Table of Contents
What do blue eyes mean to Pecola?
the beauty and happiness
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 page does Pecola talk about blue eyes?
These lines, which introduce Pecola’s desire for blue eyes, are found in Chapter 3 of the “Autumn” section of the novel.
Who gives Pecola blue eyes?
Soaphead
One day, Pecola visits and asks Soaphead to give her blue eyes. Soaphead is sympathetic. He knows he can’t do such a thing, but he tells her to give some meat to the dog. If the dog reacts to the meat, he tells Pecola, she will get her blue eyes.
Who does Pecola ask for blue eyes?
What does Pecola’s imaginary friend represent?
Summary and Analysis Summer: Section 2 Pecola has a “friend,” too, but hers is not real. It is a hallucination. Pecola’s schizophrenia has created an imaginary friend for her because she has no real friends — Claudia and Frieda now avoid her. Not even her mother is a friend.
What happened to Pecola?
After the dog eats the meat, gags, and dies, Pecola believes her wish has been granted. Thus begins her sharp descent into madness. The fourth and final section (“Summer”) takes place after Pecola loses her mind. In the beginning, Claudia and Frieda learn that Pecola has been impregnated by her father.
How did 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.
Why is Pecola obsessed with Shirley Temple?
Pecola may be obsessed with Shirley Temple, because she sees something that she does not see in herself- beauty, purity and innocence. Shirley Temple embodied the ideal image of American girlhood.
What is the significance of Pecola?
Eleven-year-old Pecola equates beauty and social acceptance with whiteness; she therefore longs to have “the bluest eye.” Although largely ignored upon publication, The Bluest Eye is now considered an American classic and an essential account of the African American experience after the Great Depression.
What happens to Pecola at the end of novel?
Why does Pecola want blue eyes in the Bluest Eye?
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. The The Bluest Eye quotes below are all either spoken by Pecola Breedlove or refer to Pecola Breedlove.
What is the Bluest Eye quote in the Bible?
The Bluest Eye Quote 1 “It 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 in his own plot of black dirt.
When was The Bluest Eye by John Steinbeck published?
Note: all page numbers and citation info for the quotes below refer to the Vintage edition of The Bluest Eye published in 2007. Need another quote? Need analysis on another quote? Need analysis for a quote we don’t cover?
What is the plot of the Bluest Eye?
In short, The Bluest Eye is about Pecola Breedlove, an 11-year-old Black girl fascinated with blond-haired, blue-eyed children. She dreams of having blue eyes herself — a dream that comes from a very dark place in which Pecola truly yearns for a life very different from her own, filled with love and acceptance.