Monday, April 11, 2011

Change

(once again, my blog is not separating into paragraphs) What I truly believe Toni Morrison is trying to explain in the interview, is not racisom, is not loneliness or the salem witch trials. I believe she wants to go further than that, and understand change in society. She studies history to understand these changes. She wants to see these changes with innocent eyes, which is why she chosses young girls, like Pecola and Claudia, to be the central figures of her book. These girls see what happens around them through innocent eyes, they are vulnerable to thier surroundings. Although Morrison did mention 'slavery' and 'racism,' she is not only looking at how blacks vere descriminated, but also how whites throughout history were discriminated. For example, she mentions the 'Salem witch trials' which delt with the killing of white people thought to be witches, and religion. She encorporates this idea of religion being an influence, to show that over time, people used religion to view an African American as a devil like creature. She doesn't only pin point religion, but defines it as a main cause. She shows that slavery does not mean the 'enslavement of black people through history', but instead 'enslavement of all races, and prisoners of war. She shows that in history, slaves have come from everywhere, not only africa, and not from only one race. The idea of slaves has only changed over time, and developed a change of how those people were viewed: through racism. There is also a personal slavery she talks about. One that I think Pecola relates to: loneliness. She speaks of how this feeling has changed. In the past, which I believe Pecola feels, a person had to stay in thier loneliness on thier own. They were left to thier own suffering, and thier own confusion, but now, our loneliness has changed. We are no longer as isolated as we used to be, we are more connected then ever! Whether it be through facebook, cellphones, TV, there is no denying we are more connected, and less 'lonely'. Perhaps in this world, Pecola would have solved her curiousity in good way, or a bad way, it could go both ways, just like before. We live in a dangerous world, and that hasn't canged from the past. We live in a world that is sometimes open to new ideas, or sometimes closed, it just depends on the moment in time. Morrison views herself as a voice. She is the voice of all her characters, and she is a voice of ideas. She states her opinion on racism, places it in her stories, and shows change in characters, such as Pecola and Claudia. She shows that everone changes, and that the change of ideas only takes time. She describes what america was before, and how she had to research how much its changed, yet how even with Obama, as the first African American president, some things haven't changed, and will remain the same for a while. We dream for our ideal perfect world, like Pecola dreams to be white. But as Morrison says , 'its a dream.' Ending on that note, I believe she thinks that the world can change, but its based on all our fantasys, and the world never reaches that fantasy level.

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