99 pages • 3 hours read
Toni MorrisonA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Blue eyes are introduced in the novel when Claudia describes her puzzlement over why the adults in her life and other African-American girls saw blue eyes as highly prized features to be celebrated and loved when found on the faces of dolls or white girls.
Blue eyes appear again when Pecola attempts to transform her dark eyes to blue ones so that her parents will stop behaving violently in front of her; Pecola's consumption of Mary Jane candies, marked with an image of a blue-eyed, blonde-haired white girl, is one of the small moments of pleasure granted to her in the novel.
By the end of the novel, Pecola has, with the complicity of Soaphead Church, transformed her dark eyes into blue ones in an act of self-delusion that tips her over into insanity. Blue eyes in the novel are associated with Eurocentric beauty standards, internalized racism that victimizes African Americans, and childhood innocence.
Seeing and invisibility in the novel serve to underscore African-American girls and women's struggles with racism and sexism. Pecola's invisibility to Mr. Yacobowski, the storeowner from whom she buys candy, is the result of her perceived unattractiveness and his inability to see Pecola as fully human because she is African American.
By Toni Morrison
A Mercy
A Mercy
Toni Morrison
Beloved
Beloved
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God Help The Child
God Help The Child
Toni Morrison
Home
Home
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Jazz
Jazz
Toni Morrison
Love
Love: A Novel
Toni Morrison
Paradise
Paradise
Toni Morrison
Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination
Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination
Toni Morrison
Recitatif
Recitatif
Toni Morrison
Song of Solomon
Song of Solomon
Toni Morrison
Sula
Sula
Toni Morrison
Sweetness
Sweetness
Toni Morrison
Tar Baby
Tar Baby
Toni Morrison
The Origin of Others
The Origin of Others
Toni Morrison