baby that the marigolds did not grow....There is really nothing more to say- except why. But since why is difficult to handle, one must take refuge in how."
Even though their is no explicit scenes left it is a "sneak peek" on what the book has to offer. Even reading this is disturbing because it is telling the untold. Morrison wants the readers minds open enough to consider the implications of the abuse. She wants her readers involved, empathetic, and concerned not with the fictional aspects of plot or character detail, but with the reality of the situation she embellishes. She doesn't want the reader to just be reading this book and think how awful but actually witness the damage incurred when witness isn't borne, when children are not listened to, when history goes unchallenged and petrifies the goodness in people until the goodness can no longer be found. Morrison wants her readers to be involved and while that is a very conscious thing to do, some of the material and subjects in this book is very graphic for minors under 18.
I want the books to be banned still because they are to graphic for minors under 18. Even though there is more explicit scenes in the book i could have quoted i decided to go along with some that were kind of a background story but they are also (my opinion) the foundations. It is hints in the book that shows different aspects of possible results stemming from childhood sexual abuse. She makes her reader fully conscious of the types of misconduct that potentially surround all children: dirty magazines, nasty old men, nasty girls next door, sexual abuse of girls, and incest. Xin mentioned some of the major graphic scenes in the book and sense we all have to put quotes and insights about the book it is nice to have some variety too!
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rebecca shaffer
4/14/2013 10:43:00 am
Quote 2: The Bluest Eye
on page 12 in the first paragraph:
"When she comes out of the car we will beat her up, make red marks on her white skin.and she will cry and ask us do we want her to pull her pants down.....we know she is offering something precious and that our own pride must be asserted by refusing to accept.
This is the first hint that Morrison tells us at childhood sexual trauma with Rosemary Villanucci. A common phenomenon among abused children is to imitate sexual practice. The"whenever she ask us" implies that is the first occurrence that rosemary offers "something precious" to them. Rosemary offers to pull her pants down because momentarily the MacTeer girls become her abusers. She reacts as someone who knows what it means to be forced to give sexual favors to more powerful people in order to protect herself.
Quote 3
on page 27
"Mrs.Macteer! mrs. MacTeer!"Rosemary hollered. "Frieda and Claudia are out here paying nasty! Mrs. MacTeer!"
Rosemary know what "nasty" is: she automatically thinks in terms of sexual references when she sees the MacTeer girls helping out Pecola with her first menstrual cycle. Rosemary knows what nasty is and while Frieda and Claudia do no they still have some innocence.The MacTeer girls still have a sense of unviolated self, a sense of pride.
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Xin Cong
4/14/2013 01:42:20 pm
Quotes for Beloved:
Page 13. All in their twenties, minus women, fucking cows, dreaming of rape, thrashing on pallets, rubbing their thighs and waiting for the new girl—the one who took Baby Suggs’ place after Halle bought her with five years of Sundays.
Author uses graphic language to describe how slavery suffered from suppression of the white owner to challenge us to see if the audience are angry or do not feel anything about it. It is a strategy used to provoke feelings so that people start to think about the issue of racism and through her graphic language, people get to know the real feelings than ever of what happened to those who are living under prejudice.
Page 175. Inside, two boys bled in the sawdust and dirt at the feet of a nigger woman holding a blood-soaked child to her chest with one hand and an infant by the heels in the other. She did not look at them; she simply swung the baby toward the wall planks, missed and tried to connect a second time, when out of nowhere—in the ticking time the man spent staring at what there was to stare at—the old nigger boy, still mewing, ran through the door and snatched the baby from the arc of its mother’s swing.
Here it involves infanticide; the language is so graphic, which is really shocking. I think, the author is depicting a picture of a mother killing her children, trying to show such an effect that the character, the black woman slave had went through slavery and endured an unbearable life when she is kept as a slave. Her desperation drove her crazy to kill her own children. When you read here, people would feel and think about this unalienable love from one mother to her baby in real life. So that it creates a contrast effect to make the readers feel the desperation of the black female slave. The graphic language is also a mean to embrace the audience of the real feelings than simply being told that the kids were killed by the black female slave.
Author adopted the same way of telling the storyline and using graphic language to describe how victims under racism and prejudice react to their environment. The story is not chronological, so it seems choppy; however that is how the author keeps the audience engage in reading and respond to different characters. They both involve challenging topic such as incest, pedophile, bestiality, infanticide, graphic sexuality, and violence. She designs such story line using challenging language instead of tepid language to provoke audience and make audience to see into the issue--racism and provide an insight of the impact of racism and prejudice.
In bluest eye, author uses plenty African language. In doing so, she criticizes the loss of the culture and advocate people from whichever race should respect their own culture and ancestors. Also uses repetitions of the line in primary readings on top of each chapter. I think it is because the background of the primary. There had been a controversy about this primary since in the book, they painter only adopt characters using white kids images but ignore other races, the book itself reflect the ideology of racism in America back then.
