The Bluest Eye
Detailed Summary
Prologue
The first part of the prologue seems to be an excerpt from a 1940s American first-grade primer, one that was used for decades to teach white and black students to read. It describes a house and a happy and picture-perfect American white family. The house is green and white. The door is red in color. The house, as a whole, is very attractive. The family consists of Mother, Father, Dick, and Jane. They reside in the white greenhouse. They live happily. Jane is a pretty girl who has a red dress. She wants to play, but no one wants to play with her. The cat will not play. Mother laughs when she is asked to play with Jane. Father gives a smile in that regard. The dog will not play; it runs away. At last, a friend comes who will play with Jane. Jane and her friend will play a nice game. This sequence is first repeated verbatim without punctuation, and second time without punctuation and spaces between the words like the flow of a stream.
In the second part of the prologue, Claudia MacTeer’s narration recounts a time in the Fall of 1941. Claudia remembers that there bloomed no marigolds in that fall. Claudia and her elder sister, Frieda believed that as Pecola was having her father’s baby, there bloomed no marigolds. They found by a little examination that not only theirs but the marigolds of the whole community did not grow. The garden, fronting the lake, even did not show any marigolds. They were worried so deeply about Pecola’s upcoming baby’s health that they did think of nothing but their own magic. They thought that if they said the right words over the seeds they would blossom, and Pecola’s baby would be safely delivered. Fights and mutual accusations occurred between Claudia and Frieda regarding the marigolds. Claudia believed for years that her sister was right in thinking that the seeds did not sprout, for she planted them too deep. But both could not assume that the earth itself, where they planted the seeds, was barren at that time. They had planted their seeds in a little pot containing black dirt. Similarly, Pecola’s father dropped his seeds in his own plot of black dirt. Cholly is dead now, and so is the sisters’ innocence and faith. The seeds shriveled and died, and so did his baby. There remains now nothing of the best, despair of Pecola’s father and love, grief, hope, and fear of Claudia and Frieda, but only Pecola and the barren earth. Claudia concludes that nothing e is to be said except why. However, as it would be difficult to lain why the events happened, she would only explain how.
Autumn
Claudia MacTeer, now grown-up, tells what happened a year before the Fall when no marigolds bloomed. Rosemary Villanucci, a white neighbor of the MacTeer family, resides in her father’s cafe. She eats bread and butter, sitting in a 1939 Buick. She taunts Claudia and Frieda saying that they could come to her house. Claudia and Frieda want to smash the arrogance and pride of ownership, present in the lady’s chewing mouth. When she offers something to the sisters, they assert their pride by refusing to accept it.
Their house is old, green, and infested with rats. Only a large room is lighted at night by a kerosene lamp, but other rooms are left in darkness.
School has started, but the sisters are expected to help gather coal that has fallen out of the railroad cars. One day, after a trip, to collect coal, Claudia catches a cold. Her mother is angry with her for catching a cold and rebukes her for not wearing something on her head during the trips to gather coal. Claudia is full of feelings of guilt and self-pity. Her mother rubs the Vicks salve on her chest and massages her chest until she is faint. Claudia pukes on the bed clothes and her mother angrily wipes it up as best she can. Claudia starts crying, for she is deeply humiliated by her mother’s words. She does not understand that her mother is mad at the sickness, not her. Her sister, Frieda comes in with a sorrowful look. She soothes Claudia by singing a song. At the night, her cough becomes dry and tough. Now, When Claudia thinks of autumn, she realizes that it was her mother who did not want Claudia to die. All her broodings and complainings during her illness, conceal enormous folds of love and concern for her daughter.
Henry Washington is silent, separate, and a pleasantly mysterious nan, who has come as a new roomer of the MacTeer family. He was living with Della Jones on Thirteenth Street. Della is a nice and good churchwoman. Henry says that Della is too clean for him, and he wants a woman to smell like a woman. He has never married. To Claudia’s mother, Henry is sensible and a steady worker with quiet ways. She says that the extra money, five dollars every two weeks as rent from Henry will help pay the bills. Mr. Henry arrives on a Saturday night. He smells wonderful and smiles a lot, showing small teeth with a gap in the middle. Mrs. MacTeer shows him the bathroom, and closet and introduces Frieda and Claudia to him Claudia, Frieda, and their parents are happy with the man. They love him. He shows magic which startles even Claudia’s parents.
