The Bluest Eye, debut novel by Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison, published in 1970. Set in Morrison’s hometown of Lorain, Ohio, in 1940–41, the novel tells the tragic story of Pecola Breedlove, an African American girl from an abusive home. Eleven-year-old Pecola equates beauty and social acceptance with whiteness; she therefore longs to have “the bluest eye.” Although largely ignored upon publication, The Bluest Eye is now considered an American classic and an essential account of the African American experience after the Great Depression.
Structure
The Bluest Eye is divided into four sections, each of which is named for a different season. (The novel begins with “Autumn” and ends with “Summer.”) The four sections are further divided into chapters. Most of the chapter titles are taken from the simulated text of a Dick and Jane reader. Three versions of the simulated text appear at the beginning of the novel. The first version is clear and grammatically correct; it tells a short story about “Mother, Father, Dick, and Jane,” focusing in particular on Jane, who seeks a playmate. The second version repeats the message of the first, but without proper punctuation or capitalization. The third version lacks punctuation, capitalization, and spaces between words. It reads:
Britannica Quiz The Literary World (Famous Novels) How much do you really know about the stories and the authors of the classics you love, from Jane Eyre to Brave New World?Hereisthehouseitisgreenandwhiteithasareddooritisveryprettyhereisthefamilymotherfatherdickandjaneliveinthegreenandwhitehousetheyareveryhappyseejaneshehasareddressshewantstoplaywhowillplaywithjaneseethecatitgoesmeowmeowcomeandplaycomeplaywithjanethekittenwillnotplay...lookherecomesafriendthefriendwillplaywithjanetheywillplayagoodgameplayjaneplay
The three versions symbolize the different lifestyles explored in the novel. The first is that of white families like the Fishers; the second is that of the well-adjusted MacTeer children, Claudia and Frieda, who live in an “old, cold, and green” house; and the distorted third is that of the Breedloves. Morrison’s references to Dick and Jane—an illustrated series of books about a white middle-class family, often used to teach children to read in the 1940s—help contextualize the novel. They also comment on the incompatibility of those “barren white-family primer[s]” (as Morrison called them) with the experiences of Black families.
Summary
Pecola’s story is told through the eyes of multiple narrators. The main narrator is Claudia MacTeer, a childhood friend with whom Pecola once lived. Claudia narrates from two different perspectives: the adult Claudia, who reflects on the events of 1940–41, and the nine-year-old Claudia, who observes the events as they happen.
In the first section of the novel (“Autumn”), nine-year-old Claudia introduces Pecola and explains why she is living with the MacTeers. Claudia tells the reader what her mother, Mrs. MacTeer, told her: Pecola is a “case…a girl who had no place to go.” The Breedloves are currently “outdoors,” or homeless, because Pecola’s father, Cholly, burned the family house down. The county placed Pecola with the MacTeer family until “they could decide what to do, or, more precisely, until the [Breedlove] family was reunited.”
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Despite the tragic circumstances of their friendship, Claudia and her 11-year-old sister, Frieda, enjoy playing with Pecola. Frieda and Pecola bond over their shared love of Shirley Temple, a famous American child star known for her blonde curls, babyish singing, and tap-dancing with Bill (“Bojangles”) Robinson. Claudia, however, “couldn’t join them in their adoration because [she] hated Shirley.” In fact, she hated “all the Shirley Temples of the world.” The adult Claudia recalls being given a blue-eyed baby doll for Christmas:
From the clucking sounds of adults I knew that the doll represented what they thought was my fondest wish...all the world had agreed that a blue-eyed, yellow-haired, pink-skinned doll was what every girl child treasured. “Here,” they said, “this is beautiful, and if you are on this day ‘worthy’ you may have it.”
(Video) Facts about THE BLUEST EYE by Nobel laureate Toni Morrison!
Claudia remembers dismembering the doll “to see of what it was made, to discover the dearness, to find the beauty, the desirability that had escaped me, but apparently only me.” Finding nothing special at its core, Claudia discarded the doll and continued on her path of destruction, her hatred of little white girls unabated.
