The Bluest Eye

Pecola Breedlove is the dark-skinned daughter of a poor African American family, the Breedloves. Raised by Pauline Breedlove, who is more focused on the appearance of respectability than nurturing her children, and Cholly Breedlove, a father who is absent, violent, and sexually abusive, Pecola sees herself as worthless. Her primary motivation in the novel is to have the bluest eyes. She believes that having blue eyes will transform the indifference and disdain of people around her into love.

Over the course of the novel, Pecola witnesses and experiences various traumas. She witnesses her father regularly beating and at times forcing her mother to have sex, is bullied by other children because of her dark skin and Afrocentric features, and is sexually assaulted by her father twice. Through all of these experiences, Pecola is convinced that having blue eyes will rescue her.

By the end of the novel, Pecola has retreated so far from the world around her that she believes she has blue eyes, and she has two distinct voices in her head—one that ridicules her and seems to fully understand the import of the violence she suffers and another that tries to escape this violence through the fantasy of having the bluest eyes.  

Older than Claudia by just a year, Frieda MacTeer is on the cusp of adolescence. Her in-between state is represented by a mix of innocence and knowledge that she at times lords over her sister as the two engage in sibling rivalry. Frieda is innocent enough that she believes that sacrificing the new bike and planting flowers will convince God to preserve Pecola's baby. She is old enough to understand in a vague fashion that getting a menstrual period is the entrance into womanhood and makes a girl capable of having a baby.

The novel suggests rather than fully represents Frieda's maturity. Frieda, unlike her sister, has been socialized to love Shirley Temple as the ideal of girlhood. An important turning point for Frieda in the novel is when Mr. Henry molests her. The experience of the molestation and her witnessing of her parents' violent response to Mr. Henry serve to differentiate her from her sister. As the elder sister, Frieda also exemplifies the moral values of her parents. She questions Mr. Henry about the presence of Miss Marie in the MacTeer home, and she is the one who insists that she and her sister are not allowed to wait for Pecola in Miss Marie's apartment.

While there are some differences between the two girls, Claudia's use of "we" as opposed to "I" in much of the narration highlights the impact of the girls' close relationship on their identities.

A native of Georgia, Cholly Breedlove was abandoned by his mother on a garbage heap when he was a few days old and abandoned by his father before his birth and again as an adolescent. Cholly is driven by basic impulses and is a drunk, violent man who abuses his wife and children.

Beyond his abandonment by his parents, the seminal experiences in Cholly's life are an indirect sexual assault by two white men when he was 14 and his father's rejection of him shortly thereafter. Cholly's first sexual experience happens the day of his aunt/foster mother's funeral. After a playful encounter with Darlene, Cholly is forced to simulate sex with Darlene by two white hunters who stand over him with rifles and call him racial slurs. The deep humiliation of that experience leads Cholly to displace his rage onto the closest targets—Darlene and the other black girls and women with whom he subsequently interacts.

Cholly experiences another devastating blow when Samson Fuller, the man he believes to be his father, rejects him in order to focus on game of craps in an alley in Macon, Georgia. After this experience, Cholly is transformed into a "[d]angerously free" (159) man who murders white men and violates the ultimate taboo by raping his daughter years later. Cholly embodies the worst stereotypes of African American men as bestial. 

A native of Alabama, Pauline Breedlove is an African American woman whose life is defined by the loss of her dream of romantic love and beauty. As a young girl, Pauline injured her foot and thus came to see herself as incomplete and unattractive. Her dreams of being swept away by a lover seemed to come true when she met Cholly as a young woman, but the move to Lorain, the loss of a front tooth, the disappointment of raising children without adequate financial means to support them, and her inability to embody the white beauty she sees while at the movies convince her that she is ugly.

Her one redeeming quality in the eyes of whites and in her own eyes is her ability to create order. She takes this obsession with order and uses it to transform herself into a servant who is beloved by white employers because of her selflessness in keeping their homes and raising their children. Although she was an object of ridicule by African Americans when she first moved to Ohio, she is by the time of the events of the novel a woman who has gained respect from her community because of her work ethic and her professions of faith.

Mr. Henry is a handsome older man who boards with the MacTeers when difficult financial times force them to rent out one of the rooms of their home. Mr. Henry is presented as a charming man who is beloved by children and adults alike. Over the course of the novel, it becomes clear that Mr. Henry is not quite who he appears to be.

The first indication of this difference is when the girls come home to discover that Mr. Henry has been entertaining sex workers in the MacTeer home while the family is away. Another revelation of who Mr. Henry is occurs when he molests Frieda by touching her on her breasts. The last representation of Mr. Henry is of him being chased away by Mr. MacTeer with a shotgun when his abuse of Frieda is discovered. Mr. Henry is just one of the men in the novel who violates the boundaries of girls and women sexually.

