What Does The Tornado Symbolize Pecola's Suicide

Claudia, another character who goes through a similar situation compared to Pecola. She is a young girl who came out from a loving family and is intrusive, yet sensitive.

Besides the inherent self-confident issue, the outside voice from community is also affecting Pecola’s view. For example, in the “accident” when Pecola went into Junior’s house, Junior killed the cat and impute to Pecola. His mother, Geraldine, saw Pecola was holding the dead cat. Without any thought and didn’t even ask for the truth, Geraldine simply called Pecola a “nastylittle black bitch.” This event, again, reinforces Pecola’s view of what beauty means.

As a child, he was not loved by his mother. She prefered her cat to her own son. Junior saw this at an early age and “spent some happy moments watching it suffer” (86). Junior locked Pecola in a room, becoming the perpetrator with the same turn of attitude as Cholly. When he saw that the cat liked Pecola, he threw the cat, killing it, because the thing his mother loved more than himself loved her. Pecola’s wish could be paralleled to the cat. It had blue eyes, and was loved dearly by someone, which could explain the attention she gave to the cat. Junior even said, “Gimme my cat! (90). Up to this point, he wanted nothing to do with the cat and even tortured it, but with it being the only connection to his mother, he called it his own. Pecola’s dream, or having the same attention as the cat, was killed when the cat was killed. Junior was not loved by his mother, only taken care of to live. She did not “allow her baby, Junior, to cry…[she] did not talk to him, coo to him, or indulge him in kissing bouts” (86). This unlove for her family caused Junior to be victimized, and then alter his ways, and become the perpetrator. Pecola is the victim in the rage of Junior, only because his mother did not love him. She wanted someone to be kind to her, and love her, but that was only met with

In the aftermath, there is a dialogue presented between Pecola and an imaginary friend. The dialogue includes conflicted feelings of Pecola’s rape, and her deluded thoughts of her wish for blue eyes has been granted. She believes that the changes in behavior of the people around her are because of her new eyes, and not the news of her rape. Claudia speaks for a final time, and describes the recent phenomenon of pecola’s insanity. She also suggests that Cholly, (who had since died), may have shown Pecola the only affection he could by raping her. Claudia believed that the whole community, herself included, have used Pecola as a way to make themselves feel beautiful and happier.

“Again, the hatred mixed with tenderness. The hatred would not let him pick her up, the tenderness forced him to cover her.” [This quote represents the emotions that flood through Pecola’s father’s head after he rapes her. Prior to and during raping Pecola, Pecola’s father is enraged with many emotions. These emotions include anger, tenderness and l0ve towards Pecola. This is a significant quote in the novel because this is one of the few parts of where Pecola’s father, Cholly’s, character is shown. This quote reveals Cholly’s character because it shows that the events that happened in his

When Claudia is informed by her mother about the arrival of Pecola and her staying with their family for a couple of weeks, she is simply told that a "case" was going to join them. Pecola was homeless because Cholly destroyed their home and as a result, everyone was outdoors. This is the real terror in one's life, being "outdoors". "If you are outdoors, there is no place to go. Outdoors was the end of something, an irrevocable, physical fact" (17-18). This fear pervades the fiction of Morrison, being radically unsettled, being homeless. Pecola too is constantly outdoors. She is not able to integrate into the community, she is left on the peripheries always, literally moving from one place to another looking for a place of security and comfort.

By contrasting the homes of Claudia and Pecola throughout the entire novel, Morrison stresses the importance of home in defending against a predatory, racist society. In Claudia’s home, her parents truly care for her and her sister. In one instance, her father took out a gun to fend off a tenant that touched Freida’s breast. This completely contrasts with Pecola’s home, where her parents are both hateful and self-hating, and her father actually raped her. Even though both households are

Women berate other women for the loss of their virginity, whether it be by choice or not. When Pecola is raped and impregnated by her father, no one barring Frieda and Claudia are concerned. This upsets Claudia due to the fact that “...our sorrow was more intense because no one would share it. They were disgusted, amused, shocked, outraged or even excited by the story” (Morrison 190). There are no comforting words for a girl violated by her father, only criticism and isolation.

