The Ugly Little Girl: Pecola Breedlove

Pecola Breedlove is a really special character, though she herself, nor anyone around her would think so. But the truth is, Pecola is a special little girl, because she represents something. She represents a lot of somethings, actually. She represents all of the children that have been beat down, abused, and forgotten by society. The children that are chewed up and spit out, then mocked and hated by the guilty for the wrongness that was heaped upon them through no choice of their own. She has been subjected to almost every type of abuse and hatred, from everyone around her. No where is there a sympathetic ear, a shoulder to cry on, no one to go to for company except the arms of whores. Pecola is an ugly little girl who wants to be beautiful.

She's every child of color that has been subjected to harsh prejudices beyond their years. All of the children who wished to be loved by anyone, for any scrap of attention. She's every child that has ever been raped and sexually assaulted, especially those given scorn instead of pity. She's all of the children who are smashed and broken by this world, who are thrown away like a candy bar wrapper. The system has failed her, like countless other children in society. She comes from a home where abuse obviously takes place. Throughout the novel what goes on in the Breedlove home seems to be a staple of gossip around town. Her dad is a drunkard who rapes her and doesn't even see anything wrong with it. Her mother seems not to give a hoot about either of her children, and even blames Pecola for her own rape and hates her for it. Her own mother blames her for the brutal violence shoved on her, not once, but twice. “Mrs. Breedlove looked dropp-eyed at you? ...ever since I got my blue eyes, she look away from me all the time” (189). She thinks her mamma is jeleous of her blue eyes, but really it's because her mother is disgusted by her own daughter. The only clothes she is given are raggedy, with holes in her dresses and runs in her stockings. She needs help, it's apparent from both her behavior and her appearance. So the biggest question is, where are the people to help her? The only people that

The only way she could ever find peace was to pretend to disappear, to turn invisible so that no one would be able to see the ugly little colored girl she was, that she dreaded being. All that Pecola wanted was to be considered beautiful. “If she looked different, beautiful, she herself would be different....Maybe Cholly would be different, and Mrs. Breedlove too” (46). She thought that if she was beautiful then she would finally get the love and attention she so desired; the love that was always saved for little white girls with pretty blonde hair, the kind of little girls her mamma takes care of. If she had those pretty blue eyes, it would solve everything. But it wasn't only her face that was ugly, but the girl herself. Not the actual Pecola, but the version that floated out of the lips of the gossipers around town. To them she was nothing but a dirty little girl, from a poor, dirty family. It was the ugliness of her family that made her ugly, that consumed and ruined her. And they all just accepted it, no question, because they thought they deserved it. “It was as though some mysterious all-knowing master had given each one a cloak to wear, and they had each accepted it without question” (39). It wasn't some all-knowing sources that gave them the cloak, it was the people around them. She had no chance to be beautiful in the opinions of others, she was doomed the moment she was born. But she thought that having blue eye, the bluest eyes,