Alone, with no one to turn to, Pecola creates her own imaginary friend, someone who will listen while she talks about her new blue eyes. Everyone, we hear, is jealous of how pretty and “really, truly, bluely nice” they are, so perfect and powerful that not even strong sunlight can […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Summer: Section 2 – LOOKLOOK . . . How many times a minute are you going to look inside . . . ?Summary and Analysis Summer: Section 1 – I have only to break . . .
Claudia and Frieda believe they must do more than just pray for the health and safe delivery of Pecola’s baby because it will be the antithesis of the white baby dolls that Claudia has always despised. However, a miracle of this magnitude requires that they sacrifice their money and bury […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Summer: Section 1 – I have only to break . . .Summary and Analysis Spring: Section 4 – SEETHEDOG . . . Once there was an old man who loved things . . .
Elihue Micah Whitcomb, known as Soaphead Church, is nauseated by the sickly old dog, just as he is nauseated by most people. Yet he is comfortable with the realization that he is a misanthrope, for he realized his disdain for people at an early age. Paradoxically, however, he has dabbled […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Spring: Section 4 – SEETHEDOG . . . Once there was an old man who loved things . . .Summary and Analysis Spring: Section 3 – SEEFATHER . . . When Cholly was four days old . . .
What drives a man to rape his own daughter? Of all the hard-luck stories we’ve encountered so far in this novel, nothing can equal Cholly’s story — especially his early years, when he was abandoned by his father before he was born, then wrapped in newspapers and thrown on a […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Spring: Section 3 – SEEFATHER . . . When Cholly was four days old . . .Summary and Analysis Spring: Section 2 – SEEMOTHER . . . The easiest thing to do would be to build . . .
A quiet, private girl, Pauline was responsible for her two young twin siblings, Chicken and Pie, while her mother worked. She enjoyed keeping house, arranging and straightening things, and being neat and meticulous. She dreamed of meeting a good-looking, loving man, and when she did, she and Cholly Breedlove moved […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Spring: Section 2 – SEEMOTHER . . . The easiest thing to do would be to build . . .Summary and Analysis Spring: Section 1 – The first twigs are thin . . .
Seeking liquor, which the girls mistakenly believe will “eat up” fat, they go looking for Pecola, reasoning, “Her father’s always drunk. She can get us some.” They find her, far away on Lake Shore Park, where her mother, Pauline, works for a white family named Fisher. There, they witness Pauline […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Spring: Section 1 – The first twigs are thin . . .Summary and Analysis Winter: Section 2 – SEETHECAT . . . They come from Mobile.
Mother Geraldine, Father Louis, and son Junior epitomize the black middle class, which has become far distanced from its black roots. Geraldine consciously removes herself from, and looks down on, black people who do not have white middle-class aspirations. According to Morrison, Geraldine is one of those blacks who “when […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Winter: Section 2 – SEETHECAT . . . They come from Mobile.Summary and Analysis Winter: Section 1 – My daddy’s face is a study.
In addition to Mr. MacTeer, this section introduces Maureen Peal, a light-skinned black girl who seems to personify enviable white qualities. Maureen is lauded by teachers; Pecola is ignored. Like Jane in the primer, Maureen, the “high-yellow dream child with sloe green eyes,” is considered pretty and perfect; in contrast, […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Winter: Section 1 – My daddy’s face is a study.Summary and Analysis Autumn: Section 3 – HEREISTHEFAMILY . . . The Breedloves did not live in a storefront because . . .
Pecola imagines that she is ugly because of the actions and remarks of people like Mr. Yacobowski, who owns the neighborhood candy store. His unwillingness to touch Pecola’s hand is reminiscent of the black dirt metaphor used earlier to describe her. The tension between the two people is taut. Pecola’s […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Autumn: Section 3 – HEREISTHEFAMILY . . . The Breedloves did not live in a storefront because . . .Summary and Analysis Autumn: Section 2 – HEREISTHEHOUSE . . . There is an abandoned store . . .
Pecola’s house is definitely not pretty; in fact, it is the neighborhood eyesore. The narrator says that it “festers.” The building once had life — food was baked here, and gypsy girls occasionally flirted from its open, teasing windows. Now, however, all sense of life has long since drained from […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Autumn: Section 2 – HEREISTHEHOUSE . . . There is an abandoned store . . .