The MacTeer family has another roomer, namely Pecola Breedlove. Mrs. MacTeer informs the sisters that Pecola along with her family, is outdoor. Her father has burnt down the family house, so the county put her under temporary shelter with the MacTeers. Pecola’s mother, Mrs. Breedlove, is staying now with the woman she works for. Pecola’s brother, Sammy is with another family. Cholly is in jail now. Pecola comes with nothing but a white woman and sits down. MacTeer’s family gives Pecola shelter, for it is a criminal act to put one’s own kin outdoors. Claudia’s mother tells Claudia and Frieda that they should be nice to Pecola. Pecola is an object of pity to everybody, for her father put the family outdoors, which is a.great sin by the community standards. But the MacTeer family shows fellow-feeling toward her. Claudia and Frieda sleep with Pecola and enjoy the fun with her. Pecola’s arrival stops the fighting between Claudia and Frieda. They try hard to keep Pecola from feeling outdoors. Frieda gives her food gifts which she accepts gracefully. Pecola loves drinking milk out of the Shirley Temple cup of the MacTeers. She gazes fondly at the silhouette of Shirley Temple’s dimple. Frieda and she converse about the beauty of Shirley Temple. Claudia could not join them in their adoration, for she hates Shirley Temple and the blonde, blue-eyed baby doll that she was given at Christmas. Claudia does not understand why such dolls are considered lovable. Adults, older girls, shops, magazines, newspapers, window signs – all the world agree that every girl treasures a blue-eyed, yellow-haired pink-skinned doll. Picture books are full of little girls sleeping with their dolls. Instead of adoring and sleeping with the dolls, Claudia pulls her dolls apart to discover where the beauty is located. She breaks off the tiny fingers, bends the flat feet, loosens the hair, twists the head around, but cannot find any beauty. She does not want dolls but her Mama’s kitchen and the sound of the music from her father. Her hatred of dolls turns into her hatred of all little white girls, and then into a false love of whiteness and cleanliness.
On a Saturday afternoon, Mrs. MacTeer gets angry, for Pecola drank three quarts of milk. She knows that Claudia and Frieda dislike milk and assumes that Pecola has drunk it out of greed. But Claudia and Frieda know that Pecola is fond of Shirley Temple and takes every opportunity to drink milk out of it just to handle and see sweet Shirley’s face. Mrs. MacTeer’s fussing soliloquies always irritate and depress the sisters. They are ashamed of the insults heaped on their cond. Pecola. Mrs. MacTeer continues the interminable soliloquies for hours, connecting one offense to another. When she is fussing, the sisters feel like somebody is throwing stones at them.
On a lonesome Saturday, the sisters find Pecola baffled when they are sitting on the steps. Pecola begins bleeding from between her legs. Grieda understands that she is menstruating. Frieda helps Pecola with the menstruation, but Rosemary cries it to their mother as nasty. Mrs. MacTeer whips Frieda but after a moment understands the matter. That night, the sisters and Pecola lie in bed. The sisters feel respect and awe for Pecola, for a person who is really menstruating is somehow sacred. Pecola asks Frieda how babies are made.
Frieda replies that she is to get someone to love her. Pecola asks how to get people to love her. But Frieda already has gone asleep, and Claudia does not know about it.
As Cholly Breedlove is out of jail the family moves into an apartment, which was formerly a store. The large store is partitioned into two rooms by cardboard planks that did not reach the ceiling. There is a living room and a bedroom. There are two sofas, an upright piano, and a tiny artificial Christmas tree decorated and dust-laden for two years. There are three beds in the bedroom. There is a coal stove in the center of the bedroom. The kitchen, a separate room, is at the back of this apartment. There are no bathroom facilities. Only a toilet bowl that is inconspicuous to the eye. The only living thing in Breedlove’s house is the coal stove. The pieces of furniture are neglected. Nobody has ever lost a penny or a brooch under the cushions of either sofa and remembers the place and time of the loss.
The Breedloves live in the storefront, for they are black and poor and they believe they are ugly. Ugliness does not belong to them, but they wear fake ugliness and speak about it. Cholly’s ugliness is associated with his behavior, but Mrs. Breedlove, Pecola, and Sammy wear false ugliness. They have small eyes, narrow foreheads, heavy eyebrows, crooked noses with insolent nostrils, high cheekbones, and shapely lips. The source of ugliness cannot be found in their countenance, for it comes from their belief in ugliness. They have accepted it without any question. The master and every billboard, movie, and glance tell them they are ugly and they take it for granted. They deal with the ugliness in their own way. Mrs. Breedlove takes it as her martyrdom. Sammy uses it as a weapon to cause others pain. Pecola, concealed, veiled, eclipsed, only hides behind hers.
On a Saturday morning in October, Mrs. Breedlove wakes first noiselessly. She puts à sweater on over her nightgown and walks toward the kitchen. She begins banging around the kitchen. The previous night, Cholly came home so drunk that the fight between Cholly and Mrs. Breedlove was left for this morning. Pecola opens her eyes and lies staring at the dead coal stove. She could smell Cholly’s whiskey. She realizes the purpose of Mrs. Breedlove’s movements and that no preparation of breakfast will take place. Mrs. Breedlove wakes .. Cholly and tells him to fetch coal outside, for she has a lot of things to do. She is cold and does not want to get cold. Cholly refuses. Mrs. Breedlove says that if she sneezes from fetching coal outside, Cholly will be in trouble. Sammy is awake but pretending to be asleep. Pecola holds her stomach muscles tightened and conserves her breath, realizing the upcoming fight. Mrs. Breelove regards herself as an upright Christian, a woman who has faith not in Christ the Redeemer, but in Christ the Judge. She prays to Jesus to help her destroy Cholly’s pride. She wants Cholly to continue his sins, and go wilder and more irresponsible. Cholly also requires Mrs. Breedlove, for he can shed all his inarticulate fury and aborted desires on her. Cholly and Breedlove fight brutally. The days are dim and forgotten if any fight did not take place. It relieves the monotony of poverty and removes the silence of the dead rooms.
