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White Beauty Standards Pecola

477 Words2 Pages

Characters: Pecola Breedlove- She’s eleven-year-old black girl who underscore that having blue eyes will make her beautiful. Unfortunately, she is abused by her mother, father, and classmates. She changed from a protagonist character to a broken girl that haunts the town to remind them of their reprehensible hatred and ugliness that they treated her with. Claudia MacTeer- She’s the narrator of the story. Claudia is a strong independent nine-year-old fighter that isn’t tractable and rebels against adults. She makes it her mission to fight against the black community idealizing the white beauty standards. Cholly Breedlove- Cholly is Pecola’s pernicious and impulsively,violent father. He suffered from humiliation early in his childhood and …show more content…

Theme: White Beauty Standards- This books provides an example of white beauty standards detering black girls and women. The desire to induce white beauty standards on black women result in an encroach hasherness and tragedy than the actual white beauty standards. Seeing v.s. Being Seen- Pecola has an unrealistic desire to get blue eyes. She has this inaccessible dream because she thinks having blue eyes will dispel people doing ugly things to and in front of her. Pecola decides the only way for her to get blue eyes is to blind herself. She’s finally able to see herself as beautiful with the cost of not seeing at all. There’s a connection between how we see ourselves and how other sees us. Sexual Abuse- Many of the characters experienced sexual coming of age in a abusive environment. For instance, Cholly first sexual experience ends with two racists white men forcing him to finish having sex, while they watch. However, the worst sexual abuse in the novel was when Cholly raped his daughter Pecola. This theme buttress how people falsely believe women’s body are available for abuse and that ruins black’s childhood.

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