〇 The Bluest Eye By Toni Morrison
Summary
Nine-year-old Claudia and ten-year-old Frieda MacTeer live in Lorain, Ohio, with their parents. It is the end of the Great Depression, and the girls’ parents are more concerned with making ends meet than with lavishing attention upon their daughters, but there is an undercurrent of love and stability in their home. The MacTeers take in a boarder, Henry Washington, and also a young girl named Pecola. Pecola’s father has tried to burn down his family’s house, and Claudia and Frieda feel sorry for her. Pecola loves Shirley Temple, believing that whiteness is beautiful and that she is ugly.
Pecola moves back in with her family, and her life is difficult. Her father drinks, her mother is distant, and the two of them often beat one another. Her brother, Sammy, frequently runs away. Pecola believes that if she had blue eyes, she would be loved and her life would be transformed. Meanwhile, she continually receives confirmation of her own sense of ugliness—the grocer looks right through her when she buys candy, boys make fun of her, and a light-skinned girl, Maureen, who temporarily befriends her makes fun of her too. She is wrongly blamed for killing a boy’s cat and is called a “nasty little black bitch” by his mother.
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Full text: The Importance of Being Earnest
We learn that Pecola’s parents have both had difficult lives. Pauline, her mother, has a lame foot and has always felt isolated. She loses herself in movies, which reaffirm her belief that she is ugly and that romantic love is reserved for the beautiful. She encourages her husband’s violent behavior in order to reinforce her own role as a martyr. She feels most alive when she is at work, cleaning a white woman’s home. She loves this home and despises her own. Cholly, Pecola’s father, was abandoned by his parents and raised by his great aunt, who died when he was a young teenager. He was humiliated by two white men who found him having sex for the first time and made him continue while they watched. He ran away to find his father but was rebuffed by him. By the time he met Pauline, he was a wild and rootless man. He feels trapped in his marriage and has lost interest in life.
Cholly returns home one day and finds Pecola washing dishes. With mixed motives of tenderness and hatred that are fueled by guilt, he rapes her. When Pecola’s mother finds her unconscious on the floor, she disbelieves Pecola’s story and beats her. Pecola goes to Soaphead Church, a sham mystic, and asks him for blue eyes. Instead of helping her, he uses her to kill a dog he dislikes.
Claudia and Frieda find out that Pecola has been impregnated by her father, and unlike the rest of the neighborhood, they want the baby to live. They sacrifice the money they have been saving for a bicycle and plant marigold seeds. They believe that if the flowers live, so will Pecola’s baby. The flowers refuse to bloom, and Pecola’s baby dies when it is born prematurely. Cholly, who rapes Pecola a second time and then runs away, dies in a workhouse. Pecola goes mad, believing that her cherished wish has been fulfilled and that she has the bluest eyes.
●==Plot summary==
In [[Lorain, Ohio]], nine-year-old Claudia MacTeer and her 10-year-old sister Frieda live with their parents, a tenant named Mr. Henry, and Pecola Breedlove, a temporary [[foster child]] whose house was burned down by her unstable, alcoholic, and sexually abusive father. Pecola is a quiet, passive young girl who grows up with little money and whose parents are constantly fighting, both verbally and physically. Pecola is continually reminded of what an "ugly" girl she is by members of her neighborhood and school community. In an attempt to beautify herself, Pecola wishes for blue eyes. Additionally, most chapters' titles are extracts from the ''[[Dick and Jane]]'' paragraph in the novel's prologue, presenting a white family that may be contrasted with Pecola's. The chapter titles contain sudden repetition of words or phrases, many cut-off words, and no [[Word divider|interword separation]]s.
The novel, through [[Flashback (narrative)|flashback]]s, explores the younger years of both of Pecola's parents, Cholly and Pauline, and their struggles as African Americans in a largely [[White Anglo-Saxon Protestant]] community. Pauline now works as a servant for a wealthier white family. One day in the novel's present time, while Pecola is doing dishes, drunk Cholly rapes her. His motives are largely confusing, seemingly a combination of both love and hate. After raping her a second time, he flees, leaving her pregnant.
Claudia and Frieda are the only two in the community that hopes for Pecola's child to survive in the coming months. Consequently, they give up the money they had been saving to buy a bicycle, instead planting marigold seeds with the superstitious belief that if the flowers bloom, Pecola's baby will survive. The marigolds never bloom, and Pecola's child, who is born prematurely, dies. In the aftermath, a dialogue is presented between two sides of Pecola's deluded imagination, in which she indicates conflicting feelings about her rape by her father. In this internal conversation, Pecola speaks as though her wish for blue eyes has been granted, and believes that the changed behavior of those around her is due to her new eyes, rather than the news of her rape or her increasingly strange behavior.
Claudia, as narrator a final time, describes the recent phenomenon of Pecola's insanity and suggests that Cholly (who has since died) may have shown Pecola the only love he could by raping her. Claudia laments on her belief that the whole community, herself included, has used Pecola as a scapegoat to make themselves feel prettier and happier.
◆ =Characters==
* '''Pecola Breedlove''': Her insanity at the end of the novel is her only way to escape the world where she cannot be beautiful and happy due to her family situation and the beauty and social standards of that time. She believes that having blue eyes would make her more accepted.
