Pecola Breedlove, is an eleven-year-old black girl whom the story revolves around. She is abused by almost everyone in the novel and eventually suffers being raped by her father, Cholly Breedlove. Pecola's experiences, however, are not typical of all black girls who have to grow up in a hostile society. But who is to blame? One could easily argue that it was Mr. and Mrs. Breedlove. But who is to blame for how they treat their child? The white supremacy is the main cause of Cholly’s past, Pecola’s
the fate of Pecola Breedlove. For Pecola, constant abuse by society and her family had made her so utterly alone. Her brother had run away from home by encouragement from his mother, who had rejected the family and gone to work for a white family. By working for the white family, she got everything that she wanted and was needed. In doing so, she rejected the needs of her family entirely, not even her own daughter could call her “mother” instead she was forced to call her “Mrs. Breedlove”, a symbol
Pecola Breedlove is a young girl growing up black and poor in the early 1940s. She is repeatedly called "ugly" by nearly everyone in her life, from the mean kids at school to her own mother. This constant criticism, the relentless bullying she gets at school, and her rough family life (her parents are always fighting, both verbally and physically) lead Pecola to seek escape from her misery by fantasizing about becoming more beautiful. Pecola begins to believe that if she could just achieve physical
Through the character of Pecola Breedlove, Toni Morrison illustrates that society has caused black people to lose their self-esteem and feel inferior to white people. All her life, Pecola is vulnerable to the messages society carries about black people because of who she is: a black girl in her youth. The narrator, Claudia (as an adult) described Pecola as the person that everyone compared themselves to in order to feel better about themselves. “Her simplicity decorated us, her guilt sanctified
Cholly's rape of his daughter makes more sense. Pecola represents Cholly as a child. She is an ugly little helpless girl who is rejected by everyone. Whenever cholly sees her, he remembers his childhood as a helpless child . Being rejected by his father when he goes to meet him is similar to the way Pecola is rejected by everyone. He feels revulsion towards her. Instead of feeling sympathy, he feels revulsion. As the critic Vickory says'' Pecola is like Cholly once was, small and
On the opposite hand, Pecola represents non-standardized tragic hero WHO continues to be a toddler way more sinned against and full of the passiveness of her surroundings than moving it. She looks vulnerable, fallible and inert receiver all the time. a toddler in whom self-loathing, self-disgust, self-repulsion and self-degradation are planted since the start of her self-fulfillment and since the beginning of her awareness of her biased and prejudiced surroundings. Like Gregor Samsa, she thinks that
Eye, Pecola Breedlove is obsessed with having blue eyes; a trait she believes would make her beautiful and worthy to receive love. Pecola “hides behind her ugliness” (39) and is shamed by her family and society for not being beauty, not “conforming”. However, the shame isolates Pecola and she yearns for her mother’s affection as she sees her coddling the little white girl in the house Pauline works at. Instead of receiving the necessary feelings of love and kindness from her mother, Pecola is instead
by Toni Morrison, the Breedlove family lives in an abandoned store in the small town of Lorain, Ohio. Everyone in the town believes that the Breedloves are ugly, and the Breedloves themselves wallow in self-loathing over their physical appearances. Pecola, the daughter and youngest child of the Breedloves, intensely yearns for blue eyes in the hope that they would make her beautiful, which would consequently make others respect her and treat her well. While the Breedloves’ self-contempt concerning
The Hindering Conditions of Pecola and African Americans in the 1940s In A Letter to My Nephew, essayist and social critic James Baldwin describes the hindering conditions under which African Americans are born in the United States, expressing “you were born where you were born and faced the future that you faced because you were black and for no other reason” (Baldwin). For as long as they have been “free,” African Americans have struggled to fully own their freedom and reap the benefits associated
The immoral acts of society raped Pecola Breedlove, took her innocence, and left her to go insane. The Random House Dictionary defines “rape” as “an act of plunder, violent seizure, or abuse; despoliation; violation.” The Random House definition perfectly describes what happens to Pecola over the course of the novel. From Pecola’s standpoint, society rapes her repeatedly, by their judgmental attitudes towards everything that she is; she is “ugly,” she is poor, she is black. In Toni Morrison’s The