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Rebecca Shaffer
4/14/2013 03:14:42 pm
Quote 1 &2 beloved:
pg 24
'the new girl they dreamed of at night and fucked cows for at the dawn while waiting for her to choose"
It presents sexual acts as a vulgar satisfaction of biological urges with no higher or sacred meaning. Morrison is trying to describe the situation that the slaves were in and how lonely and lustful they were for a woman touch. She repeats this in the book multiple times.rape is more often mentioned obliquely than portrayed directly, therefore initially appearing to be less prominent an issue. Morrison seeks not to present a comprehensive portrait of the act of rape and its bodily and psychic repercussions, but instead to offer glimpses into the traumatic event as it gradually becomes comprehensible to its survivors. Thus, in Beloved, we do not read detailed descriptions of sexual assault. Instead, the allusions concentrate upon the incomprehensibility of the trauma.
"All the time, I'm afraid the thing that happened that made it all right for my mother to kill my sister could happen again. I don't know what it is, I don't know who it is, but maybe there is something else terrible enough to make her do it again. I need to know what that thing might be, but I don't want to. Whatever it is, it comes from outside this house, outside the yard, and it can come right on in the yard if it wants to. So I never leave this house and I watch over the yard, so it can't happen again and my mother won't have to kill me too." Chapter 21, pg. 205
Beloved isnt as graphic as The Bluest Eye but Morison still bring issues that is hard to speak about alive.This content is very hard very children under the age of 18 to read about. I think the language and even some of the topcs are to much information for kids. Even though they are not as gruesome if you are not mature enough you would have a hard time reading it. Beloved shows how rape and slavery can change people and their personality changes with each different circumstances.
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Samantha Cook
4/15/2013 06:00:49 am
We all discussed the first quote, 'the new girl they dreamed of at night and fucked cows for at the dawn while waiting for her to choose" in class one day and I think that it is safe to say we were all a little blown away by the vulgarity of the whole situation. To me, this quote is one of the top three to why I believe the book should stay banned. I like how you said it brings about a type of lustful satisfaction without the mention of the sacred meaning. This moment in the book shows how raw and real what Morrison is trying say and how far she is willing to go to share her voice.
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Samantha Cook
4/15/2013 05:55:32 am
"It had occurred to Pecola some time ago that if her eyes, those eyes that held the pictures, and knew the sights—if those eyes of hers were different, that is to say, beautiful, she herself would be different." Chapter 3
This moment that Pecola goes through is one of the first instances where she realize her yearning for blue eyes. Her wanting of blue eyes is something much more than a desire, it signifies something that she believes will alter her reality completely in every way possible. She thinks that having white attributes like blue eyes will change the way that people perceive her and the way she is treated. Having this change take place, to her, would almost give her the ability of being able to look past all of the horrible things that have and are still happening all around her. She is driven mad from all of the horrible and demeaning things that have taken place in her life, until the point where she truly believes she has gotten what she wanted.
Blue eyes are one of the biggest and most frequently mentioned throughout the pages of this novel. To Pecola, that is what beauty is and nothing else will make her feel beautiful in everyone's eyes unless she posseses this physical quality.
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Samantha Cook
4/15/2013 06:41:17 am
The Bluest Eye Quote #2:
"He sat up, choking and spitting. Naked and ashed, he leaped from the bed, and with a flying tackle, grabbed his wife around the waist, and they hit the floor. Cholly picked her up and knocked her down with the back of his hand. She fell in a sitting position, her back supported by Sammy's bed frame. She had not let go of the dishpan, and began to hit at Cholly's thighs and groin with it. He put his foot in her chest, and she dropped the pan. Dropping to his knee, he struck her several times in the face...."
This section of the novel goes on in more detail of their lengthy fight and explains in detail all that goes on. Not only is it a gruesome sight and deal a lot with Cholly beating his wife, but Sammy and Pecola are there witnessing all that is going on between their parents. By the end of it, the two children are horrified and are hiding. Sammy comes out to tell his mother to kill Cholly while he lays underneath the blanket she placed over him. Pecola sits underneath her quilt begging God to make her disappear, and she pictured that it was actuallty happening yet the only part of her that would not go was her eyes. This kind of violence and damage that the readers watches go on within these few lines is a particular reason why I believe this book should stay banned among minors. As a young child, watching this take place can result in some major disfunction within their worlds.
The Bluest Eye Quote #3:
"Surrounding all of this lust was a border of politeness. He wanted to fuck her - tenderly. But the tenderness would not hold. The tightness of her vagina was more than he could bear. His soul seemed to slip down to his guts and fly out into her, and the gigantic thrust he made into her then provoked the only sound she made - a hollow suck of air in the back of her throat."
The instances of rape, incest, and sexual interactions are quite common in this novel. This one in particular is in the section talking about Cholly and his past. The author does not state how old Pecola is, but she seems to be very young because she is still crawling. When I started reading this novel, I knew to expect some pretty vulgar and hard to handle moments from what I had heard about the novel, but this pushed past even my own set boundaries. The fact that he is committing rape against is own daughter who is at most 3 years of age at the time made me want to stop reading then and there. This moment is so raw and hard to believe that it is not acceptable for those below a certain maturity level. Children just simply can not handle being exposed to this kind of information too early on in their development.
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