Throughout the book, Pecola sees people eating delicious foods that make her jealous because most of her friend never got to eat that candy or that very good piece of bread
In the short story “Marigolds”, by Eugenia W. Collier, the marigolds, which symbolize hope, convey the theme that everything isn’t always easy but don’t give up hope and keep trying. The setting of the story takes place in a poor Maryland city during the Great Depression. Lizabeth is trying to find out who she is when her parents have a loud conversation about their problems, causing Lizabeth to go destroy Miss Lottie’s marrigolds. In the beginning, Lizabeth says how she feels about the marrigolds: “For some peverse reason, we children hated those marigolds. They interfered with the perfect ugliness of the place; they were too beautiful; they did not make sense.”
This contrast of handling the problem is the main divide between the two novels. While Pecola takes the path of denial and avoidance, Yolanda actually takes steps to improve herself into her new culture. Pecola believes that the problem is nonexistent and ignores it to try and disprove the existence of it. She avoids confronting the reality of her rape and pregnancy through her blue eyes that she now believes that she has: “After that first day at school when I had my blue eyes… Now I don’t go to school anymore.
She miscarries and that was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Pecola retreats into a fantasy world where she is a bird and can fly away from all the pain she has endured, and she is unable to escape the delusion. Another little girl named Claudia blames herself and her sister’s fear of interacting with Pecola as the reason for Pecola’s mental break, but it wasn’t them; it was the adults that surrounded
The short story ”Marigolds” follows the narrator, a 14 year-old-girl living in extreme poverty during the Depression, as she transitions from the innocence of childhood to the raised consciousness of adulthood. Lizabeth has been poor for a long time, and her story describes her battle with feelings of frustration and hopelessness at being trapped in such a desperate situation. I believe one theme of “Marigolds” is the idea that as we grow up, the innocence of childhood is replaced by compassion. We see this in Lizabeth’s emotional state after she taunts Miss Lottie, when she ruins Miss Lottie’s marigolds, and finally in her reflection at the end of the story.
When Pecola believes that “if those eyes of her” were “different,” she believes that altering
Marianne Williamson one said, “ As someone who has faced as much disappointment as most people, I’ve come to trust not that events will always unfold exactly as I want, but that I will be fine either way.” Disappointments are hard and frustrating, but we learn and grow from them. Even though there are many different types of disappointment. Authors use childhood disappointment to show how their characters grow and develop from their disappointment.
When Pecola was just being born she was being called ugly by the person who she needed the most, her mother. This is because the same thing happened to her Mother, and her Grandmother. Racist Societal constructs broke their family
To have something as wonderful as that happen would take a long, long time"(46) This line from the text shows that to Pecola this white feature represents beauty and the end of her problems. Furthermore, symbolism can also be found in the homes of the characters. In the novel, homes are a symbol of economic status. The reader can infer that the nicer the home is, the richer the character.
Pecola and her mother, Pauline, see themselves as ugly because they hold themselves to beauty standards in which light-skinned people are the ideal. Pecola and her mother have a brutal home life due to the drunken violence of Cholly Breedlove, and the constant pressure of beauty standards only adds to their misfortune. Morrison explains this pressure by asserting that “[i]t was as though some mysterious all-knowing master had given each one a cloak of ugliness to wear, and they
Pecola is challenged by the idea that her mother prefers her work life, that they have an outdated house, and that she does not look like the Shirley Temple doll with blue eyes. Morrison went into great detail when describing the elegance and beauty that was present in the Fisher home, to demonstrate that those who do not fit into the ideal American life often feel shame. The Breedlove family lived a very simple life, and in no way did they fit into what society believed to be correct. Mrs. Breedlove was the only member of the family that truly understood what the American Dream looked like. The work that she did for the Fishers lead her to envy the American Dream.
But it is not only the race and the colour of their skin what makes them unable to change their situation, but also poverty. Race and wealth are intertwined, and Pecola is the fundamental victim of this relationship, for she is a young black girl suffering from this ideology that determines her life. The dominant class imposes its values upon the other, for they think they are the best ones, reducing thus the personality of the people belonging to other classes, and at the same time, making them unable to change their oppressed situation, for they do not have the chance. They just accept their current position, and thus they will always be
It is the mother’s vulnerability to the racial standards of beauty that is transmitted to the daughter and ultimately leads to her victimization. In fact, the reason of Pauline’s vulnerability to the racially prejudiced notions of beauty lies in her relationship with her own mother. The relationship between Pecola Breedlove, the protagonist, and her mother, Pauline Breedlove, is ironically characterized by lack of love, and emotional attachment, indifference, frustration and cruelty. Set in a small town in Ohio, during the Depression, The Bluest Eye is the story of eleven year old Pecola Breedlove, who, victimized by the racist society, yearns for blue eyes, which, she believes, will make her worthy of love, happiness and acceptance in the
As Paul C. Taylor declares, “the most prominent type of racialized ranking represents blackness as a condition to be despised, and most tokens of this type extend this attitude to cover the physical features that are central to the description of black identity” (16). Such attitudes are found in the words of black women themselves, when they talk about Pecola’s baby, saying that it “ought to be a law: two ugly people doubling up like that to make more ugly. Be better off in the ground” (188). Without any support from her community or even family, Pecola is a character who is
1) Society has change the way Pecola perceives herself and she has the idea in her mind that her life would be less miserable if she has blue eyes. She is always thinking that “if those eyes of hers were different, that is to say, beautiful, she herself would be different” (Morrison 46). Pecola has gotten the impression of her life being complete if only she has blue eyes. She would see the eyes of others and become envious of their blue eyes. The boys at school would always pick on her and call her an ugly black girl.