He knows he cannot help her, but he tells her to give meat—which he has secretly poisoned—to the dog. He tells her that if the dog reacts, her wish will be granted. The dog convulses and dies, and Pecola runs away.

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.

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.

The Bluest Eye Pecola’s schizophrenia has created an imaginary friend for her because she has no real friends — Claudia and Frieda now avoid her.

Then Aunt Jimmy gets sick. The community calls in M’Dear, the local healing woman, whose height and authority impress Cholly. She prescribes pot liquor, and Aunt Jimmy begins to improve, but then she eats a peach cobbler and dies.

Essie Foster A neighbor and friend to Cholly and his Aunt Jimmy, her peach cobbler is blamed for causing Aunt Jimmy’s death.

Geraldine’s son, known as Junior, is an arrogant and entitled young boy. He feels ownership of the school playground across the street from his house, and forces other children to play with him. He is lonely, and his mother’s coldness has caused Junior to become sadistic and cruel, especially toward her cat.

pe-co-la, pec-ola ] The baby girl name Pecola is pronounced as PihKOWLAH †. The origin of Pecola is English-American. The name means a brazen woman. Pecolah, Pekola, and Pekolah are variations of Pecola.

In The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison provides a philosophy of funk that is more concerned with behavior than music: “the funkiness of passion, the funkiness of nature, the funkiness of a wide range of emotions” (p. 68). Funk becomes an alternative to controlled behavior, i.e., respectability.

Pecola wishes that she could be “traditionally beautiful” in the story The Bluest Eyes. Pecola wishes earnestly that she could have blue eyes so that she could seem more beautiful; this desire derives from the idea of beauty that she has internalized by being given blonde haired, blue eyed dolls throughout her life.

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Pecola begins to think that if she were prettier, her parents would be nicer to each other and to her. Since Pecola equates beauty with whiteness, she begins to pray for blue eyes in order to change the way she sees the world as well as the way she is seen by others.

She treats the girls with some kindness, telling them that Pecola is with Mrs. Breedlove at the house where Mrs. Breedlove is a servant. She then tells the girls that they can wait with her until Pecola is back, offering them pop to drink while they wait.

The inside of the house is beautiful, and a small white girl comes in and asks for “Polly.” Claudia is furious that the child calls Mrs. Breedlove by this name because even Pecola calls her mother “Mrs. The cobbler splatters on the floor and burns her, and her mother comes in and beats her.

Louis Junior: Geraldine’s son, who bullies Pecola and blames her for accidentally killing his mother’s beloved cat. Maginot Line (Marie): A prostitute who lives with two other prostitutes named China and Poland in an apartment above the one Pecola lives in.

Henry is finally thrown out of the house for touching Frieda inappropriately.

Ms. Breedlove thinks that she is working for Jesus by teaching Cholly the error of his ways through her fighting with Cholly. She wants Jesus to judge him and decide that his punishment is death. This is ironic as Jesus’s teachings focus on forgiveness and healing not on physical retribution and death.

Mr. Henry’s touching Frieda’s breasts is a subtle preparation, or foreshadowing, of Cholly Breedlove’s rape of Pecola. When Cholly rapes Pecola, it is a physical manifestation of the social, psychological, and personal violence that has raped Cholly for years.

She explains that her hatred of dolls turned into a hatred of little white girls and then into a false love of whiteness and cleanliness. It is a Saturday afternoon, and Mrs. MacTeer is angry because Pecola has drunk three quarts of milk.

Marigolds symbolize life, birth, and the natural order in The Bluest Eye. Claudia and Frieda plant marigolds, believing that if the marigolds bloom, Pecola’s baby will be born safely.

When her mother found her, she beat her almost to death. The gossips think that it would be best for the unborn baby to die. Claudia and Frieda are embarrassed and hurt for Pecola, and their sorrow is intensified by the fact that none of the adults seems to share it.

When Pecola’s mother finds her unconscious on the floor, she disbelieves Pecola’s story and beats her. Cholly, who rapes Pecola a second time and then runs away, dies in a workhouse. Pecola goes mad, believing that her cherished wish has been fulfilled and that she has the bluest eyes.

The novel begins with a series of sentences that seem to come from a children’s reader. The sentences describe a house and the family that lives in the house—Mother, Father, Dick, and Jane. The brief narrative focuses on Jane. The pet cat will not play with Jane, and when Jane asks her mother to play, she laughs.

The person who suffers most from white beauty standards is, of course, Pecola. She connects beauty with being loved and believes that if she possesses blue eyes, the cruelty in her life will be replaced by affection and respect.