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 is the most important theme of The Bluest Eye?
In The Bluest Eye, Morrison foregrounded the demonization of Blackness in American culture, focusing on the effects of internalized racism.
Who is blamed for killing Geraldine cat?
At this moment, Geraldine comes home, and Junior tells her that Pecola has killed the cat.
How does 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.
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.
How did Pecola get pregnant?
Pecola’s father rapes her in their kitchen. Pecola visits Soaphead Church and asks him to give her blue eyes. Pecola gets pregnant with her father’s child. Pecola’s baby dies.
What is the symbolism of The Bluest Eye?
Bluest Eye(s)
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.
What does the cat symbolize in The Bluest Eye?
The cat is a black creature with blue eyes, and blue eyes represent perfection. Morrison gives the cat these features to illustrate that perfection and the good life are not always what they appear to be.
What does Maureen Peal represent?
Maureen is a snobby, uppity light-skinned girl with money who is new to the neighborhood. Maureen comes to symbolize a different kind of black family – the upwardly mobile, light-skinned African-American family that disdains darker-skinned black people.
What mental illness does Pecola have?
schizophrenia
As a result, Pecola suffers from schizophrenia, and spend the rest of her life in her own world. She is influenced by perceptual distortion, rational disorganization, emotional instability and loss of control.
What do blue eyes symbolize?
Therefore, they are sometimes attributed to “eternal youth.” Blue eyes are heralded by some to be the most desirable and attractive of eye colors, and those who have them possess a calm and peaceful personality. Blue eyes are also representative of knowledge.
Why does Claudia want a baby alive?
Claudia and Frieda want Pecola’s baby to live in order to validate their own blackness and to counteract the universal love for white baby dolls, Shirley Temple look-alikes, and the black community’s flawed-but-Anglicized beauty, Maureen Peel.
What do marigolds represent in The Bluest Eye?
Claudia and Frieda associate marigolds with the safety and well-being of Pecola’s baby. Their ceremonial offering of money and the remaining unsold marigold seeds represents an honest sacrifice on their part. They believe that if the marigolds they have planted grow, then Pecola’s baby will be all right.
What does milk symbolize in The Bluest Eye?
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.
What does winter symbolize in The Bluest Eye?
Winter. Winter is usually the time where things die and return. There is no “new life” for Pecola; there is only false hope.
What does Pecola represent?
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.
Are Claudia and Frieda black?
Claudia and her older sister, Frieda, have learned their life lessons from their mother. They have learned how to be strong black females who can fight back and not be overwhelmed and brainwashed by standards of beauty imposed on them by white and black women.
What is a black e mo?
The “Black e mo” part of the quotation means that Pecola was even more black than they were. Consequently even those who were not particularly light skinned themselves took the chance to ridicule and tease someone who was darker then they were. The children are carrying around bottled up resentment and rage.
Is Pecola a schizophrenic?
As a result, Pecola suffers from schizophrenia, and spend the rest of her life in her own world. She is influenced by perceptual distortion, rational disorganization, emotional instability and loss of control.
Which eye color is most rare?
green
At some point, you’ve probably wondered what the rarest eye color is. The answer is green, according to the American Academy of Ophthalmology (AAO). Only about 2 percent of the world’s population sport this shade.
Why are blue eyes so loved?
People with blue eyes are often considered to be attractive because they are seen as being trustworthy and sincere. Blue eyes are also associated with youth and innocence, which is another reason why people find them appealing.
What do dolls symbolize in The Bluest Eye?
The Symbolism of Dolls in “The Bluest Eye”
This is symbolic of the anger she feels about racial differences, especially between white and black girls of the same age. In The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison uses a tone of frustration and mild anger towards dolls, but more specifically, towards racial differences.
What does autumn symbolize in The Bluest Eye?
In this way, Morrison uses the season of “Autumn” not only as a division of the narrative, but as a tool to underline the Breedloves’ unnatural lack of beauty, specifically through Pecola, against the expectations of a traditionally beautiful season.
How does Pecola lose her sanity?
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.
Why did Pecola drink so much milk?
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.