1 Who Dies in Order to Give Pecola Blue Eyes
The novel's protagonist, Pecola is an eleven-year-old black girl from an abusive home. She believes she is ugly and suffers the cruelty of her parents, classmates, and other individuals in the community. She desires blue eyes, believing that they will make her beautiful—based on her unquestioning belief regarding whiteness as the sole standard of beauty—and allow her to transcend her horrible situation.
Pecola Breedlove Quotes in The Bluest Eye
The The Bluest Eye quotes below are all either spoken by Pecola Breedlove or refer to Pecola Breedlove. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Quiet as it's kept, there were no marigolds in the fall of 1941. We thought, at the time, that it was because Pecola was having her father's baby that the marigolds did not grow. A little examination and much less melancholy would have proved to us that our seeds were not the only ones that didn't sprout; nobody's did…It had never occurred to either of us that the earth itself might have been unyielding. We had dropped our seeds in our own little plot of black dirt just as Pecola's father had dropped his seeds into his own plot of black dirt. Our innocence and faith were no more productive than his lust or despair.
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"How do you do that? I mean how do you get someone to love you?"
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The Breedloves lived there, nestled together in the storefront. Festering together in the debris of a realtor's whim. They slipped in and out of the box of peeling grey, making no stir in the neighborhood, no sound in the labor force, and no wave in the mayor's office. Each member of the family in his own cell of consciousness, each making his own patchwork quilt of reality—collecting fragments of experience here, pieces of information there.
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[The Breedloves] lived there because they were poor and black, and they stayed because they believed they were ugly.
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You looked at them and wondered why they were so ugly; you looked closely and could not find the source. Then you realized that it came from conviction, their own conviction.
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It had occurred to Pecola some time ago that if her eyes, those eyes that held the pictures, and knew the sights—if those eyes of hers were different, that is to say, beautiful, she herself would be different.
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He does not see her, because there is nothing to see. How can a fifty-two-year-old white immigrant storekeeper with the taste of potatoes and beer in his mouth, his mind honed on the Virgin Mary, his sensibilities blunted by a permanent awareness of loss, see a little black girl?
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To eat the candy is somehow to eat the eyes, eat Mary Jane. Love Mary Jane. Be Mary Jane.
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What did love feel like? she wondered. How do grownups act when they love each other? Eat fish together? Into her eyes came the picture of Cholly and Mrs. Breedlove in bed. He making sounds as through he were in pain, as though something had him by the throat and wouldn't let go. Terrible as his noises were, they were not nearly as bad as the no noise at all from her mother. It was as though she was not even there. Maybe that was love. Choking sounds and silence.
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His soul seemed to slip down into his guts and fly into her, and the gigantic thrust he made into her then provoked the only sound she made—a hollow suck of air in the back of her throat. Like the rapid loss of air from a circus balloon.
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I thought of the baby that everybody wanted dead, and saw it very clearly. It was in a dark, wet place, its head covered with great O's of wool, the black face holding, like nickels, two clean black eyes…no synthetic yellow bangs suspended over marble-blue eyes, no pinched nose and bowline mouth. More strongly than my fondness for Pecola, I felt a need for someone to want the black baby to live—just to counteract the universal love of baby dolls, Shirley Temples, and Maureen Peals.
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The birdlike gestures are worn away to a mere picking and plucking her way between the tire rims and the sunflowers, between Coke bottles and milkweed, among all the waste and beauty of the world—which is what she herself was. All of our waste which we dumped on her and which she absorbed. And all of our beauty, which was hers first and which she gave to us.