This time, Mrs. Breedlove sneezés and the fight begins. She throws a dishpan of cold water on Cholly’s face. Nared and ashen, Cholly leaps up from the bed and grabs his wife around the waist, and knocks her down with the back of his hand. She falls by-Sammy’s.bed frame. Cholly hits her in the chest and she hits Cholly in the thighs and groin with the dishpan. Sammy helps his mother by hitting his father on the head with his fists. Mrs. Breedlove strikes him two, blows and throws a quilt over him, and lets him lie. She walks towards the kitchen and tells her son that she needs some coal. Pecola is now relieved and can breathe easily: The sick feeling comes again and she tries to be relieved: but she can not. She was also nauseated. She desires herself to disappear. She squeezes her eyes Shut but the eyes do not disappear. They are always left. She hates her ugliness, which makes teachers and classmates ignore her. She only sits at a double desk in her class. Teachers never give a glance at her, and classmates tease her. She sits in front of the mirror, and looking at it she tries to discover the secret of ugliness. She has hope, for a long time, for blue eyes, which will change all the evil in her life. to good. If she looks different, her parents would be different. They would praise and adore her. Every night, she prays for blue eyes. She has been eagerly praying for a year. This throws her into the false belief that only through a miracle, she would get blue eyes. But by, this, she would never know her beauty.
Pecola gets up and walks to the grocery store to buy candy. She es difficulty with Mr. Yacobowski, the Storekeeper. She has got three pennies in her shoe. There is enough time for her to consider at to buy. She reaches Yacobowski’s store by climbing four wooden steps to the door of the store. She opens the door and sees an array of Mary Janes’s candies. She gets her pennies out of her shoe. wir Yacobowski looks at her and a moment later realizes that he is Ft to waste a glance, for there is nothing to see on Pecola’s face. Parola observes his reluctance to look at her and finds a vacuum in his face. She cannot understand the reason for the reluctance. She thinks that it may be that she is a little girl and he is a grown man. Ör, it may be that she is black and ugly. Yacobowki throws three Mary Jane candy packets at Pecola. Pecola takes the candies and holds the pennies in her hand before Mr. Yacobowki. He hesitates to touch her hand at first but eventually takes the pennies from her hand. This gives Pecola shame and insult. She, again and again, remembers Mr. Yacobowski’s eyes and impatient voice. Tears nearly come to her eyes but she resists them by looking at the picture of Mary Jane in the candy packets. She becomes jovial by seeing the white. smiling face, blonde hair, blue eyes Mary Jane. The eyes seem mischievous but to Pecola, they are very attractive. She eats the candy and the sweets. To her, eating the candies is like eating the eyes of Mary Jane.
Pecola goes to visit the whores who live in the apartment above hers. China, Poland, and Miss Marie are the three whores whom Pecola loves. She visits them and runs their errands, and in return, the whores do not hate her. Poland is sober and seldom speaks unless she is drunk. She sings blues songs with her sweet voice. Marie does not start speaking easily, but once she starts, she cannot be stopped. They are friendly with Pecola. Poland and China are getting ready for the evening. Poland is singing and ironing. China is curling her hair, sitting on a kitchen chair. Marie does not get ready. Pecola starts conversing with Marie. She asks Marie about her boyfriend. Marie makes fun of Pecola, saying that she has not seen any boy since 1927, for boys started getting born old’: At this, three of them laugh heartily. Marie laughs loudly, China giggles and Poland laughs without sound. Pecola expresses her surprise at the numerous boyfriends of the women. Marie discloses how she gets lots of boyfriends and money. She gets money from a lover, named Johnny. When Marie asks Johnny to stop killing people and robbing banks, Johnny replies that he does all things to bring Marie nice things. Marie recalls another lover named Dewey, who loved her dearly. They lived three years together like a married couple and had children Pecola, on hearing this, wonders what love is like. She thinks over the love of Dewey and Miss Marie. She looks at the women and wonders what the women really are, real or unreal.
The whores call themselves ‘Sugar-coated whores’. They describe themselves as ‘good Christian colored women. They describe their youth as a period of ignorance. They are not like the whores who regret their loss of innocence, but they are the ‘whores in whores’ clothing’. They have no word for innocence because they are not the whores who go wrong at the hands of fate and the horror of circumstances. These women hate all men without shame, apology, and discrimination. They abuse the male visitors regardless of white, black, Mexican, Jews, or Pole. They take delight in cheating and harassing men. Once, a lured Jew fell victim to their wrath. They held him up by the heel, shook everything out of his pants pockets, and threw him out of the window. The women also do like or respect women except themselves. But with Pecola, they are very free and friendly. Marie tells her stories to Pecola, for she is a child. If Pecola joins with them to live the life they do, they will not dissuade her or voice any alarm.
Winter
Claudia MacTeer pays homage to her father. She describes him with winter metaphors and similes. Her father, Mr. MacTeer is a type of man who should be liked by members of his family. He is affectionate to his family and very responsible as the head of the family. His eyes are stiff, intimidating, and comparable to a cliff of snow threatening to avalanche. His eyebrows bend like black limbs of leafless trees. He is a sensible, hardworking man who shows his love for his family more through deeds than through words. He works night and day to keep his family safe and secure. It is too cold in winter and they expect spring to come. Winter seems to make a knot of monotony that nothing or nobody can loosen.