The second section (“Winter”) consists of two short vignettes. The first of these is narrated by Claudia, and in it she documents Pecola’s fascination with a light-skinned Black girl by the name of Maureen Peal. Friendly at first, Maureen ultimately humiliates Pecola and her friends by declaring herself “cute” and Pecola “ugly.” The second vignette, narrated by a third-person omniscient narrator, focuses on Geraldine and Louis Junior, a young mother and son in Lorain, Ohio. Geraldine and Junior’s connection to Pecola is not immediately obvious; she does not appear until the end of the vignette. On a particularly boring afternoon, Junior entices Pecola into his house. After she comes inside, he throws his mother’s beloved cat at her face. Scratched and verging on tears, Pecola attempts to leave. Junior stops her, claiming she is his “prisoner.” Junior then picks up his mother’s cat and begins swinging it around his head. In an effort to save it, Pecola grabs his arm, causing them both to fall to the ground. The cat, released in mid-motion, is thrown full-force at the window. At this point Geraldine appears, and Junior promptly tells her that Pecola has killed the cat. Geraldine calls Pecola a “nasty little black bitch” and orders her to leave.
The third section of the novel (“Spring”) is by far the longest, comprising four vignettes. In the first vignette, Claudia and Frieda talk about how Mr. Henry—a guest staying with the MacTeers—“picked at” Frieda, inappropriately touching her while her parents were outside. After Frieda told her mother, her father “threw our old tricycle at [Mr. Henry’s] head and knocked him off the porch.” Frieda tells Claudia she fears she might be “ruined,” and they set off to find Pecola. In the second and third vignettes, the reader learns about Pecola’s parents, Pauline (Polly) and Cholly Breedlove. According to the omniscient narrator, Polly and Cholly once loved each other. They were married at a relatively young age and migrated together from Kentucky to Lorain. Over the years, their relationship steadily deteriorated. One disappointment followed another, and sustained poverty, ignorance, and fear took steep tolls on their well-being. At the end of the third vignette—just before the events of the first section begin—Cholly drunkenly stumbles into his kitchen, where he finds Pecola washing dishes. Overwhelmed by conflicting feelings of tenderness and rage, Cholly rapes Pecola and leaves her unconscious body on the floor for Polly to find.
The fourth vignette picks up not long after the rape. It begins by delving into the personal history of Soaphead Church, a misanthropic Anglophile and self-proclaimed spiritual healer. Soaphead is a deceptive and conniving man; as the narrator observes, he comes from a long line of similarly ambitious and corrupt West Indians. His latest scheme involves interpreting dreams and performing so-called “miracles” for the Black community in Lorain. When Pecola goes to him asking for blue eyes, Soaphead initially sympathizes with her:
Here was an ugly little girl asking for beauty…A little black girl who wanted to rise up out of the pit of her blackness and see the world with blue eyes. His outrage grew and felt like power. For the first time he honestly wished he could work miracles.
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Soaphead forms a plan to trick Pecola. He gives her a piece of raw meat and demands that she give it to his property owner’s dog. If the dog “behaves strangely,” he tells her, her “wish will be granted on the day following this one.” Unbeknownst to Pecola, the meat is poisoned. After the dog eats the meat, gags, and dies, Pecola believes her wish has been granted. Thus begins her sharp descent into madness.
The fourth and final section (“Summer”) takes place after Pecola loses her mind. In the beginning, Claudia and Frieda learn that Pecola has been impregnated by her father. The sisters hope that the baby will not die; they pray for it and even offer a sacrifice (a bicycle) to God. Meanwhile, Pecola converses with an unidentified person—presumably, herself—about her new blue eyes, which she still thinks “aren’t blue enough.” In the final moments of the novel, the adult Claudia tells the reader that Pecola gave birth prematurely and the baby did not survive.
Origin and analysis
Questions of race and gender are at the centre of The Bluest Eye. In a 2004 interview Morrison described her motivations to write the novel. She explained that in the mid-1960s “most of what was being published by Black men [was] very powerful, aggressive, revolutionary fiction or non-fiction.” These publications “had a very positive, racially uplifting rhetoric.” Black male authors expressed sentiments like “Black is beautiful” and used phrases like “Black queen.” At the time, Morrison worried that people would forget that “[Black] wasn’t always beautiful.” In The Bluest Eye, she set out to remind her readers “how hurtful a certain kind of internecine racism is.”
Morrison conceived of the idea for the novel some 20 years before its publication. During an undergraduate creative writing workshop at Howard University, she worked on a short story about a young Black girl who prayed for blue eyes. The story was in part true; it was based on a conversation with a childhood friend who wanted blue eyes. “Implicit in her desire,” Morrison observed, “was racial self-loathing.” The soon-to-be author wondered how her friend had internalized society’s racist beauty standards at such a young age.
