Friday, March 22, 2013

The Bluest Eye: Two Character Analysis

Pecola

Physical characteristics:
  • 11 years old
  • African-American
  • Black, curly hair
  • Raped and abused by mom and dad
  • Becomes pregnant 
Emotional Characteristics:
  • Feels self hatred towards herself and the African-American race
  • Fragile and delicate; feels inferior because of her race
  • Wishes to have blue eyes
  • Wants people to love her
  • Damaged from watching her parents fight
  • Creates a fantasy world in order to escape from her brutal reality
  • By the end of the novel she believes her wish to have blue eyes is granted yet this is because she has become mentally unstable
  • Her fate: insanity, is worse than death because she is not allowed to escape


Claudia MacTeer: Narrator of the story, has a child's perspective with the exception of some scenes where she is talking as an adult and looking back

Physical characteristics:
  • Starts out as a 9 year old and as the story progresses she grows up
  • African-American
Emotional characteristics:
  • Suffers from adult's tyranny over children
  • Suffers from racism towards the black community
  • Idealizes beauty as being white and blue-eyed
  • Not learned about self-hatred

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