Claudia remembers Maureen Peal arriving in Winter, a new girl in school. Claudia calls her ‘disrupter’, for her arrival breaks the usual monotony of winter. She is a wealthy black girl, who enchants the school. She is light-skinned, sloe green-eyed, and long brown-haired. She lives in comfort and care. Her patent-leather shoe with buckles, brightly colored knee socks, and fluffy sweaters mesmerize the sisters. Claudia compares her green eyes to Spring, her complexion to summer, and her walk to Autumn. She is very popular in school. The teachers smile at her. Black and white boys do not tease or throw stones at her. Black and white girls prioritize her over others. She brings white milk. She does not search anybody, but everybody flocks to the table of her choice.
Claudia and Frieda dislike her and search for flaws. First, they change her name from Maureen Peal to Meringue Pie. They discover, w their relief that Maureen has a dog tooth and stumps where her sixth fingers were removed. She was born with six fingers on each wind and there was a little bump where each extra one had been cut. Claudia and Frieda go triumphant and start calling Maureen ‘Six Enger-dog-tooth-meringue-pie’ behind her back. However, other people do not attend to their hostility to Maureen, for they all adore her.
Claudia and Frieda, while walking together with Maureen one day, came across a circle of boys harassing Pecola. With the power of a majority, they, like a necklace, surround her. Shouting derogatory chants, they taunt her for her black skin and because her father sleeps naked. The boys in this way are diminishing the pain of their burned minds. Their mind is burned for age by the cultivated ignorance, hopelessness, self-hatred, and contempt for their own blackness. They continue taunting Pecola. Pecola drops her notebook and covers her eyes with her hands. Frieda and Claudia come to the rescue. Frieda brings her books down on one of the boys’ heads and takes Peeola’s hand and asks her to come on. Another boy named, Bay boy, seems to beat them up, but they all disperse when Maureen appears on the scene. They do not want to harass three girls in front of Maureen.
The girls leave the playground. Maureen buys Pecola an ice cream and begins to ask indecent questions about her father’s nakedness. Claudia objects for she has reminded them of their father’s nakedness. There ensues a quarrel.
Pecola asserts that she has not seen her father naked but Maureen insists that she has. Claudia asks Maureen to stop. Maureen abuses them by calling them black and herself ‘cute’. Claudia aims an attack on Maureen, but she escapes it and runs away. The sisters taunt her by shouting ‘six-finger-dog-tooth meringue pie. Pecola stands speechless. They bid farewell to Pecola. While walking together, they think over Maureen’s last words and realize the indication of inferiority. They feel that they can only destroy dolls. They cannot destroy the numerous Maureen Peals who are pampered by everyone. They know that the enemy is not Maureen but the thing that has made her beautiful. However, the sisters are happy and feel comfortable with their black skin, scars, and dirt. When they arrive home, Mr. Henry gives them money for Ice-creams. This makes them elated. They go to buy potato chips from Miss Bertha’s candy, snuff, and tobacco store. They buy potato chips and hurry back home and sit under the lilac bushes of their house. From the bushes they find Mr. Henry entertaining the prostitutes in the living room. The prostitutes are named China and the Maginot Line. Maginot Line is the one who did not allow church women to set their eyes on her who killed people and set them on fire and poisoned them. There are many black and red words about her. Mr. Henry, in a playful manner, sucks his fingers of China. China seems to be genuinely enjoying Mr. Henry. But the Maginot Line feels a sort of mild lonesomeness and asks China to leave the house soon. They leave the house and Claudia and Frieda go inside. They ask Mr. Henry about the women. He explains that they are members of the Bible Study Group. He forbids them to disclose anything about the visitors to their mother. Claudia and Frieda assure Mr. Henry that they will not do so.
There follows an account of the sugar-brown girls who come from Mobile, Aiken, Meridian, or Marietta. These girls pass the streets without a stir. They have slim ankles and long and narrow feet. They use orange-colored lifebuoy soap to wash. They smell like wood, newspaper, and vanilla. They learn things from land grant colleges and normal schools.
In the home economics department, they learn how to do the white man’s work with refinement, and how to prepare his food. They get teacher education and learn to instruct black children in obedience. They learn how to shed the dreadful funkiness of passion and of human emotions. Though they have no boyfriends, they get husbands. They always marry, for men find them useful for their household management. Men know that they will manage the household chores efficiently. They will also bear children easily. So, the men feel secure in marrying them. But men do not know that they will establish absolute dominance in their house. They will be a vigilant guard of every plant, weed, and even against their men. They will submit their body to men not completely but partially. There are some living things that get their affection. A cat is such a thing that is as clean as these girls. They hold the cat in their arms and adore it. The cat gets priority, regarding love, for they love the cat more than their children. Geraldine is one of those brown women from Mobile. She lives with her husband, a son named Junior, and a black cat. She meets Junior’s physical comfort and satiety, but she does not indulge him. She keeps Junior clean and tells him not to play with niggers, for niggers are dirty. She neglects Junior and loves the blue-eyed black cat more than Junior. Junior realizes the 1 distinction between his mother’s behavior toward him and the cat. He tactfully and indirectly expresses his hatred toward his mother by inflicting pain on her beloved cat.