By 1965 Morrison’s short story had become a novel, and between 1965 and 1969 she developed it into an extensive study of socially constructed ideals of beauty (and ugliness). In The Bluest Eye, Morrison foregrounded the demonization of Blackness in American culture, focusing on the effects of internalized racism. Through Geraldine, Polly, Pecola, and other characters, she demonstrated how even the most subtle forms of racism—especially racism from within the Black community—can negatively impact self-worth and self-esteem.
Form and style
The Bluest Eye is a work of tremendous emotional, cultural, and historical depth. Its passages are rich with allusions to Western history, media, literature, and religion. Morrison’s prose was experimental; it is lyrical and evocative and unmistakably typical of the writing style that became the hallmark of her later work. Some 20 years after its initial publication, Morrison, reflecting on the writing of her first novel in a 1993 afterword to The Bluest Eye, described her prose as “race-specific yet race-free,” the product of a desire to be “free of racial hierarchy and triumphalism.” In her words:
The novel tried to hit the raw nerve of racial self-contempt, expose it, then soothe it not with narcotics but with language that replicated the agency I discovered in my first experience of beauty. Because that moment was so racially infused…the struggle was for writing that was indisputably black.
The form of this novel was also experimental and was highly innovative: Morrison built a “shattered world” to complement Pecola’s experiences. She changed narrators and focal points within and between the four sections. The narration itself alternates between first person and third-person omniscient. Although the events of the novel are, as Morrison wrote, “held together by seasons in childtime,” they are narrated mostly nonchronologically. The novel itself is fairly short; it concludes after only 164 pages.
The temporal structure and frequent shifts in perspective are a key part of Morrison’s attempt to imagine a fluid model of subjectivity—a model she hoped could offer some kind of resistance to a dominant white culture. By shifting the point of view, Morrison effectively avoids dehumanizing the Black characters “who trashed Pecola and contributed to her collapse.” Instead, she emphasizes the systemic nature of the problem. She shows the reader how the racial issues of the distant and not-so-distant past continue to affect her characters in the present, thereby explaining, if not justifying, many of their actions.
Publication and reception
After several rejections, The Bluest Eye was published in the U.S. by Holt, Rinehart and Winston (later Holt McDougal) in 1970. Somewhere between 1,200 and 1,500 first-edition copies were printed; Morrison had expected only about 400. At the time, Morrison—a single mother living in New York City—was working as a senior editor in the trade division of the publisher Random House.
The Bluest Eye was not a commercial success. In a 2012 interview with Interview magazine, Morrison claimed that the Black community “hated [the novel].” The little critical attention the novel received was generally positive. The New York Times celebrated Morrison’s willingness to expose “the negative of the Dick-and-Jane-and-Mother-and-Father-and-Dog-and-Cat photograph that appears in our reading primers…with a prose so precise, so faithful to speech and so charged with pain and wonder that the novel becomes poetry.” All things considered, Morrison felt that “the initial publication of The Bluest Eye was like Pecola’s life: dismissed, trivialized, [and] misread.”
Legacy
Since its publication in 1970, there have been numerous attempts to ban The Bluest Eye from schools and libraries because of its depictions of sex, violence, racism, incest, and child molestation; it frequents the American Library Association’s list of banned and challenged books . Nonetheless, the novel has been categorized as an American classic in the tradition of Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, Mark Twain, and William Faulkner.
Haley BrackenFAQs
Who are the main characters in The Bluest Eye? ›
The Bluest Eye
What is the bluest eyes summary? ›The Bluest Eye, published in 1970, is the first novel written by Toni Morrison. The novel takes place in Lorain, Ohio (Morrison's hometown), and tells the story of a young African-American girl named Pecola who grew up following the Great Depression.
Why is The Bluest Eye important? ›And 50 years after it was originally published, The Bluest Eye still illuminates Morrison's deft ability to make Black girls feel and be seen. Morrison's portrait of the fatalities of racism still scares people, including those who sit on school and library boards.
What is the conclusion of The Bluest Eye? ›At the end of the novel, Pecola's child dies, and she becomes insane due to the difficulties and traumatizing experiences she went through. The final reflection of Pecola's foster-sister Claudia provides insight into the main themes that Morrison aimed to highlight in his novel.
What is the tone of The Bluest Eye? ›The tone of Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye is best described as melancholy. There is joy in her writing, but it is always underpinned by some dark, barely fathomable truth.
