IDENTITY IN TONI MORRISON’S BELOVED AND THE BLUEST EYE

Year 2019, Issue: 43, 93 - 103, 27.03.2019

Zeki Edis

Abstract

Toni Morrison as an African American
novelist, throughout her works, portrays the trials and tribulations of the
black community in the United States. In her novels, Morrison pays attention to
the issues, which has related to the black community such as slavery, racial
discrimination, marginalization, racism, and identity. Among these issues, the
identity issue has been one of the major problems that African-Americans have
encountered. Some white Americans regard Blackness as a state of poverty and
ugliness. Morrison
is an African-American. Therefore, most of the works in these issues always has
intrigued the attention of her. In The Bluest Eye,
Morrison depicts the life of an African-American family. She mainly focuses on
a young girl of a family named Pecola Breedlove. Pecola constantly called ugly
and mocked due to the color of her skin. Therefore, she feels frustrated and
neglected by her surroundings. Therefore, she desires to have blue eyes and
searches for her identity. Because she believes that getting, blue-eyes would
make her more beautiful. On the other hand, in Beloved, Morrison
portrays the life of a female slave named Sethe. After many sacrifices, Sethe
manages to escape slavery but it leaves horrific impacts on her. Throughout the
novel, Morrison uses different characters to demonstrate the hardships of the
black community in the United States. In addition to this, she criticizes
slavery system as it has affected the identity of the black community. This
article aims to investigate the life of the main characters in the
aforementioned novels and discuss their quest for identity due to the white
dominant culture that surrounds them. It will also portray the devastating
consequences of slavery on the black community. 

Keywords

Siyah Edebiyat, Kölelik, Kimlik, Beloved, The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison

References

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