Junior plays with the black boys. He is used to teasing the white and black girls when they pass the playground. One day, he notices a wack girl, whom he has seen before. He comes to know the girl’s wame. It is Pecola. He, then, lures Pecola into his house under the pretense of showing her some real kittens. Pecola enters the house id is mesmerized by the beauty of the house. She sees the Bible on the dining-room table, a picture of Jesus Christ on a wall, backs of chairs, little tables, and dark-red flowers. She wants to see everything very slowly but Junior interrupts. He hurls his mother’s black cat in Pecola’s face. Pecola is scratched and terrified. She touches the scratched place and feels tears coming. She moves towards the door, but Junior holds the door shut with his hand. Junior laughs at Pecola’s banging on the door. He opens the door and finds Pecola rubbing the cat’s back. He snatches the cat and swings it in circles. Pecola grabs Junior’s arm and they both fall. Junior releases the cat, letting it fly full force against the window. The cat dies. Mrs. Geraldine arrives suddenly and Junior blames the cat’s death on Pecola. Pecola’s dirty dress, muddy shoes, and soiled socks remind Geraldine of all the dirty little black girls she has seen throughout her life. She drives Pecola out of her house terming her a “nasty little black bitch.” Pecola gets out of the room, staring at the pretty brown lady and her gold-and-green house.
Spring
Spring arrives. Claudia associates the coming of Spring with a different style of whipping-it is whipping with a switch. “They beat us differently in the Spring. Instead of the dull pain of a winter strap, there were these new green switches that lost their sting long after the whipping was over.”
On a Spring Saturday, she lies “sunk in the grass of an empty lot” splitting the stems of milkweed and thinking about ant and pitch pits and death and “where the world went when I closed my eyes”. After passing a long time in the grass, she enters the house which seems to be uneasily quiet. She finds her mother singing something about trains and Arkansas and behaving strangely. She notices that her mother is doing the same chore twice absentmindedly. She sits down on the floor to listen to the song’s story. Her mother sweeps the porch twice. She still has her hat on her head and dusty shoes on her eel. All the time she sings about trains and Arkansas. When she stops, Claudia goes upstairs and finds Frieda lying on her bed and crying profusely. When asked about the reason, Frieda lifts her swollen face and tells her that Mr. Henry has grabbed her arms and touched her tiny breasts. When her father saw Mr. Henry coming up on the porch, he threw their old tricycle at his head and knocked him
off the porch. Mrs. MacTeer hit him with a broom when he got up. Everybody was screaming at him. Then a neighbor, Mr. Buford, came with a gun and gave it to Mr. MacTeer. Mr. MacTeer shot at Mr. Henry and he jumped out of his shoes and kept on running in his socks. Then another neighbor, Rosemary Villanucci, came out and told Frieda that her father would go to jail. Frieda hit her. Then, Miss Dunion came in and advised Mrs. MacTeer that Frieda should be taken to the doctor, otherwise she would be ruined. Mrs. MacTeer screamed at her. Now, Frieda is crying, for she does not want to be ruined. They are confused about being ‘ruined’, they think being ‘ruined’ means being fat like the prostitute Maginot Line. Claudia pictures Frieda as fat and big woman and begins to feel tears. They then find out that China and Poland are not fat because they take whiskey. So, they go looking for Pecola to get whiskey from her father so that Frieda may not get fat. They meet Marie, whose fleshy body makes them imagine that they are seeing what is to become of Frieda. Marie looks at them down through the porch railing and smiles at them. She tells them that Pecola is helping her mother at her workplace in one of the lakefront houses. They walk to the lakefront houses and meet Pecola at the back of a beautiful house. Pecola is surprised to see them and asks them about the prostitutes. They say that the Maginot Line is not sacred, so their mother does not allow them to go to Maginot. But Pecola says that Maginot Line is Mrs. Marie, and she is not bad rather she is friendly, for she gives Pecola lots of stuff, pretty dresses, shoes, candy, etc. Pecola’s mother is introduced to the sisters and she takes them inside the beautiful house. She goes to get the wash and tells them not to miss anything in the house. A small white girl comes and asks for ‘Polly meaning Mrs. Pauline Breedlove. The girl is smaller and younger than the sisters and Pecola. Claudia is angry to see such a little girl call a woman by her name. They notice a silvery pan containing purple juice. Pecola touches the pan to see whether it is hot. The pan tilts under Pecola’s fingers and falls to the floor, splattering blackish blueberries everywhere. Most of the juice splashes on Pecola’s legs. Out of pain, Pecola cries out and begins hopping. Her mother enters the room. Pecola and her mother fall to the floor. Her mother yanks her up by the arm and slaps her and abuses her directly. She also abuses the sisters by implication. The sisters run away from the house out of fear. The little white girl starts crying. Mrs. Breedlove turns to her and washes her dress, soothing her every moment. She tells Pecola to put the laundry bag in the wagon and clear the mess.
