Pecola's Mother

Besides the inherent self-confident issue, the outside voice from community is also affecting Pecola’s view. For example, in the “accident” when Pecola went into Junior’s house, Junior killed the cat and impute to Pecola. His mother, Geraldine, saw Pecola was holding the dead cat. Without any thought and didn’t even ask for the truth, Geraldine simply called Pecola a “nastylittle black bitch.” This event, again, reinforces Pecola’s view of what beauty means.

As a child, he was not loved by his mother. She prefered her cat to her own son. Junior saw this at an early age and “spent some happy moments watching it suffer” (86). Junior locked Pecola in a room, becoming the perpetrator with the same turn of attitude as Cholly. When he saw that the cat liked Pecola, he threw the cat, killing it, because the thing his mother loved more than himself loved her. Pecola’s wish could be paralleled to the cat. It had blue eyes, and was loved dearly by someone, which could explain the attention she gave to the cat. Junior even said, “Gimme my cat! (90). Up to this point, he wanted nothing to do with the cat and even tortured it, but with it being the only connection to his mother, he called it his own. Pecola’s dream, or having the same attention as the cat, was killed when the cat was killed. Junior was not loved by his mother, only taken care of to live. She did not “allow her baby, Junior, to cry…[she] did not talk to him, coo to him, or indulge him in kissing bouts” (86). This unlove for her family caused Junior to be victimized, and then alter his ways, and become the perpetrator. Pecola is the victim in the rage of Junior, only because his mother did not love him. She wanted someone to be kind to her, and love her, but that was only met with

Pauline Breedlove, Pecola's mother, experiences racism within the black community when she moves to Lorain, Ohio. Being a dark-skinned black woman from the south, she does not understand why "northern colored folk was different... [and why they were] no better than whites for meanness" (117). She recognizes the hierarchy, or the "difference between colored people and niggers" within the black community, especially from the light-skinned women she encounters (87). One of these light-skinned black women is Geraldine, Junior's mother, who believes "colored people were neat and quiet; niggers were dirty and loud" (87). She even tells her son

“Again, the hatred mixed with tenderness. The hatred would not let him pick her up, the tenderness forced him to cover her.” [This quote represents the emotions that flood through Pecola’s father’s head after he rapes her. Prior to and during raping Pecola, Pecola’s father is enraged with many emotions. These emotions include anger, tenderness and l0ve towards Pecola. This is a significant quote in the novel because this is one of the few parts of where Pecola’s father, Cholly’s, character is shown. This quote reveals Cholly’s character because it shows that the events that happened in his

With some background knowledge on Pauline, the mother of Pecola, it’s easier to understand some of Pecola's core traits. There are parallelisms between Pecola and Pauline. They find their reality too harsh to deal with, so they become fixated on one thing that makes them happy, and they ignore everything else. Pecola's desire for blue eyes is more of an inheritance that she received from her mother. One of Pauline’s own obsessions was back when she was fascinated with the world of the big pictures. As long as they can believe in their fantasies, they're willing to sacrifice anything else.

In the novel, Morrison condemns the idea of living by one’s perception of one’s value rather than through the truth, which leads to negative implications. Pauline Breedlove creates an elaborate fantasy world, in which the household of her white employers becomes hers. Morrison indicates that Pauline “[looks] at their houses, [smells] their linens, [touches] their silk draperies, and [loves] all of it” (Morrison, 127), to suggest that Pauline has formed an attachment to what she believes is hers. The way she refers to “[her] floor...[her] floor...[her] floor” (107), after her daughter Pecola accidentally spills a tart at the Fishers’ house, implies that Pauline views that household as a parallel reality, with the white girl as her daughter, and the clean kitchen as her kitchen. Morrison depicts another illusion in which Pauline strives to become a paragon of virtue—by being “an active church woman, [not] drinking, smoking or carousing” (128). She believes she “[fulfills] a mother’s role conscientiously when she points out [the father’s] faults to keep [the children] from having them” (129). But in reality, Pauline fails to embody that role, often “neglecting her house, her children, her man” (127) and “fighting [her husband] with a darkly brutal formalism” (43). Morrison’s depiction of Pauline’s delusive mindset consequently leads to harmful effects, like the emotional abandonment of her family. Her

Many examples of her childlike innocence occur throughout the book including her idea of planting the marigold seeds in hope to save Pecola’s baby. Although she has a reoccurring innocence, she slowly starts to mature and understand different controversies in life, one of the major ones being racism. She later understands the reason Maureen Peal received more attention from others was because she was a lighter skin tone than herself. She also learns how to interpret different situations and peoples’ character through the gossip that she hears from her mother and the other women in the community. However, Claudia shows her maximum mature process when she realizes at the end of the book that she could not save Pecola or her baby; the baby was going to die whether the marigolds bloomed or not. Throughout the book, Claudia and Pecola are both exposed to situations they were both too young to understand. Claudia’s strength prevails and she becomes a mature women prepared for the awful realities of the world while Pecola’s weakness and self-hatred allowed her to fail and go

