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The Bluest Eye Research Paper

Decent Essays

Many people can think back to their childhood and be reminded of many happy memories. They lived a life full of innocence and purity; however, in The Bluest Eye the young girls did not get that same experience. Children lead different lives, some of which deal with rape and abuse. The young black girls that Toni Morrison writes about face many hardships that no young child should encounter. These hardships take away the innocence of their childhood. The topic of rape is prominent during most of the book and is a very controversial topic in society. According to the Ohio state laws “rape is any form of unwanted sexual conduct without the victim's consent” and can be punished as a first-degree felony; however, in the book Pecola’s father came …show more content…

While they might not be shooting their children, they are abusing them without knowing the whole story first. Frieda, Pecola, and Claudia experience abuse throughout the whole book. In the beginning of the book Pecola starts menstruating, which causes problems. Claudia and Frieda’s mother heard noise outside and came to see what the disturbance was and end up finding the girls all together, “Mama grabbed Frieda by the shoulder, turned her around, and gave her three or four stinging cuts on her legs” (pg 30). Their mother finally found out that the girls were not playing nasty like she originally thought but were cleaning up the blood from Pecola “her eyes were sorry. ‘All right, all right. Now, stop crying. I didn’t know’” (pg 31). These young girls had to endure a lot of abuse from their parents and guardians because of hearsay. A life of abuse is the reality for many children. A young girl who was on her way to being a professional tennis player dealt with “the brunt of his outbursts. Her father would abide nothing short of perfection” (New York Times). She did not live up to her father’s expectations which was a cause for the beatings. There was so much pressure on her to surpass the expectations she had to live up to; similarly, Claudia and Frieda had high expectations of them as well. In many families’ kids are expected to be miniature adults essentially, “when we catch colds, they shake their heads in disgust at our lack of consideration” (pg 10). Not every form of abuse is physical, there is also verbal abuse. When Claudia and the other children do not live up to the adult role that is expected of them, there will be consequences like verbal and physical abuse. The sense of innocence in children is lost due to an expectation of maturity. Living up to a parent’s dream is difficult and causes for problems in the child’s

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