Volume II Issue II April-June 2022

Name of Author : R. Muthuselvi

Title of the paper : Child Abuse in Toni Morrison’s God Help The Child and The Bluest Eye

Abstract: Toni Morrison’s one of the main thematic concerns is child abuse and trauma which is dealt in her latest novel God help the Child and her premier novel The Bluest Eye. She has actually dealt with all sorts of child abuse and maltreatment in her novels. In her recent novel God Help the Child, Morrison brings into a very complicated childhood trauma stories like her first novel The Bluest Eye in which all of the characters suffer some kind of child abuse like neglect, witnessing, domestic violence, emotional and psychological abuse, molestation, sexual abuse etc. She shows how the child exposure to traumatic experiences has a dramatic and far reaching effect into adulthood such as psychological, emotional, behavioural and social problems. Morrison explores the curse of the past, the legacy of slavery and its aftermath and it holds on the present, through the fact of colourism. In these two novels of Toni Morrison’s God Help the Child and The Bluest Eye clearly deal about the term racism and it is based on the skin colour result in childhood trauma. Children may adopt coping strategies of resist maltreatment or they may internalize oppression and accept self loathing.

Keywords : Child Abuse, trauma, social problems, racism

DOI :

Page No. : 57-65