The omniscient narrator now recounts Mrs. Breedlove’s story. She is the ninth of eleven children of Mr. and Mrs. Williams. She grows up in Alabama as Pauline Williams. During the second year of her life, Pauline gets her foot seriously wounded when she impales her foot on a rusty nail that punches clear through her foot. It leaves her with a crooked and archless foot. Since then she walks with a slight limp and believes that this accident has determined her destiny. She also believes that the “end of her lovely beginning” is due to the deformed foot. She blames her foot for her feeling of separateness and unworthiness. She is isolated from her family members. She realizes why no one ever considers her preference and why she never feels at home anywhere. She cultivates quiet and private pleasures. She likes to arrange things in rows according to the shape, size, and gradations of color. She is never angry with anybody, who spoils her arrangement, for it gives her another scope to arrange things.
Near the beginning of World War I, the Williams family migrate to Kentucky. They live in a five-room farmhouse in a real town. Some of Pauline’s brothers join the Army, one sister dies and two others get married. Pauline leaves school. Her mother gets a job cleaning and cooking for a white minister. Pauline, being the oldest girl at home, takes over the case of the house. She manages all the household chores sincerely. She enjoys housekeeping. She loves to work in calmness when every one of the family is out. She has a pair of twin siblings namely Chicken and Pie, who go to school.
When the war ends, the twins leave school. Pauline is fifteen years old. She still does housekeeping, but now she finds less enthusiasm and energy. Fantasies about men and love occupy her mind. Those very thoughts make her even more melancholic. She thinks over the fantasies, idling by the river bank or gathering berries in the field. Everything appears before her like a picture of death. She thinks of the death of newborn things and the setting sun. Pauline meets Cholly at the age of fifteen, Cholly’s yellow eyes, flaring nostrils, thin figure, and strength impress Pauline. She likes his whistling and tickling on her foot. Soon, Pauline falls in love with Cholly. Cholly proves to be kind and lovely; he regards Pauline’s deformed foot as endearing and special. Pauline, for the first time, is made to regard her foot as an asset. They marry and settle in the north of Lorain, Ohio. Cholly works in the steel mill and Pauline does the housekeeping. Pauline faces utter loneliness, for she has no one but only Cholly to talk with. But Cholly almost always leaves her alone and goes to work. The black women of Ohio town are unfriendly toward her. They cast unfavorable glances at Pauline for She is not smart like them. Cholly starts drinking and disliking Pauline’s total dependence on him. Pauline wants money from Cholly for beautiful clothes so that the women might look at her differently.
Then everyday quarrels and fighting start between them. Pauline takes a job as a housekeeper in a white woman’s family. Cholly shows up at the woman’s house drunk, wanting some money. Pauline, alarmed by the white woman’s presence, tells him to get out. Pauline loses the job, for the woman does not let her do the job unless she leaves Cholly. The woman also deprives Pauline of the eleven dollars she owes to Pauline.
One winter, Pauline finds that she is pregnant and Cholly. is happy at that and their conjugal life improves. But Pauline is still lonely in the apartment, becomes addicted to movies, and develops destructive ideas about romantic love and physical beauty. She equates physical beauty with virtue and develops self-hatred. She tries to be like the fashionable white movie stars. She stops this practice when she loses her front teeth and becomes ugly. Cholly teases her and they again start fighting. She gives birth to a baby boy. She conceives for the second time and gives birth to a baby girl, named Pecola. Pecola seems different from her brother, Sammy. Baby Pecola is healthy and looks like a black ball of hair. Pauline likes to watch her but knows that she is ugly.
Sammy and Pecola’s arrival arouses the need of working with Pauline. She takes on her identity as a martyr. She joins the church. She rents two rooms of a storefront house. She lets Cholly indulge in drinking. She sees Cholly as a model of sin and failure and prays to God to save the children from their father’s sin. Pauline becomes the breadwinner of the family by securing a job with the Fishers, a wealthy family. The Fishers are affectionate, appreciative, and generous. They regard Pauline as an ideal servant and do not want to lose Pauline. Pauline likes the family members, furniture, lifestyle, and every other thing of the Fishers. She looks after the little Fisher girl and does every household chore efficiently. She becomes obsessed with the beauty, order, cleanliness, praise, and good behavior of the Fishers. Power, praise, and luxury are hers in this household. She starts prioritizing the Fishers and neglecting her own family. But she claims that she fulfills a mother’s role conscientiously, for she works twelve to sixteen hours a day to feed the children. She keeps the children away from their father’s sin. At times, she remembers the good times with Cholly, but now she is unhappy.
There is an account of Cholly Breedlove’s life. His childhood and adolescence are traumatic and humiliating. His mother wraps him in two blankets and one newspaper and abandons him on a trash heap by the railroad when he is four days old. His great aunt Jimmy restores him, beats his mother, and never allows her to get near the baby, Cholly. His mother runs away and since then nobody has seen or heard of her. Aunt Jimmy rears him with great care and affection. After four years of school, he asks aunt Jimmy his father’s name. It is Samson Fuller. Aunt Jimmy names him Cholly Breedlove after her dead brother, Charles Breedlove. After two more years of school, Cholly takes a job at Tyson’s Feed and Grain Store. He sweeps up, mins errands, weighs bags, and lifts them onto the drays. Here, he meets Blue Jack whose kindness he remembers long. Blue Jack tells Cholly’s old-timey stories and ghost stories. Cholly remembers the happy moments of eating watermelon with Blue Jack.
