The Character Of Pecola In The Bluest Eye

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Pecola, the protagonist of The Bluest Eye, despite this dominant role she is submissive and remains mysterious. Pecola is a fragile and delicate child when the novel begins, and by the novel’s close, she has been almost entirely ruined by violence. At the beginning of the novel, two desires form the basis of her sensitive life: she wants to learn how to get people to love her; when forced to witness her parent’s brutal fights, she simply wants to vanish. Neither wish is granted, and Pecola is forced further and further into her fantasy world, which is her only defense against the pain of her reality. She believes that being granted the blue eyes that she wishes for would change both how others see her and what she is forced to see. At the novel’s end, she believes that her wish has been granted, but only at the cost of her stability. Pecola’s fate is worse than death because she is not allowed any relief from her world—she simply moves to “the edge of town, where you can see her even now” (205).
When we first meet young Pecola she has been relocated by the state after her father, Cholly, burns down their family’s house and the family is outdoors; “that old dog Breedlove had burned up his house, gone upside his wife’s head, and everybody, as a result was outdoors” (16-17). Pecola adores Shirley Temple, loves playing with dolls, and desperately wants to have blue eyes so she isn’t “ugly”. While these desires illustrate that Pecola mentally and emotionally remains a child, her menstruation, in the first chapter of the book, shows that she is experiencing a physical coming-of-age. However Pecola doesn’t understand what is happening and is ultimately concerned with the all too real adult horror of “getting someone to love you” and th...

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...ther, a mother who loves her white employers better than her own family, and a brother who is constantly running away. All three who reinforce the idea of Pecola’s ugliness. At the end of this novel, after not only one but two cases of being raped by her father, becoming pregnant and then losing a baby whose father was also Pecola’s, and being made to believe that she was finally granted her blue eyes. Pecola’s state of mind, it is safe to say, has completely deteriorated. In the novel it is stated “a little black girl yearns for the blue eyes of a little white girl, and the horror at the heart of her yearning is exceeded only by the evil fulfillment” (204). Regardless of delusions, evil forces, or the mental of break of young Pecola. It is clear by the end of the novel that her state of mind is gone and the entire community has seemingly cast her from their mind.

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