Comparision. The Protagonist in "The bluest eye" is Pecola and the protagonist in "The Color Purple" is Celie

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What similarities would you make between the two protagonists at this stage in the novel?

The Protagonist in The bluest eye is Pecola and the protagonist in The Color Purple is Celie. Both are young black females who come from a poor family and are both living in the early 20th century at which point in time slavery had been long abolished however there was still a significant difference in the way in which black people were treated, they were considered the bottom of the social hierarchy and the very bottom of that were young female black girls, and this is the message that Morrison and Walker are trying to portray and something that both Morrison and walker thought to be an almost untold story, it had been kept a secret from society as if it had just been brushed away and no-one wanted to speak of, this is evident in the opening of the novel The Bluest Eye where Morrison writes “As quiet as its kept, there were no Marigolds…” Which creates a secretive tone, the secret society was trying to keep is that life wasn’t always happy and cheerful. There were no Marigolds, and marigolds are a symbol of happiness, there was no happiness. Morrison attempts to critique the idea of gender roles within culture and almost as if this perspective of a female girl was tabooed and any mention of it is foisted on the listener, it is inflicting something unwanted on them.

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Although this social hierarchy did exist the northern states of America there was less seclusion as is evident in the Bluest eye which is set in Ohio however there was still a longing to conform to the ideology of the time which was that white girls, specifically the cliché of blonde hair and blue eyes (hence the books name) was considered beautiful and anyone who didn’t abide to these attributes was considered ugly however it was not explicit in the northern states, nobody had told Pecola that she was Ugly explicitly however it was implied as she did not resemble ...

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