* '''Claudia MacTeer''': Narrates the majority of the novel and is also a young black girl. She is the child of Pecola's foster parents and is Frieda's sister. She is not only Pecola's fostering sister but she is also considered to be her friend. She is an independent, mature, and passionate nine-year-old. Despite her relative naivete, she is one of few, if any, characters that feel sympathy for Pecola. Claudia is the polar opposite of Pecola. In the first chapter, she destroys her white dolls out of hatred of white people. By contrast, Pecola consistently acts on her desire to achieve white beauty standards. Claudia is raised in a stable home, always assured of her self-worth and surrounded by a strong network of family.
* '''Frieda MacTeer''': Claudia's 10-year-old sister. Frieda is more enlightened to the world in comparison to her younger sister and Pecola. Frieda is courageous and unwavering. She is seen to defend both Claudia and Pecola within the novel. Frieda can be classified as determined, independent, and stubborn at times.
* '''Cholly Breedlove''': Cholly is Pecola's father. Abusive and an alcoholic, Cholly's violent and aggressive behavior reflects his troublesome upbringing. In addition to being rejected by his father and discarded by his mother as a four-day-old baby, Cholly's first sexual encounter is ruined when it is interrupted by two white men, who force Cholly to continue while they watch and sneer. Traumatic events like these influence Cholly to become a violent husband and father who beats his wife and eventually rapes his daughter. These gestures of madness are said to be mingled with affection, as they are his way of showing love.
* '''Pauline "Polly" Breedlove''': Pecola's mother, Mrs. Breedlove, is married to Cholly and lives the self-righteous life of a [[martyr]], enduring her drunk husband and raising her two awkward children as best as she can. Mrs. Breedlove is a bit of an outcast herself with her shriveled foot and Southern background. She lives the life of a lonely and isolated character who escapes into a world of dreams, hopes, and fantasy that turns into the movies she enjoys viewing. However, after a traumatic event with a foul tooth, she relinquishes those dreams and escapes into her life as a housekeeper for a rich white family who gives her the beloved nickname "Polly."
* '''Sam Breedlove''': Pecola's older brother. Sammy, as he is more often referred to in the novel, is Cholly and Mrs. Breedlove's only son. Sam's part in this novel is minimal. Like his sister Pecola, he is affected by the disharmony in their home and deals with his anger by running away.
* '''Auntie Jimmy''': Cholly's great aunt, takes him in to raise him after his parents abandon him. She is friends with Miss Alice and is briefly ill, tended to by the medicine woman whom the locals call "M'Dear." Aunt Jimmy dies suddenly when Cholly is still a young boy during a meal of peach cobbler that was made by a friend, Esse Foster.
* '''Samson Fuller''': Cholly Breedlove's father who abandoned Cholly before he was born. After Aunt Jimmy dies, Cholly runs off in search of Samson in Macon, Georgia, where he is left distraught and disappointed with his discovery.
* '''The Fishers''': The rich, white couple who employ Pauline as their servant and as the caretaker of their young daughter.
* '''Geraldine''': A socially conscious upper-class black woman in the community who exaggerates the fact that she is above traditional black stereotypes and is more "civilized" than other black families in Lorain, Ohio. When she feels that her husband isn't fulfilling her need for love, she finds a cat and pours her affection into it. Her lack of attention to anything but the cat causes unintended hatred for the cat from her son, whom she often neglects.
* '''Louis Junior''': Geraldine's son, who bullies Pecola and blames her for accidentally killing his mother's beloved cat.
* '''Maginot Line (Marie)''': A prostitute who lives with two other prostitutes named China and Poland in an apartment above the one Pecola lives in. These ladies are ostracized by society, but teach Pecola a lot about being a social outcast, and offer her the support that few others do.
* '''Rosemary Villanucci''': The MacTeers' next-door neighbor who constantly tries to get Claudia and Frieda in trouble.
* '''Mr. Yacobowski''': The discriminatory white immigrant, owner of the grocery store where Pecola goes to buy [[Mary Jane (candy)|Mary Janes]].
* '''Maureen Peal''': A light-skinned, green-eyed [[mulatto|half-blood]] African-American girl Pecola's age who is described in the book as a "high yellow dream child" with long brown hair and green eyes. Maureen considers herself to be above dark-skinned African-American people. Frieda and Claudia mock Maureen, calling her "Meringue Pie".<ref>{{cite book|last1=Gordon|first1=Lewis|title=Existence in Black: An Anthology of Black Existential Philosophy|date=1997|publisher=Routledge|page=120}}</ref>
* '''Soaphead Church''': Born Elihue Whitcomb, he received his nickname, "Soaphead Church", for his hair and profession, and has proclaimed himself to be "Reader, Adviser, and Interpreter of Dreams." He is a "light-skinned" West Indian failed preacher who hates all kinds of human touch. He considers himself to be a "[[misanthrope]]". He refuses to confront his homosexuality and therefore, the touch of little girls whom he views as innocent and "seductive" is the cleanest form of human touch that he pursues. He is also a religious hypocrite as a past preacher. Although someone who hates humans, he as a "Reader, Adviser, and Interpreter of Dreams" takes on the trouble of others, and works closely with them to help solve their problems. When Pecola approaches him asking for blue eyes, he tells her to give meat to his landlord's dog, and that her wish will be granted if the dog reacts. However, he secretly poisons the meat, and the dog dies, contributing to Pecola's delusions that she has blue eyes.{{cite web|url=http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/bluesteye/characters.html|title=SparkNotes: The Bluest Eye: Character