Born Elihue Whitcombe, Soaphead Church comes from a family of African Americans who are the descendants of an English noble and a woman of color. Soaphead Church has failed at almost every profession he has attempted to enter. During the events of 1941, Soaphead Church is working as a healer and spiritual adviser. Despite this title, Church is a deeply immoral man who justifies his actions—trading on Pecola's innocence to get her to poison his landlady's dog and sexually abusing girls because he despises uncleanliness—by blaming the existence of evil on God.

The firstborn child of Breedloves, Sammy is represented in the novel briefly. He intervenes in fights between his parents and encourages his mother to kill Cholly Breedlove after knocking out his father during a fight. Unable to bear the violence of his home, Sammy exercises a prerogative made available mostly to men and boys by running away.

Blue is an older African-American man who serves as a mentor to Cholly during Cholly's childhood. Because Cholly is raised by Aunt Jimmy, an old African American woman, Blue assumes an important role in Cholly's life as a black male figure. Blue's identity as a black man is one characterized by sexual conquest, some acts of generosity, and a penchant for drinking to excess. Cholly emulates all of Blue's traits by the time of the events of 1941.

Darlene is an adolescent African-American girl with whom Cholly makes out on the day of Aunt Jimmy's funeral. Darlene is later victimized when two armed white men force Cholly to sexually assault her. Darlene, a somewhat flat character, is most notable as just the first of many African American girls and women who are forced to bear the brunt of African American men's rage.

Aunt Jimmy is the maternal figure in Cholly's life until her death when Cholly is 14. An older African-American woman, Aunt Jimmy is a moral authority who rescues Cholly when he is baby and beats Cholly's mother for abandoning her child on a trash heap. Aunt Jimmy provides important sustenance for Cholly by raising him and by leaving him a small inheritance—a stash of coins—that Cholly uses to escape from Georgia after her death.

Samson Fuller is likely Cholly's father. His first act as a father was to abandon Cholly's mother while she was still pregnant with Cholly. Cholly next encounters the man he believes to be his father after Aunt Jimmy’s death. Samson is presented as an emasculated figure (unlike his Biblical namesake, Samson has a bald spot) who has fathered many children and rejects his son in order to gamble. 

One of three sex workers who live above the Breedlove apartment, Miss Marie is a sex worker who is extremely obese. She treats Pecola kindly but is also one of the adults who engage in sexualized talk in front of the 11-year-old girl.

The mother of Claudia and Frieda, Mrs. MacTeer is portrayed in the narrative as a woman who generously takes in Pecola when she is removed from the Breedlove home. Mrs. MacTeer is also a harsh disciplinarian who is not averse to using a switch to punish her daughters, a church-going woman, a woman who feels stressed by her family's financial difficulties, and a woman who loves her children fiercely.

Mr. MacTeer is only slightly represented in the novel. His most significant action in the novel is his attack on Mr. Henry with a shotgun after he discovers that Mr. Henry has molested Frieda. Mr. MacTeer has the distinction of being one of the few father figures in the novel who is present in the life of his children and who sees his role as one of protector when it comes to his children. 

The coddled only child of Geraldine, a respectable African-American woman, Louis Junior is a sadistic boy who moves from abusing his mother's cat to attacking Pecola. Morrison presents his cruel streak as the direct result of the rearing he receives in his well-kept home. 

Maureen Peal is a light-skinned African-American girl who is idolized by peers and teachers alike because of her appearance. The underserved adulation is the result of internalized racism that convinces everyone that she must be worthy of love because of her near-white skin tone. Her actions—teasing Pecola because she was abused by her father and calling the MacTeers ugly because of their darker skin—reveal her to be a cruel and shallow person.

Rosemary is the white child of an affluent café owner in Lorain. She teases the MacTeer girls from the backseat of her father's car. Their decision to beat her up when she emerges from the car is an expression of their envy of her status as a white, affluent girl.

Geraldine is the sexually repressed, respectable African-American mother of Louis Junior. Geraldine meets all of the expectations of reputable black womanhood by keeping a clean, decorated home, and disciplining her son by keeping him away from undesirables like Pecola. Her lack of charity toward Pecola serves as an indictment of these values, however.

Velma is, for a brief time, Soaphead Church's wife. She meets Soaphead when she is just a girl. Her mixed racial heritage and subsequent abandonment of Soaphead when she can no longer bear their sterile home are presented by Soaphead as evidence for her lack of suitability as a wife.