Analysis of Bluest Eye Essay

Bluest Eye Summary and Analysis(winter)

We are once again within Claudia MacTeer's narrative, opening with a lyrical passage about the harshness of winter and her father's determination to keep his family warm and safe.

Claudia also confides her dislike of a new girl in school named Maureen Peal, a light-skinned and well-off black girl who has quickly become the new darling of teachers and children alike. On an unseasonably warm day, Maureen happens to choose to walk with Claudia and Frieda part of the way home. The three girls run into a group of boys who are tormenting Pecola Breedlove?by chanting about her blackness and her father's supposed habit of sleeping naked. These are the insults of choice, even though many of the boys' fathers might also sleep naked and the boys themselves are all black. Led by Frieda, the MacTeer sisters stand up to the boys and get them to leave Pecola alone. The four girls then walk together, and initially Maureen is very friendly to Pecola, talking about movies with her and treating her to ice cream. The conversation turns to puberty and then Maureen asks if Pecola has ever seen a naked man. Pecola, for some reason, seems to think that she is being asked if she has seen her father naked, which she vehemently denies. The questions are clearly making Pecola uncomfortable, and Claudia and Frieda try to get Maureen to stop. The conversation quickly degenerates into a fight, and Maureen starts to tease all three girls, but Pecola especially, picking up on the boys' lead and saying that Pecola must have seen her own father naked. Claudia tries to hit Maureen but Maureen flees; safe on the other side of the street Maureen screams that she is indeed cute and the other girls are black and ugly. Claudia is clearly troubled by this possibility, but she also says that Maureen is not the real enemy. The real enemy is the "Thing" that makes Maureen beautiful and the other girls ugly.

Frieda and Claudia go home, where their boarder, Mr. Henry, greets them and gives them money to go buy ice cream. The girls decide to go get candy?because of Frieda's fear that Maureen might be at the ice cream shop?and so they arrive home earlier than Mr. Henry expected. Playing outside, the girls look in through one of the windows and see Mr. Henry nibbling on the fingers of China and the Maginot Line (Marie). Frieda and Claudia recognize them, but wait until the prostitutes are gone to go back into the house. They ask Mr. Henry who the women were, and he tells the girls that the women are members of his Bible study class. He also asks the girls not to tell their mother. When the girls are alone and Claudia asks what they should do, Frieda decides that they don't need to tell their mother, because no plates have been used, and Mrs. MacTeer once said that she wouldn't let the Maginot Line eat off of one of her plates.

Analysis:

This section is structured by two main events: the girls' walk home, and the incident with the prostitutes and Mr. Henry. There is a passage early in the section where Claudia describes herself and Frieda metaphorically, using flower imagery to describe how she and her sister respond to their environment. This metaphor calls attention to the importance of nurture and environment for these young girls, especially in these formative years of their childhood. The theme of the oppressed internalizing ideas about their own ugliness is a strong element of the first part of the section. The worst insult the black boys can think of is to call Pecola black. Claudia, allowing herself to use her more grown-up voice, says that the insult has power because the boys and Pecola have a contempt for their own race and have learned self-hatred. The fight with Maureen reveals something important?Pecola's desperate reaction to Maureen's question seems to indicate that perhaps she has not only