The Bluest Eyes

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To Ban or Not To Ban; Ban Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eyes sparks arguments regarding banning the book from several high school curriculums in the country. Although this is a powerful novel for adults, this book should not be in Bonny Eagle High School's curriculum. This book should be banned from the curriculum because of the references the book makes on topics such as: racism, sexuality, profanity, child molestation and child rape. The topics express deep emotions and realism that young high school readers should not be forced to read. In a small town in Ohio, beauty is only captured in white woman or in the deep blue of ones eye. The main character, Pecola, a young African American thriving to find beauty in her, does not have blue eyes. As the novel unfolds, the reader is lead to find Pecola as an ugly child. Pecola deals with the secret life of her family’s insecurities. Cholly, her father, is a raging alcoholic, who enjoys sex too much. His enjoyment of the activity leads him to have sex with a woman while white men watch and make him finish. It also leads to him raping his daughter on the kitchen floor one day when he comes home and finds his daughter cleaning the dishes. Pecola becomes pregnant with her father's child, but loses the baby along the way of pregnancy. She is driven to insanity, as she believes she has magically got blue eyes. Her insanity takes her on a lonely road of climbing through trashcans and talking to herself. However, she feels beautiful with her eyes. Those eyes make her feel significant in a world where she is considered insignificant based on the color of her dark skin. Four main U.S. Supreme Court cases set the parameters of the First Amendment in public schools. In the Tinker case in 1965 involved the protest of middle school students wearing black armbands to protest the Vietnam War. This protest leads to the

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