The meaning of beauty is abused emotionally because the characters consider whiteness beautiful. It is associated with beauty and cleanliness. Blue eyes mean beauty, “It had occurred to Pecola some time ago that if her eyes...were different, that is to say, beautiful, she herself would be different”(Morrison 46). Pecola dislikes herself because she doesn't have blue eyes. She wants people to view her differently and wants to view the world differently. Another instance of emotional abuse is when Pecola is framed for killing a cat . Junior frames Pecola for killing the cat because he feels that Geraldine his mother pays more attention to the cat rather than him, so he likes the cat to suffer .Geraldine says to Pecola, “Nasty little black bitch ”(Morrison 92). Pecola and Junior want people to love them but does not believe they do because of their actions and words towards them, which causes them to develop depression. Pecola's mother Mrs.Breedlove fails as a parent because she doesn’t believe in her daughter about being raped. “Regained consciousness, she was lying on the kitchen floor under a heavy quilt, trying to connect the pain between her legs with face of her mother looming over her ”(Morrison 163). Mrs. Breedlove fails to believe her daughter because she has gone through same circumstances of trauma as her. Someone one’s appearance, is taken

Cholly, not only wants to vandalize their house and the dreams of Pecola. But, he also manages to vandalize and damages Pecola when he rapes her twice in the second Act. Once when she was trying to wash dishes and once more while she was laying on the couch. The symbolism here shows when Pecola is washing the dishes. The water from the tap is her thoughts about rebirth and becoming a new person, cleansed of any bad, with pure, blue, eyes. This is once again squashed by Cholly as he rapes her, taking her innocence, her childhood, and damaging the one thing that was her own and that she could control: her virginity. Later on, when Pecola's mother, Pauline, doesn't believe her when she tells her about the rape, furthermore proving the dysfunctional and unloving environment Pecola has to trudge through.

“So when the child regained consciousness, she was lying on the kitchen floor under a heavy quilt, trying to connect the pain between her legs with the face of her mother looming over her” (Morrison, p. 163). Paradoxically to her looking forward to having Pecola when she was pregnant, “I used to talk to it whilst it be still in the womb. Like good friends we was” she didn’t protect her. She didn’t believe her, she dismissed her thus allowing it to happen again. Pecola has an older brother Sammy who differing from Pecola, runs away as a coping mechanism to the problems they are inflicted with.

Similarly, Claudia confronts set racialized standards of “good” and “bad” which compel her to also react with jealous anger at the glorification of the white American lifestyle as “good.”   After receiving a white baby doll for Christmas, Claudia gives a detailed description of her destruction of the doll and states her hatred for such dolls.  She also notes that “the dismembering of dolls was not the true horror.  The truly horrifying thing was the transference of the same impulses to little white girls” (22).  When Maureen Peal, a light-skinned girl from an upwardly mobile family, transfers to Claudia’s school, she instantly attracts the everyone’s attention.  Claudia mentions, “When she was assigned a locker next to mine, I could indulge my jealousy four times a day” (63).   Claudia understands she will never be a perfect little white girl or even a light-skinned well-off girl.  Facing the lack of inherent status and attention she receives as a result of the cultural standards she finds herself in, she is driven to jealous, which she constantly throws herself into.  She even admits that her jealousy is an indulgence that feeds her and gives her some twisted satisfaction since she herself

In order to keep this position, she must distance herself from typically black stereotypes and actions. Geraldine, a fair skinned and well off black woman, tries her hardest to assert her higher position over people, and has taught her son to stay away from the dirty n*ggers. Geraldine’s son, Junior, lures Pecola into their house with the promise of kittens, before throwing their old cat at her face. He then locks her inside with the cat, which Pecola starts to befriend. Noticing that she had stopped sobbing, Junior opens the door and angrily throws the cat at the wall, killing it.

There are many themes that seem to run throughout this story. Each theme and conflict seems to always involve the character of Pecola Breedlove. There is the theme of finding an identity. There is also the theme of Pecola as a victim. Of all the characters in the story we can definitely sympathize with Pecola because of the many harsh circumstances she has had to go through in her lifetime. Perhaps her rape was the most tragic and dramatic experience Pecola had experiences, but nonetheless she continued her life. She eliminates her sense of ugliness, which lingers in the beginning of the story, and when she sees that she has blue eyes now she changes her perspective on life. She believes that these eyes have been given

The terror of the beginning of her first menstruation is symptomatic of the traumatic experience she has in life. When Pecola has her first periods she is alarmed and screams. Suddenly Pecola bolted straight up, her eyes wide with terror. A whinnying sound came from her mouth. "What's the matter with you?" Frieda stood up too. Then we both looked where Pecola was staring. Blood was running down her legs. Soon drops were on the steps. I leaped up. "Hey, you cut yourself? Look. It's all over your dress". A brownish red stain discolored the back of her dress. She kept whinnying standing with her legs far apart. Frieda said, "Oh Lordy! I know. What that is!".