In each case, the daughter is ruined in the eyes of their society. The women in Malaefou are “constantly whispering about her [Lili]” (10). Pecola is also a victim of shunning after her miscarriage. Morrison’s narrator notes, “We honed our egos on her, padded our characters with her frailty, and yawned in the fantasy of our strength” (203). Morrison defines Pecola as outcast, driving her mad and sending her to wander among the “coke bottles and milkweed” (203).

Pauline eventually meets Cholly, who is Pecola’s biological father, and they fall in love. "He seemed to relish her company and even to enjoy her country ways and lack of knowledge about city things. He talked with her about her foot and asked, when they walked through the town or in the fields, if she were tired. Instead of ignoring her infirmity, pretending it was not there, he made it seem like something special and endearing. For the first time Pauline felt that her bad foot was an asset. And he did touch her, firmly but gently, just as she had dreamed. But minus the gloom of setting suns and lonely river banks. She was secure and grateful; he was kind and lively. She had not known there was so much laughter in the world." (Morrison, p. 115)

On the opposite hand, Pecola represents non-standardized tragic hero WHO continues to be a toddler way more sinned against and full of the passiveness of her surroundings than moving it. She looks vulnerable, fallible and inert receiver all the time. a toddler in whom self-loathing, self-disgust, self-repulsion and self-degradation are planted since the start of her self-fulfillment and since the beginning of her awareness of her biased and prejudiced surroundings. Like Gregor Samsa, she thinks that each one what happens round her is natural and normal; she ne'er tries to revolt or to vary her surroundings; and in contrast to Samsa, she seeks to own her look modified, thus she goes to Soaphead Church to offer her blue eyes. rather than ever-changing

Maureen and Claudia get into an argument, after Claudia defends Pecola. Claudia says that Maureen think she is so cute, and Maureen says, she is, and throws a racist insult at Claudia and Pecola. Maureen states that Claudia and black, and she makes it seems as if it bad thing, and she also calls her ugly. However, she shouts this from the other side of the road, where she is “safe”. So perhaps Maureen thinks that Claudia will hit her again. Maureen does not find Claudia, Frieda, and Pecola pretty. Pecola, who already has a hard time finding beauty in herself gets called ugly, by a girl who everybody thinks is pretty. A little after, Claudia said Pecola’s pain antagonized her. However, the pain was not the pain from accidently getting hit my

There are many themes that seem to run throughout this story. Each theme and conflict seems to always involve the character of Pecola Breedlove. There is the theme of finding an identity. There is also the theme of Pecola as a victim. Of all the characters in the story we can definitely sympathize with Pecola because of the many harsh circumstances she has had to go through in her lifetime. Perhaps her rape was the most tragic and dramatic experience Pecola had experiences, but nonetheless she continued her life. She eliminates her sense of ugliness, which lingers in the beginning of the story, and when she sees that she has blue eyes now she changes her perspective on life. She believes that these eyes have been given

“If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude.” – Maya Angelou. Pecola Breedlove changed her eyes, but not her attitude, therefore, her life went downhill. Janie Crawford changed the man in her life, until she found the right one, and possessed an optimistic attitude towards love. Tania wanted to leave her partner, which is change, so that she could gain strength and confidence. How are each of these women considered strong?

When Pecola was born the first thing her mother said was, "Head full of pretty hair, but Lord she was ugly” (Morrison 126). Because Pecola doesn’t fit into middle class standards of beauty, as she grows, she begins to believe she is ugly, yet Morrison forces us to sympathize with her and by doing so challenges beauty standards to be more inclusive. “The fact is … ethics and aesthetics are inseparable in art” (Tanner) but The Bluest Eye subverts the traditional literary ethics and aesthetics theory: what is beautiful is good, by showing that Pecola’s perception of herself as ugly does not make her a bad person.

The terror of the beginning of her first menstruation is symptomatic of the traumatic experience she has in life. When Pecola has her first periods she is alarmed and screams. Suddenly Pecola bolted straight up, her eyes wide with terror. A whinnying sound came from her mouth. "What's the matter with you?" Frieda stood up too. Then we both looked where Pecola was staring. Blood was running down her legs. Soon drops were on the steps. I leaped up. "Hey, you cut yourself? Look. It's all over your dress". A brownish red stain discolored the back of her dress. She kept whinnying standing with her legs far apart. Frieda said, "Oh Lordy! I know. What that is!".