Who is the antagonist in The Bluest Eye? ›Cholly Breedlove
Cholly is cowardly and abusive. His actions all point to him as the novel's antagonist: he begins seeking an escape from his family as soon as Pauline gives birth to Sammy; he hits Pauline; he tries to set the house on fire; and he rapes his young daughter.
The Bluest Eye, debut novel by Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison, published in 1970. Set in Morrison's hometown of Lorain, Ohio, in 1940–41, the novel tells the tragic story of Pecola Breedlove, an African American girl from an abusive home.
Who is Pecola's father? ›Pecola is born to Cholly and Pauline Breedlove. Pauline immediately decides that she is an ugly child. Pecola comes to stay with the MacTeers after her father, Cholly, tries to burn down their house.
Why is the book called The Bluest Eye? ›The title is taken from the protagonist's desire to have blue eyes. “Whiteness” is the beauty standard that Pecola Breedlove cannot fit in with, and from this her obsession with having blue eyes stems.
Why did Pecola go crazy? ›Pecola, a little black girl who thirsts for a pair of blue eyes, finally goes mad because of her never achieved wish. She can only live in her fantasy, persuading herself that she has a pair of beautiful blue eyes. She believes that only when she has a pair of blue eyes can she be loved.
Is Pecola black? ›
Pecola is the eleven-year-old black girl around whom the story revolves. She is abused by almost everyone in the novel and eventually suffers two traumatic rapes. Pecola's experiences, however, are not typical of all black girls who also have to grow up in a hostile society.
What is the main conflict in The Bluest Eye? ›major conflict Pecola needs to receive love from somebody, but her parents and the other members of her community are unable to love her because they have been damaged and thwarted in their own lives.
What is the significance of Pecola? ›Pecola is also a symbol of the black community's self-hatred and belief in its own ugliness. Others in the community, including her mother, father, and Geraldine, act out their own self-hatred by expressing hatred toward her.
What is beauty in The Bluest Eye? ›In The Bluest Eye, Morrison challenges Western standards of beauty and demonstrates that the concept of beauty is socially constructed. Morrison also argues that if whiteness is used as a standard of beauty or anything else, then the value of blackness is decreased and this novel works to demolish that tendency.
What does Pecola represent in The Bluest Eye? ›Pecola is a symbol of the black community's self-hatred and belief in its own ugliness. Others in the community, including her mother, father, and Geraldine, act out their own self-hatred by expressing hatred toward her.
What do the seasons represent in The Bluest Eye? ›The Seasons and Nature
For example, spring, the traditional time of rebirth and renewal, reminds Claudia of being whipped with new switches, and it is the season when Pecola's is raped. Pecola's baby dies in autumn, the season of harvesting.
By Toni Morrison
Pecola tells her friend that she's just jealous of her blue eyes. She says that everyone in town is so jealous of them that they won't look at her or talk to her anymore. Pecola says her friend is the only one who ever tells her that her eyes are pretty.
Lyrical and Featuring Multiple Perspectives
Morrison is famous for her use of fragmented narrative with multiple perspectives. Her use of different narrative styles – alternating between first- and third-person omniscient – gives her the freedom to do two interesting things.
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison takes place in Ohio in the 1940s. The novel is written from the perspective of African Americans and how they view themselves. Focusing on identity, Morrison uses rhetorical devices such as imagery, dictation, and symbolism to help stress her point of view on identity.
Which are the narrative strategies employed by the writer in Bluest Eye? ›Toni Morrison uses modernist techniques of stream-of-consciousness, multiple perspectives, and deliberate fragmentation. Two different narrators tell the story. The first is Claudia MacTeer, who narrates in a mixture of a child's and an adult's perspectives, and the second is an omniscient narrator.
How does Pecola define love? ›
In the case of Pauline and Pecola, the idea is: "if someone loved me, I would be saved; my life would be completely different." The idea that love could lead to salvation is one that gets tested in the novel, and the novel should get us thinking about whether or not this vision of love is one that is sustainable.
Why does Claudia destroy the dolls? ›Answer and Explanation: Claudia destroys the doll as an act of resistance against the idealized beauty standards that uphold white features while diminishing her own. For Claudia, her resistance extends to her lack of appreciation for the white baby dolls that sometimes show up on Christmas.
Who is Pecola's brother? ›Sammy Breedlove Sammy is the son of Pauline and Cholly Breedlove and the brother of Pecola.
Who is Mr Henry in The Bluest Eye? ›In Toni Morrison's 1970 novel The Bluest Eye, Mr. Henry Washington is the MacTeer's middle-aged tenant. Mr. Henry is initially described as a quiet and dependable man, endearing himself to Claudia and Freida MacTeer by giving them ice cream money and teasingly calling them by the names of Hollywood celebrities.
