The Bluest Eye Q&A

Cholly has no concept of parental feelings, given that he never truly experienced them as a child. The narrator adds that Cholly only reacted to his children according to how he felt at the moment. He does not experience any true love for anyone, and whatever he does experience, he is only able to express himself sexually. Cholly returns home drunk, and finds Pecola washing the dishes. He is reminded of her mother, and he feels a certain tenderness toward her, so he chooses to force himself upon her. Pecola later reveals that he rapes her a second time as well.

Pecola lives in a severely disturbed household, her parents begin to physically fight with one another the very first thing in the morning. Her brother tries to convince his mother to kill her father, and none of them ever truly treat Pecola with any kindness. She sees children with white features being treated better than herself and assumes that her parent’s horrid behavior is because she is lacking in something. She comes to believe that if she had beautiful eyes, then people would treat her better.

The primary reason lies in the fact that most people in the town are struggling to make ends meet with just their family members, and have little means of practicing charity. This is exemplified in the Autumn section when Pecola briefly stays with the MacTeer family. Additionally, this can also be because most people have a presupposition about her character, and choose to blame her for the things that have happened to her, rather than see her as the victim she truly is.

Claudia confesses at the beginning of the novel that she has a deep dislike for white features, especially when she is forced to treasure a doll in the form of a white child. She vents all of her frustration out at the doll, and she doesn’t like Shirley Temple either, like the other girls. However, Claudia eventually assimilates her views with society’s beauty standards and begins to crave the features that she had once despised.