Persuasive Strategies towards Racial Appeal in Tony Morrison’s The Bluest Eye

Somayeh Shabani

doi:10.7575/aiac.ijalel.v.7n.1p.19

Abstract

Racism is the main theme in Toni Morisson’s The Bluest Eye. The little black girl’s long lasting yearn for blue eyes has been linked to the standards of America’s society in 1940’s which associated beauty to being white. Although instances of racism are rampant throughout the story, previous studies have not attempted to determine the type of persuasive strategies used by Toni Morrison to justify racism in the novel. In this paper, the author made use of Aristotle’s concepts of ethos, logos, and pathos, as 3 main dimensions of persuasion to determine the strategies used in the novel by the narrator-Claudia. Descriptive qualitative analysis of the novel’s text revealed that the author has made use of all these strategies. Pathos was observed in form of feelings of fear, anger and hatred. Logos was observed in the logic of the grown up society of America about being white and ethos was found among the black who themselves credited the whites over their own race.

Highlights

Toni Morrison, the winner of noble prize for literature, is a contemporary American novelist known for using epic themes and vivid dialogues in her novels (Middleton 2016)
Instances of racism are rampant throughout the story, previous studies have not attempted to determine the type of persuasive strategies used by Toni Morrison to justify racism in the novel
Logos was observed in the logic of the grown up society of America about being white and ethos was found among the black who themselves credited the whites over their own race

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Toni Morrison, the winner of noble prize for literature, is a contemporary American novelist known for using epic themes and vivid dialogues in her novels (Middleton 2016) She was named as a “National Figure in America’s National Literature” by the New York review of books. Among previous studies that have studied racism in the bluest eye, the issue of how the author attempts to persuade the readership about the existence of racism among the characters, especially with regard to Aristotle’s persuasive model is not attended to. Instances of Claudia’s dialogues and soliloquies were selected and categorized into 3 main taxonomies based on Aristotle’s’ Persuasive model This resulted in accumulation of 3 types of data, i.e., ethos, logos, pathos

DISCUSSION

CONCLUSION