Who is Soaphead in The Bluest Eye? ›Born Elihue Micah Whitcomb, Soaphead Church soon learned the art of self-deception and developed a fascination and revulsion for dirt and decay. Soaphead married a woman named Velma, but she left him two months afterward. Next, he pursued the ministry but soon discovered that the profession was not right for him.
Why is The Bluest Eye not banned? ›Books, such as The Bluest Eye, should not be able to be banned because the First Amendment allows for the freedom of speech and the press. In addition, mature topics in literature help to educate and offer readers an opportunity to feel less emotionally isolated.
Did Pecola go blind? ›Rather than granting Pecola insight into the world around her and providing a redeeming connection with other people, these eyes are a form of blindness. Pecola can no longer accurately perceive the outside world, and she has become even more invisible to others.
Who gets Pecola pregnant? ›Claudia recounts some of the things she associates with one particular summer: strawberries, sudden thunderstorms, and gossip about her friend Pecola. Through fragments of gossip, Claudia and Frieda learn that Pecola is pregnant and that the baby's father is Pecola's own father.
Is Mrs MacTeer a good mother? ›Soaphead Church
Claudia and Frieda's mother, Mrs. MacTeer is a stern but loving mother. She has a penchant for singing blues songs, gossiping with her friends, and fussing about her house and children.
The destruction of the soul and mind of an 11-year-old girl should be a shattering thing to watch, but “The Bluest Eye” evokes only a mild sadness, not a wrenching sorrow.
How old is Pecola in The Bluest Eye? ›
Like all the principal characters in “The Bluest Eye,” Pecola lives in Lorain, Ohio, where Morrison, who died last August, was born in 1931. When we meet Pecola, she is eleven years old but already ancient with sorrow. Her only escape from the emotional abuse that her family and her classmates heap on her is to dream.
How did Pecola lose her innocence? ›The immoral acts of society raped Pecola Breedlove, took her innocence, and left her to go insane. The Random House Dictionary defines “rape” as “an act of plunder, violent seizure, or abuse; despoliation; violation.” The Random House definition perfectly describes what happens to Pecola over the course of the novel.
What happened to Sammy at the end of The Bluest Eye? ›Pecola moves with her mother to the edge of town, Sammy runs away, and Cholly dies in a workhouse. Claudia believes the community, including herself, has dumped their garbage on Pecola, and uses her to feel better about their own lives.
Why does Pecola have an imaginary friend? ›Summary and Analysis Summer: Section 2
Pecola has a "friend," too, but hers is not real. It is a hallucination. Pecola's schizophrenia has created an imaginary friend for her because she has no real friends — Claudia and Frieda now avoid her. Not even her mother is a friend.
Milk has come to represent whiteness. Claudia and Frieda's mother, Mrs. MacMeer, calls Pecola greedy and claims that her excessive drinking of milk symbolizes her desire for whiteness. If Pecola continues to drink milk, then she will become white – this whiteness will somehow make her more beautiful.
How are Pecola and Claudia different? ›Like Pecola, Claudia suffers from racist beauty standards and material insecurity, but she has a loving and stable family, which makes all the difference for her. Whereas Pecola is passive when she is abused, Claudia is a fighter. When Claudia is given a white doll she does not want, she dissects and destroys it.
What happened to Cholly in The Bluest Eye? ›After Cholly rapes Pecola, his daughter, near the end of the novel, he slips out of view and dies alone at a workhouse.
How old is Claudia in The Bluest Eye? ›Claudia MacTeer
An independent and strong-minded nine-year-old, Claudia is a fighter and rebels against adults' tyranny over children and against the black community's idealization of white beauty standards. She has not yet learned the self-hatred that plagues her peers.
2006. Banned from the Littleon (CO) curriculum and library shelves after complaints about its explicit sex, including the rape of an eleven-year-old girl by her father.
Why did Claudia not like Shirley Temple? ›Claudia hates Shirley Temple "because she danced with Bojangles, who "was my friend, my uncle, my daddy" and because he "was enjoying, sharing, giving a lovely dance thing with one of those little white girls whose socks never slid down under their heels" (p. 19).
What is the difference between beauty and ugliness? ›
Moore defines beauty in terms of the good—that of which the admiring contemplation is good in itself—and, accordingly, ugliness in terms of evil—that of which the admiring contemplation is evil in itself (1903). Understanding beauty in terms of order renders ugliness as a form of disorder.
