Claudia MacTeer and Pecola Breedlove are two young girls that are main characters in The Bluest Eye. They both grow up in the same time period, but their fates are different and they both have different ways of maturing. And each girl overcomes the events in their lives different, whether they have control of the events or not. The condition of their lives have never been good but it’s very important to look at how they respond to the events that happen to them and how that shapes their lives.
It is important to note that Claudia narrates part of this book from her perspective of a child and as an adult looking back. Claudia sufferers and struggles with the concept of beauty and racism, along with most black women in this time period. But something that Claudia has throughout the story is a loving family that is considered to be middle-class. Claudia is also key to the novel, showing us that most families are not like Pecola’s, families do not just give up.
However, Claudia still suffers from serious trauma, she is abused in the story, but instead of giving up she continues to be a fighter. She does not blame the color of skin or what she physically looks like, she does not believe that the color of her skin matters. She is a character in the book that does not desire to be this white, beautiful girl. Even at the beginning of the novel she looks at this white doll that all the girls desire to look like. However Claudia feels quite the opposite about it she says, “I was physically revolted by and secretly frighted of those round moronic eyes, the pancake face, and the orange worms hair” (20). Showing us that Claudia is this sense of hope throughout the book, quite the opposite of Pecola.
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Pecola is the young protagonist throughout the story, she is very passive with every situation that comes upon her. From the beginning of the novel we find out about the difficult life that she has. She is very delicate, because her parents are abusive towards her destroying her trust in just about anybody. Her mother treats her with no sort of love or care, when Pecola is sick and twos up on the bed her immediate response is, “What did you puke on the bed clothes for? Don’t you have sense enough to hold your head out of the bed?” (11).
Showing us the relationship that Pecola has with her mother. Later in the story Pecola is raped and becomes pregnant putting her even more on the outskirts of society. She loses all hope, but Pecola still wants to feel loved but someone, she believes that if she is white and beautiful that she will be loved, which she later finds out does not work. She even believes if she has blue eyes she will becomes beautiful, however it pushes her even further away from beauty and loses sanity. Pecola represents the black community and how people are looked at because of their skin color. Pecola towards the end is a scapegoat for her community, her ugliness makes them feel beautiful. Her life shows us this unrealistic view of beauty and her desire to reach something that is impossible for her to reach.
Claudia and Pecola are similar in the way that they are both young girls growing up in this time where racism is very prevalent. They grow up where beauty is only people that are white, and black people, like themselves, are not beautiful. But they differ because Pecola desires to look like these white women with blue eyes whereas Claudia is repulsed by it. Pecola also has never stuck up for herself, always letting people pick on her.
For example, when Junior wanted her to go to his house, she begins by telling him no but later is easily convinces, “Pecola began to move toward his house” (89). She does not stick up for herself even when she knows the situation will not be good. Pecola also gives up all hope when she finds out she is pregnant but when Claudia finds out her and her sister do everything they can to help her.
Claudia explains to Pecola that she needs to be brave and believe in herself. Claudia and her family are an example of families that try to pull together and work together when somethings wrong. But Pecola’s family does quite the opposite and falls apart. Pecola throughout the story and the end lower her standards to the world’s view on her and lets society ruin her life. And Claudia is hope, hope that the world is not as evil as Pecola makes it out to be. Hope that things are going to get better.
Overall, Claudia and Pecola both may be young girls growing up in this horrible time, but the way they respond to what life hands them is completely different. The way they work through the issues of this internalized racism is different, Claudia rises above this issue where Pecola falls right into the trap of it. Pecola dwells on all of the bad that happens in her life where Claudia is the messenger of the better that is yet to come.
