the bluest eye
...lking around looking completely out of touch “to the beat of a drummer so distant only she could hear.” People in her town, even Claudia and Frieda, saw her as and outcast because of her “ugliness” and because of her father raping her. I would think that people would see past the rape and instead of kicking her out of society to be in a fantasy world all her own, they would have tried to help her by being her friend. The description of her trying to fly but being grounded is describing a child’s effort to break away from her horrible life but being unable to shake her past in her eyes and everyone else. The “blue void” she could not reach or see, but she could never let go of symbolizes her “racial self-loathing,” of feeling ugly and her desire to be beautiful like all the dolls with blue eyes. All of this paragraph basically describes is a fallen child who has no hope of finding herself or of anyone else seeing her as a whole person again. The very last paragraph in this book describes Claudia and a certain “we” that includes her town, and how they all feel at the end of the story. “And now when I see her searching the garbage-for what? The thing we assassinated? I talk about how I did not plant the seeds too deeply, how it was the fault of the earth, the land, of our town. I even think now that the land of the entire country was hostile to marigolds that year. This soil is bad for certain kinds of flowers. Certain seeds it will not nurture, certain fruit it will not bear, and when the land kills of its own volition, we acquiesce and say the victim had now right to live. We are wrong, of course, but it doesn’t matter. It’s too late. At least on the edge of my town, among the garbage and the sunflowers of my town, it’s much, much, much too late” (206). This paragraph paints an image of Pecola digging through the garbage like she has been reduced to a bum. The word “assassinated” is used because Pecola was no longer a sane person because of what everyone had done to her, her father raped her, her mother pretty much didn’t care about her, her friends abandoned her, and society thought she was ugly and banished her. Claudia then mentions the seeds that she and Frieda planted to try and help save Pecola and her baby. The seeds and marigolds mentioned in this passage area metaphor for children growing up. They author is trying to explain that they where all seeds that needed to be cared for. The hostile land could be referring to all of the racial discriminations and the poor parenting that these children had to endure. When they talk about seeds that will not nurture, I believe it is referring to Pecola’s parents, Cholly and Mrs. Breedlove. They too started out as children or “seeds” but because they never learned the righ...