Bluest Eye

Jenny Brown
ENGL 470
4/1/02

Certainly no memories to be cherished:
Consequences of the Migration of Rural African-American Families to Urban Areas in The Bluest marrow
The Breedlove family in Toni Morrisons The Bluest Eye has migrated from the rural South to the urban North, participating in the Great Migration that took place from 1910 to1940 in the U.S. detached from family, the comfort of established culture, and thrust into isolation, their intent to live a more prosperous life affords them unaccompanied the knowledge of their loss. Morrison has created characters that argon intimately shaped by the memories of home, which destroy the possibility of flourishing integration into Northern culture. The importance of establishing a community individualism travels with the Breedloves. Yet their lack of familial solidarity in Lorain damages neophyte judgements about their worthiness to a community. Only love may provide the strength for African-American families to survive in the bleakness of Lorain, Ohio, but the uprooted Breedloves cannot love themselves or each other and indeed do not survive.
In the novel, manifestations of love flourish in different ways depending on the household.



Although there is strong belief that the family structure was adversely affected in making the trip North, the MacTeer family does not disintegrate amid the stressful changes affecting the black underprivileged in northern cities (Tolnay 1). Love is presented through unity only in the MacTeer household, enabling them to forge through their awareness of discolour racism in the North. The members of this family exist in a needlelike contrast to the Breedloves because they respect one another. Love is the salient symptomatic of the MacTeer house, love as thick as Alaga syrup was everywhere in their home, even when Mrs. MacTeer was frustrated with their poverty and the childrens sickness.
Pauline shuns her children and her husband in pursuit of the niceties of the dominant white race,...If you expect to get a full essay, order it on our website: Orderessay



If you want to get a full essay, wisit our page: write my essay .