Why does pecola go to Soaphead church? ›For example, at times in The Bluest Eye we are forced to see the novel through the mind of Cholly, Pecola's father, and Soaphead Church, a pedophile who Pecola goes to in order to receive blue eyes.
What does the milk represent in The Bluest Eye? ›Claudia and Frieda's mother, Mrs. MacMeer, calls Pecola greedy and claims that her excessive drinking of milk symbolizes her desire for whiteness. If Pecola continues to drink milk, then she will become white – this whiteness will somehow make her more beautiful.
Why was the book The Bluest Eye banned? ›Reasons cited have included, “sexually explicit material,” “lots of graphic descriptions and lots of disturbing language,” and “an underlying socialist-communist agenda.” One complaint simply called it a “bad book.”
How did Pecola get blue eyes? ›When Pecola is finally granted her wish for blue eyes, she receives it in a perverse and darkly ironic form. She is able to obtain blue eyes only by losing her mind. Rather than granting Pecola insight into the world around her and providing a redeeming connection with other people, these eyes are a form of blindness.
Why in Part 4 does Pecola obsess on the fact that her eye is the bluest rather than being satisfied with just having her eye changed to blue? ›Pecola is obsessed with having blue eyes because she believes that this mark of conventional, white beauty will change the way that she is seen and therefore the way that she sees the world.
How does Pecola lose her sanity? ›She realizes that no one — except Claudia and Frieda — will play with her, socialize with her, or be seen with her. She is raped by her drunken father and self-deceived into believing that God has miraculously given her the blue eyes that she prayed for. She loses her baby, and shortly afterward she loses her sanity.
Who is Pecola's father? ›Pecola is born to Cholly and Pauline Breedlove. Pauline immediately decides that she is an ugly child. Pecola comes to stay with the MacTeers after her father, Cholly, tries to burn down their house.
What is the significance of Pecola? ›Pecola is also a symbol of the black community's self-hatred and belief in its own ugliness. Others in the community, including her mother, father, and Geraldine, act out their own self-hatred by expressing hatred toward her.
Is The Bluest Eye a true story? ›The story was in part true; it was based on a conversation with a childhood friend who wanted blue eyes. “Implicit in her desire,” Morrison observed, “was racial self-loathing.” The soon-to-be author wondered how her friend had internalized society's racist beauty standards at such a young age.
Who gives Pecola blue eyes? ›
One day, Pecola visits and asks Soaphead to give her blue eyes. Soaphead is sympathetic. He knows he can't do such a thing, but he tells her to give some meat to the dog. If the dog reacts to the meat, he tells Pecola, she will get her blue eyes.
Is The Bluest Eye sad? ›The destruction of the soul and mind of an 11-year-old girl should be a shattering thing to watch, but “The Bluest Eye” evokes only a mild sadness, not a wrenching sorrow.
What is the main conflict in The Bluest Eye? ›major conflict Pecola needs to receive love from somebody, but her parents and the other members of her community are unable to love her because they have been damaged and thwarted in their own lives.
Who gets Pecola pregnant? ›Claudia recounts some of the things she associates with one particular summer: strawberries, sudden thunderstorms, and gossip about her friend Pecola. Through fragments of gossip, Claudia and Frieda learn that Pecola is pregnant and that the baby's father is Pecola's own father.
Why did Pecola go crazy? ›Pecola, a little black girl who thirsts for a pair of blue eyes, finally goes mad because of her never achieved wish. She can only live in her fantasy, persuading herself that she has a pair of beautiful blue eyes. She believes that only when she has a pair of blue eyes can she be loved.
What does blue eyes mean Pecola? ›To Pecola, blue eyes symbolize the beauty and happiness that she associates with the white, middle-class world. They also come to symbolize her own blindness, for she gains blue eyes only at the cost of her sanity. The “bluest” eye could also mean the saddest eye.
What sacrifice do Claudia and Frieda make for Pecola? ›Claudia and Frieda decide to help Pecola by praying and by giving a sacrifice; they will give up their seed money and plant the rest of the marigold seeds. They will bury the money by Pecola's house and bury the seeds in their own yard so that they can tend them.
What happened to Sammy at the end of The Bluest Eye? ›Pecola moves with her mother to the edge of town, Sammy runs away, and Cholly dies in a workhouse. Claudia believes the community, including herself, has dumped their garbage on Pecola, and uses her to feel better about their own lives.