IDENTITY IN TONI MORRISON’S BELOVED AND THE BLUEST EYE

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.