Aunt Jimmy falls ill on a very chilly Spring. Friends come to see her. Her closest friend; Miss Alice reads the Bible to her. On a wet Saturday night, aunt Jimmy eats a piece of a peach cobbler that her friend, Essie, brings her. The next morning Cholly finds her dead. Cholly attends aunt Jimmy’s funeral. On the third day after the death, aunt Jimmy’s relatives come from nearby towns and farms. Jimmy gets special affection and attention of all, for he is the last thing that aunt Jimmy adores. The relatives talk about aunt Jimmy’s death and funeral. Everything seems interesting to Cholly. He has not yet fully understood that aunt Jimmy is dead.
He comes in touch with a girl named, Darlene. During his first sexual experience with Darlene, he is discovered by two white men who mock and humiliate them. Afterward, the pain of humiliation, coupled with the fear that Darlene might be pregnant, prompts Cholly to leave town and head toward Macon, where he hopes to locate his father, Samson Fuller. But in his father, he finds the belligerent wreck of a man who wants to do nothing with his son. After that, Cholly becomes a free man in a dangerous way. He becomes free to feel whatever he feels-fear, guilt, shame, love, grief, violence, etc. He remains indifferent to all, indifferent about when or how he dies. He goes to jail but does not feel imprisoned. He freely drinks and passes dirty days as a gandy dancer. He is truly free. He has nothing to lose, for he is abandoned by his mother and rejected for a crap game by his father. He is alone with his own perceptions and appetites. He meets Pauline Williams in Kentucky and marries her. The appearance of children keeps him away from his free lifestyle temporarily. But he does not know how to raise children, for he has never watched any parent raising himself. His interest in his wife and children is sapped and again he starts to drink. He reacts to the children and does not show any filial affection, He burns down his family house, yet does not feel any compunction. He fights with his wife in the presence of his children. He functions on the periphery of society, as all black are expected to. He is a constant source of gossip in the black community.
On a Saturday afternoon, he comes home drunk and finds Pecolo washing dishes. In his drunkenness, Cholly confuses his long feelings for Pauline, with his attraction to his emotionally fractured daughter, standing at the sink, one foot scratching her leg, the same way Pauline was doing the first time he saw her in Kentucky. In a drunken, confused state of love and lust, he rapes Pecola and leaves her dazed and motionless on the kitchen floor.
The omniscient narrator introduces Soaphead Church (Elihue Micah Whitcomb), a self-declared psychic and faith healer. Soaphead belongs to a proud Whitcomb family. His family has always been academically and politically ambitious and corrupt. A Sir Whitcomb is the forefather of this family. The members of this family are industrious. orderly and energetic. They perform well at school. They study medicine, law, and theology, and emerge repeatedly in the powerless government office available to the native population. They are corrupt in public and private practice. One of the Whitcomb brothers is a religious fanatic, who fathers four sons. Among the sons, one becomes a popular schoolmaster for the precision of justice and control of violence. He marries a sweet, indolent half-Chinese girl. This girl dies soon after bearing a son, Elihue Micah Whitcomb (Soaphead Church).
Elihue Whitcomb (Soaphead), learns everything he needs to know well, particularly the fine art of self-deception. He reads greedily but supports only those ideas which he chooses. For example, he chooses to remember Hamlet’s frivolous abuse of Ophelia, but not Christ’s love of Mary Magdalene. He chooses Hamlet’s frivolous politics but not Christ’s serious anarchy. He likes Dante most and despises Dostoyevsky most. At the age of seventeen, he meets a lovely, laughing, big-legged girl, Velma, who works as a clerk in a Chinese department store. Velma observes his melancholy, fastidiousness, and lack of humor and wants to introduce him to the idea of delight, to remove his melancholy. Soaphead tries to avoid Velma, but Velma marries him anyway. But after two months, she leaves him, realizing that Soaphead shall never sacrifice his self-created melancholy. Soaphead has sexual cravings but he restricts it, for he abhors physical contact. He is reviled by humans, a misanthrope as he is. He is nauseated by the humanness of the people, that is, the human aspects-the odor of their body, breath, blood, sweat, tears, decayed teeth, earwax, blackheads, moles, and skin crusts which are the natural survivalist protection of the body.
However, after the estrangement, Soaphead restarts his study with more vigor than before. He studies psychiatry, sociology, and physical therapy. He continues his study for six years. Then, his father refuses to support him any longer. He takes different jobs. He gets a priesthood in the Anglican Church. Having dallied with the Osthood, he abandons it to become a caseworker. He becomes a fader. Advisor and Interpreter of Dreams’ which brings him both freedom and satisfaction.
