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 it. There is not even a sustained sense of life in the coal stove, which flares and dies erratically.