The Bluest Eye

      The novel is alternately narrated in first person by Claudia MacTeer and in third person, focusing on various other characters. 9-year-old Claudia and her 10-year-old sister, Frieda, live in Lorain, Ohio with their parents, who take two other people into their home: Mr. Henry, a tenant, and Pecola Breedlove, a temporary foster child whose house has been burned down by her wildly unstable father, who is widely gossiped about in the community. Pecola is a quiet, passive young girl with a hard life, and whose parents are constantly fighting, both verbally and physically. Pecola is continually being told and reminded of what an "ugly" girl she is, thus fueling her desire to be white with blue eye . One day while Pecola is doing dishes, her intoxicated father rapes her. His motives are unclear, seemingly a combination of both love and hate. Cholly flees after the second time he rapes Pecola, leaving her pregnant. Claudia and Frieda are the only two in the community that hope for Pecola's child to survive. Consequently, they give up money they had been saving to buy and plant marigold seeds with the superstitious belief that if the flowers bloom, Pecola's baby will live. The marigolds never bloom and Pecola's child, who is born prematurely, dies.Finally, the ending reminds us that Pecola's "madness," if we want to call it that (do we?) is not her fault but is embedded in her community. The chapter begins with a quote from the initial Dick and Jane grammar school primer that is the book's epigraph, at the point in the story where a "friend" comes to play with Jane. The epigraph says, "THEYWILLPLAYAGOODGAME." It's painfully ironic that this excerpt foregrounds the theme of friendship. Pecola doesn't have any real friends, only this voice inside her head.

Now, calling this second voice an "imaginary friend" is maybe a bit too easy. It might be more interesting to see the second voice as the part of Pecola that still wants to live. After all, this is an affirming voice, an encouraging voice, one that wants her to go outside and to help her address the aftermath of the rape. Perhaps the true tragedy of the novel is that in ignoring her completely, Pecola's community forces her into such devastating loneliness that she has to imagine someone talking to her. The community commits a crime on a par with Cholly's abuse: if Cholly failed her by raping her, Pecola's community failed her by never acknowledging that a rape took place.