The bulest eye

Ruth is treated viciously by her husband and continues to devote herself to her father who has long since passed away. Reba is in and out of relationships with abusive men and Milkman’s sister First Corinthians enters a relationship with Henry Porter, which her father disagrees with and forbids her to ever see him again and subsequently makes Porter homeless as a result. Finally, Milkman’s other sister Magdalene is extremely submissive, passing up college in order to stay home and make sure her mother doesn’t perish at the hands of her abusive father. While these women’s lives are dominated and determined heavily by the men in their lives, this doesn’t mean that they are weak. It takes incredible strength to survive such oppression, especially in cases of violent relationships.

The text utilizes two reoccurring motifs: the eyes and hardness of the heart, to indicate a symbolic connection between Paul and his mother. The elements of irony and the ill-fated characters produces a deeply sardonic fairy tale on . Her lifestyle is what can be described as genteel poverty. She is a woman who is said to have “started with all the advantages” (750), but she threw away all of her prospects when she married her husband. However, she is unable to let that lifestyle go and their family is left with a constant shortage of money.

Life is hard for the sisters, but their stern yet loving parents protects them. After Cholly burns down his family's house, Pecola comes to stay with the MacTeers. Frieda and Claudia quickly befriend her. Claudia resists the white ideal of beauty that entrances Pecola. The two sisters are loyal to Pecola, defending her against the taunts of their classmates and truly pitying her after the rape.

Throughout her life Pecola has been told that she is ugly and ignorant by those wh... ... middle of paper ... ...d impregnated by her father. After she is raped, the young girl is left to internalize her father’s self-hatred as well as the pain she carries from then on, not just theoretically but actually as she carries Cholly’s child. Pecola is a symbol of the black community and its belief that white beauty is superior to theirs. At the end of the novel Claudia admits that the town acted out their self-hate by using Pecola as the scapegoat for the whole community. Her ugliness made them comparatively beautiful in appearance and her quiet suffering presented them the opportunity to make their claim to superiority by pointing out what they considered to be a young black girl’s flaws and weaknesses.

Peni is a living psycho-social sore on the conscience of her society, manipulated by the wry shrewdness of men like Aji Ramta. Mero is even unluckier, “the once jovial and much-loved little girl”, in spite of her been orphaned by an auto crash, “turned into an ageing woman overnight, sullen and indifferent to her future. It was as if she had died with her parents” (66-7). Usman, her late father’s friend and business associate takes a tender Mero with the claim of catering for her and ends up forcing himself on her as her husband. She too suffers vaginal rupture as a result of early childbirth.

Pecola is a family friend of Claudia and Frieda. Pecola came to live with the MacTeer because of her abusive father and mother’s dysfunctional love. Pecola is the little girl who wished to be white, who wished to have blue eyes, who wished to be beautiful. Pecola knows that she is not beautiful and everyone tells her. “If she looked different, beautiful, maybe they’d say, “why, look at pretty-eyed Pecola.

Mariam, the illegitimate child of a wealthy businessman from Heart who lacked the courage to marry Nana, Mariam’s mother after having dishonored her. After the suicide of Nana, Jalil is compelled by circumstances to refuge to Mariam. Mariam resents to the limited place in her father's life. On her arrival in Jalil’s house she is exposed to the realities of life and she realizes that her father's place is her life has completely turned since his other wives considered her to be a burden then an asset. She is discriminated at every juncture.

Pecola truly believes that if her eyes were blue she would be pretty, virtuous, and loved by everyone around her. Friends would play with her, teachers would treat her better and even her parents might stop their constant fights because, in her heart of hearts, no one would want to “do bad things in front of those pretty eyes.” Pecola has a deep admiration for Shirley Temple and therefore thinks that she is ugly because she looks nothing like Shirley. All across socie... ... middle of paper ... ...tain seeds it will not nurture, certain fruit it will not bear, and when the land kills of its own volition, we acquiesce and say the victim had no right to live.” When the society fails to nurture flowers like Pecola, when nourishment of the soul is denied, the fruit of self-love is never realized and it becomes self-hatred, which lead to Pecola’s undesirable fate. She is driven to insanity and the ultimately to the garbage on the outskirts of town. Works Cited Sapphire.

Her mother constantly berates her about the lack of gentleman callers. Amanda says exasperatedly, “What right have you got to jeopardize your job - jeopardize the security of us all?” What she doesn’t notice is that everything is weighing heavy upon Tom’s shoulders; he is almost to the end of his rope. His father left him, his mother degrades and devalues all that he contributes to the family and his poor sister, and he fears she will be alone forever, stuck with their controlling, monster of a mother. It all becomes too much for him and he goes out drinking almost every night. Slowly becoming an alcoholic like his father; at least that’s the fear of his mother.

Then Paula explains the marital status between her and her husband, which is that they are separated. She talks of their wedding, their children and then she moves on to talk of the savage attacks Charlo gave her. She tells of times when she was raped, battered and even more brutal, nearly killed. She told the doctors that she fell down the stairs or ‘walked into doors’ to justify her broken bones and bruises, because if she told them the truth, Charlo would hurt her, yet again. After seventeen years of too much pain and torture she received from him, she gives him a taste of his own medicine and throws him out of the house for good.