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Pecola Breedlove Character Timeline in The Bluest Eye
The timeline below shows where the character Pecola Breedlove appears in The Bluest Eye. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
...her sister (later revealed to be Frieda) believe that the flowers did not bloom because Pecola had been raped by her father, Cholly, and was pregnant with his baby. Although the... (full context)
Not long after Mr. Henry moves in, Pecola Breedlove also comes to stay with the MacTeers. The county places Pecola with the MacTeers... (full context)
During her stay, Pecola obsessively drinks milk from a Shirley Temple cup owned by the MacTeers. Pecola and Frieda... (full context)
One Saturday afternoon, Pecola, Frieda, and Claudia are outside on the house's stoop trying to avoid Mrs. MacTeer who... (full context)
...MacTeer rushes out and begins lashing Frieda with a switch. After lashing Frieda, she grabs Pecola to punish her the same way, but when she does, the pad falls from between... (full context)
That night in bed, Claudia and Frieda are full of awe and respect for Pecola. Pecola asks Frieda if her menstruation means she can have a baby now. When Frieda... (full context)
...causes her to limp, making her good leg thump against the floor as she walks. Pecola, who is awake in bed, hears pots and pans clanging together, and perceives her mother's... (full context)
The narrator then explains that Pecola and her brother Sammy respond to the violence in different ways. Sammy curses, and often... (full context)
As Pecola waits for the storefront apartment to erupt in violence, she whispers to herself, "Don't, Mrs.... (full context)
When the fight is over, Pecola experiences "the sick feeling" she gets in her stomach whenever her parents fight. She asks... (full context)
Pecola walks to Yacobowski's Fresh Veg. Meat and Sundries, a store in the neighborhood that sells... (full context)
When Pecola enters Yacobowski's, She stands at the counter looking at the candy. She decides to spend... (full context)
Unable to speak, Pecola points at the Mary Janes. Mr. Yacobowski gets frustrated, as he can't understand what kind... (full context)
Outside of the store, Pecola feels ashamed of herself. She notices the dandelions again and calls them ugly, perceiving them... (full context)
Pecola visits three prostitutes—China, Poland, and Miss Marie—who live above her family. She hears Poland singing... (full context)
Miss Marie tells Pecola about two of her boyfriends. One of the men she turned into the F.B.I. for... (full context)
When Pecola asks Miss Marie if she has any children, she says that she does. She immediately... (full context)
...with her. As they exit the school, they notice a group of black boys surrounding Pecola. As they dance around Pecola, they taunt her for her dark skin and shout that... (full context)
...or because the boy has a crush on Frieda. Frieda tells the boy to leave Pecola alone or she will "tell everyone what he did". Another boy then responds, telling the... (full context)
After the altercation, Maureen takes Pecola's arm and introduces herself. When Pecola tells Maureen her name, Maureen responds that 'Pecola' is... (full context)
Maureen offers to buy Pecola an ice cream at Isaley's. As they walk, Claudia thinks about what flavor she will... (full context)
...Grable. Maureen asks the girls if they love Betty Grable as much as she does. Pecola agrees, but Claudia says that Hedy Lemarr is better. Maureen agrees with Claudia, and tells... (full context)
...who is sixteen, doesn't menstruate yet. She then asks the girls if they menstruate yet. Pecola promptly replies that she does, and Maureen says she does too. Pecola asks Maureen why... (full context)
...cute!" and takes a swing at her. When she swings, however, she misses Maureen, hitting Pecola in the face instead. Maureen runs, yelling back that she is cute. She then calls... (full context)
One day, Junior sees Pecola walking home through the playground. He has seen her before, always alone and walking with... (full context)
Once inside, the beauty of Junior's house amazes Pecola. Junior pulls her into another room, and throws his mother's cat at Pecola's face. Junior... (full context)
Immediately after the altercation, Geraldine arrives home and Junior accuses Pecola of killing the cat. Geraldine picks up the cat's body and pulls it toward her... (full context)
...Frieda should drink whiskey to avoid getting fat and becoming "ruined", so they go to Pecola's house because they know her father will have whiskey and believe Pecola can acquire it... (full context)
...Line asks if the girls are looking for someone, Claudia explains they are looking for Pecola. The Maginot Line tells them Pecola is at her mother's workplace, explaining that Mrs. Breedlove... (full context)
Claudia and Frieda find Pecola sitting on the stoop in front of a beautiful white house. They tell her about... (full context)
...finish the wash, the family's little white girl walks into the room. When she sees Pecola, Frieda and Claudia, a look of fear dances across her face. After a moment, the... (full context)
...to come into the kitchen, Frieda notices a dish of berry cobbler on the stove. Pecola reaches out and touches the dish, accidently knocking it onto the floor. The hot cobbler... (full context)
When Pecola is born, Pauline is surprised because she doesn't look the way she had imagined her... (full context)
...using her Christian virtue to feel superior to him, and speaks badly about him to Pecola and Samuel. She describes the way they used to make love. In the early days... (full context)
On a Saturday afternoon, Cholly staggers home drunk. He finds Pecola at the sink washing dishes. As he watches her he experiences a fury of passing... (full context)
One day Pecola knocks on Soaphead's door. She comes into his house, holding her hands over her pregnant... (full context)
After Pecola runs away, Soaphead Church sits down at his night table and writes a letter to... (full context)
...homes all over town. As they enter different homes, they begin to overhear conversations about Pecola and begin to understand that Pecola is pregnant with her father's baby. Pecola's mother beat... (full context)
Claudia and Frieda feel ashamed and embarrassed for Pecola. Nobody in the community seems to share their sorrow. They find that people are disgusted,... (full context)
This chapter opens with a dialog between Pecola and her imaginary friend, whose voice appears in italics on the page. The imaginary friend... (full context)
The topic of their conversation then turns to Cholly. Pecola's imaginary friend suggests that Mrs. Breedlove ignores Pecola because she misses Cholly. When Pecola responds... (full context)
Claudia then begins to narrate the story. She describes Pecola's insanity and the way the community has disowned her. After the baby is delivered premature... (full context)
Claudia believes that the Maginot Line and Cholly loved Pecola, but love is only as good as the person giving it. Cholly's love for Pecola... (full context)
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Source: https://www.litcharts.com/lit/the-bluest-eye/characters/pecola-breedlove
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