He finally settles in Lorain, Ohio; in 1936, palming himself off as a minister. The women regard him as supernatural rather than natural. He rents a backroom from an elderly and deeply religious old lady named Bertha Reese. He likes the old lady, for she is clean and quiet. But his problem is with the pet dog, named Bob, of the lady. The dog is very old and Bertha cannot properly take care of it. Soaphead thinks that it is humane to wish the dog’s death rather than see its suffering. Determined to put an end to the animal’s misery, he buys some poison but does not go near it out of repulsion. He cannot complete his mission.
One late white afternoon, Soaphead reflects on some thoughts regarding God, His creation, good, evil, etc. Suddenly he hears a tap on his door. He sees a little girl of about twelve. He asks the girl what she wants. The girl does not respond. He assures the girl that he can solve any problem like evil influence, bad luck, etc., as he is a true spiritualist. The girl is Pecola who has come to ask him to give her blue eyes. Soaphead is touched by this request for he has an attraction to whiteness. He regards Pecola’s request as a logical petition that he ever receives. He feels a surge of love and understanding for the ugly little black girl asking for beauty, He knows he cannot help her. He tells Pecola that he can do nothing for her and it is God who will only help her if He wishes. But when he sees the old dog, Bob, he tricks Pecola into poisoning the dog with meat he has secretly poisoned. He assures Pecola that if the dog reacts, her wish will be granted, but if anything does not happen, Pecola should understand that God has refused her wish. Pecola places the meat on the floor of the porch, near the dog’s nose. The dog eats it in three or four gulps. The dog dies after choking and stumbling around the yard. Pecola runs away.
Soaphead Church goes to the table and writes a rambling and incoherent letter to God in which his mental state is revealed. In this letter, he writes that the purpose of the letter is to make God familiar with some facts which God has not noticed. He reveals the white master’s characteristics. He describes the whites as royal, snobbish, not aristocratic but class-conscious. He recalls Velma, his former Wife, and writes that Velma has left him the way people leave a hotel Toom. He also reveals that he dislikes women, but prefers the company of young girls. He then talks about Pecola. He says that he is given Pecola blue eyes, which none but only Pecola will see. Pecola will live happily ever after seeing her blue eyes.
Summer
Summer, a time of storms, arrives. Claudia remembers a storm her mother told her about that blew half of south Lorain in 1929. Claudia and Frieda are selling marigold seeds. They spend a major part of the day trouping about town, selling the seeds. They even go to the neighboring houses and sell the seeds. They are given cold drinks and lemonade to refresh themselves at the neighboring house. They overhear conversations of people and begin to piece together a story about Pecola. They come to know that Cholly raped Pecola and ran away from home. Pecola is bitterly beaten by her mother after the rape. Now, she is carrying her father’s baby. The people simultaneously blame Pecola and Cholly. From their perspective, Pecola should have fought with her father before being raped. They think that it would be best for the unborn baby to die. The sisters are embarrassed, hurt, and feel sorry for Pecola. They are disgusted, amused, shocked, outraged, and even excited by the story. Their sorrow seems to be intense, for they cannot share it with anybody. They picture the baby in the womb with a black face clean black eyes, flared hose, kissing-thick lips, and black skin. They want the baby to come and live, so that it can counteract the white baby dolls, Shirley Temples and Maureen Peals. They are not concerned with the incestuous component of the story. They do not understand how babies are made at the first place. They remember Pecola’s past sorrow and sufferings, how her mother knocked her down, how the black boys harassed her etc. They decide to help Pecola by praying and giving sacrifice. They will give up their seed money and plant the rest of the marigold seeds. They will bury the money. They will also bury the seeds in their own yard so that they can watch over them. Claudia will sing and Frieda will say the magic words.
The reader hears two voices in dialogue. Pecola and an imaginary friend, a hallucination, whose voice is in italics. Her friend is a hallucination with whom she has a long exchange of talk. The conversation reveals Pecola’s mental tendencies. The friend asks her about people’s reluctance to talk with her. Pecola answers that everybody, including her mother Mrs. Breedlove, is jealous of her blue eyes. She thinks that she has been canceled from school out of jealousy of the teachers and classmates. She talks about Mrs. Breedlove’s sadness and Sammy and Cholly’s leave of the house. She believes that Soaphead has given her blue eyes. She thinks that everybody who meets her goes away without talking with her, for they feel jealous when they see nice blue eyes. She asks the hallucination whether her eyes are nice. The hallucination tells her that the eyes are truly and ‘bluely pretty. She asks the imaginary friend if her eyes are the bluest, or to examine everybody’s eyes to see if they are bluer than hers. She wonders if her eyes are blue enough but cannot say blue enough for what.
Claudia narrates Pecola’s madness. The baby comes prematurely and dies. Pecola is so sad to see. Grown people hate her and children tease and laugh at her. She is totally damaged. She spends her days, walking up and down; her head junking to the beat of a drummer, so distant only she could hear. She flails her arms like a bird in a futile effort to fly. Frieda and Claudia try to see her without looking at her not because she was absurd, but because they failed her.
Pecola’s birdlike gestures are worn away to more picking and plucking her away 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 damped on her and which she absorbed. And all of our beauty, which was hers first and which she gave to us. All of us-all who knew her felt so wholesome after we cleaned ourselves on her.”
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