Pecola

Claudia, another character who goes through a similar situation compared to Pecola. She is a young girl who came out from a loving family and is intrusive, yet sensitive.

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.

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

I was a little confused by the last chapter. Who was Pecola talking to? It was sad for me to see Pecola obsess over believing she had been given blue eyes. In the last chapter the sentence, “A little black girl yearns for the blue eyes of a little white girl, and the horror at the heart of her yearning is exceeded only by the evil of fulfillment”, showed the relationship between beauty and skin color and how destructive beauty can be. I feel like because of what had happened to Pecola she was so desperate to be beautiful and happy, that she believed she actually had blue eyes. She thought her blue eyes were the reason that people avoided her, when it was really because of what had happened between her and Cholly. Overall, I found the book

“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

Because of racism and her own personal background, Pauline neglects her family and allows Pecola to be victimized. One reason that Pauline turns out the way she does is that she always felt inadequate. Growing up Pauline blamed her foot for her constant source of humiliation. “The easiest thing to do would be to build a case out of her foot.” “That is what she herself did” (Morrison 110). In addition, once she moved to Ohio she had to contend with regional and social class barriers to norms of beauty that she had never imagined. For example, she couldn't keep up with latest fashion and this takes a big toll on her spirit.

The boys shout slurs at her about her father and her skin tone, completely disregarding “that they themselves were black, or that their father had similarly relaxed habits” (65) In regards to internalized racism, Morrison states that “they seemed to have taken all of their smoothly cultivated ignorance, their exquisitely learned self-hatred, their elaborately designed hopelessness and sucked it all up into a fiery cone of scorn that had burned for ages in the hollows of their minds.” (65) Maureen stands idly by while Claudia and Frieda help in saving Pecola from the ruthlessness of the African American boys who hate her for something they all have in common, but the boys finish their taunting because of the stigma surrounding Maureen and her light skin. Maureen takes this time to console Pecola, walking the girls towards the ice cream parlor, and pretending to be anything but sinister. The gears switch, Maureen starts bombarding Pecola with questions of her naked father, and in the end regards Pecola as black and ugly while regarding herself as light and cute. Exposing the African American community of a deep seeded hatred in their community towards the “blackest sheep.”

Pecola and the sisters then shared childhood adventures, and what Claudia remembers in particular is the startling onset of Pecola’s puberty when she unexpectedly first had her menstruation.

and she did a thing that reminded him of her mom when they meet. He’s an abuser that made him feel like attacking because now he seen his daughter as weak. Pecola not only did she get raped once but twice by her own father. Pecola in the novel asked Claudia “how do you do that? I mean, how do you get somebody to love you?”

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)

“…the pan tilted under Pecola’s fingers and fell to the floor…she cried out and began hopping about just as Mrs. Breedlove entered with a tightly packed laundry bag. In one gallop she was on Pecola, and with the back of her hand knocked her to the floor…Mrs. Breedlove yanked her up by the arm, slapped her again, and in a voice thin with anger, abused Pecola directly and Frieda and me by implication” (Morrison, p. 109). Claudia and Frieda could defend Pecola when she was being bullied by the boys at school. They could stand up for her against Maureen who was antagonizing her however they are too young and helpless to stand up for against her

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

Pecola Breedlove is a young girl growing up black and poor in the early 1940s. She is repeatedly called "ugly" by nearly everyone in her life, from the mean kids at school to her own mother. This constant criticism, the relentless bullying she gets at school, and her rough family life (her parents are always fighting, both verbally and physically) lead Pecola to seek escape from her misery by fantasizing about becoming more beautiful. Pecola begins to believe that if she could just achieve physical beauty, her life would automatically improve. This false belief turns out to be utterly destructive to Pecola, consuming her whole life and, eventually, her sanity. Pecola is a young African American girl, born to Cholly and Pauline Breedlove. She has a brother and her family lives in a small house on the edge of town. Pecola's father was an alcoholic and he abused his wife and Pecola, both physically and sexually. Pecola is not beautiful and she wishes for nothing more than blond hair and blue eyes. She prays everyday to God to make her beautiful. The character's inner struggle is self-confidence because she believes she is ugly. Pecola is quiet, shy, and introverted due to her low self-esteem level. There’s something that I am not in accordance with Pecola and that is that she lets the negativity from other people get to her. The idea of her thinking that she is ugly creates results from her isolation from friends, the community, and even her family. There are three stages

Is the narrator of the novel, sometimes from a child’s perspective and sometimes from the perspective of an adult with flash-backs. Both Pecola and Claudia suffers from racism, beauty standards and insecurity, but what differs her from Pecola is that she has a loving and stable family. For Christmas when Claudia was given a white doll, she always destroyed it because she didn’t want them. She wasn’t interested in babies or the concept of motherhood. She was only interested in humans her age and size, and she couldn’t generate any enthusiasm at the prospect of being a mother. She wanted adults to take her seriously and rather ask her want she really wants. Claudia is also a fighter, because when she saw that a group of boys