The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison (Characters in the Novel)

 

The Bluest Eye

by Toni Morrison

(Characters in the Novel)

 

Pecola Breedlove

The protagonist of the novel, black girl who believes she is ugly because she and her community base their ideals of beauty on whiteness. The title The Bluest Eye is based on Pecola’s fervent wishes for beautiful blue eyes. She is rarely developed during the story, which is purposely done to underscore the actions of the other characters. Her insanity at the end of the novel is her only way to escape the worlds where she cannot be beautiful and to get the blue eyes she desires from the beginning of the novel. Pecola is the protagonist of The Bluest Eye, but despite this central role she is passive and remains a mysterious character. Morrison tells Pecola’s story from other points of view to keep Pecola’s dignity and, to some extent, her mystery intact. Pecola is a fragile and delicate child when the novel begins, and by the novel’s close, she has been almost completely destroyed by violence. At the beginning of the novel, two desires form the basis of her emotional life: first, she wants to learn how to get people to love her; second, when forced to witness her parents’ brutal fights, she simply wants to disappear. Neither wish is granted, and Pecola is forced further and further into her fantasy world, which is her only defense against the pain of her existence. She believes that being granted the blue eyes that she wishes for would change both how others see her and what she is forced to see. At the novel’s end, she delusively believes that her wish has been granted, but only at the cost of her sanity. Pecola’s fate is a fate worse than death because she is not allowed any release from her world—she simply moves to “the edge of town, where you can see her even now.”

Pecola is also a symbol of the black community’s self-hatred and belief in its own ugliness. Others in the community, including her mother, father, and Geraldine, act out their own self-hatred by expressing hatred toward her. At the end of the novel, we are told that Pecola has been a scapegoat for the entire community. Her ugliness has made them feel beautiful, her suffering has made them feel comparatively lucky, and her silence has given them the opportunity for speaking. But because she continues to live after she has lost her mind, Pecola’s aimless wandering at the edge of town haunts the community, reminding them of the ugliness and hatred that they have tried to repress. She becomes a reminder of human cruelty and an emblem of human suffering.

Cholly Breedlove

Pecola’s abusive father, an alcoholic man who rapes his daughter at the end of the novel. Rejected by his father and discarded by his mother as a fore day-old baby, Cholly was raised by his Great Aunt Jimmy. After she dies, Cholly runs away and pursues the life of a free man, yet he is never able to escape his painful past, nor can he live with the mistake of his present. Tragically, he rapes his daughter in a gesture of mangled with affection. He realizes he loves her, but the only way he can express it is to rape her. By all rights, we should hate Cholly Breedlove, given that he rapes his daughter. But Morrison explains, that she did not want to dehumanize her characters, even those who dehumanize one another, and she succeeds in making Cholly a sympathetic figure. He has experienced genuine suffering, having been abandoned in a junk heap as a baby and having suffered humiliation at the hands of white men. He is also capable of pleasure and even joy, in the experience of eating a watermelon or touching a girl for the first time. He is capable of violence, but he is also vulnerable, as when two white men violate him by forcing him to perform sexually for their amusement and when he defecates in his pants after encountering his father. Cholly represents a negative form of freedom. He is not free to love and be loved or to enjoy full dignity, but he is free to have sex and fight and even kill; he is free to be indifferent to death. He falls apart when this freedom becomes a complete lack of interest in life, and he reaches for his daughter to remind himself that he is alive.

Pauline Breedlove

Pecola’s mother Mrs. Breedlove is married to Cholly and lives the self-righteous life of a martyr, enduring her drunk husband and raising her two awkward children as best she can. Mrs. Breedlove is a bit of an outcast herself with her shriveled foot and Southern background. Mrs. Breedlove lives the life of a lonely and isolated character who escapes into a world of dreams, hopes and fantasy that turns into the motion pictures she enjoys viewing. Like Cholly, Pauline inflicts a great deal of pain on her daughter but Morrison nevertheless renders her sympathetically. She experiences more subtle forms of humiliation than Cholly does—her lame foot convinces her that she is doomed to isolation, and the snobbery of the city women in Lorain condemns her to loneliness. In this state, she is especially vulnerable to the messages conveyed by white culture, that white beauty and possessions are the way to happiness. Once, at the movies, she fixes her hair like the white sex symbol Jean Harlow and loses her tooth while eating candy. Though her fantasy of being like Harlow is a failure, Pauline finds another fantasy world—the white household for which she cares. This fantasy world is more practical than her imitation of Hollywood actresses and is more socially sanctioned than the madness of Pecola’s fantasy world, but it is just as effective in separating her from the people—her family—she should love. In a sense, Pauline’s existence is just as haunted and delusional as her daughter’s.

Sam Breedlove

Pecolas’s elder brother. Sammy is Cholly and Mrs. Breedlove’s only son. Sam’s part in this novel is relatively low key. Like his sister Pecola, he is affected by the disharmony in their home and deals with his anger by running away from home.

Claudia Macteer

Much of the novel is told from the perspective of Claudia. She is primary narrator in the book. Claudia is Pecola’s friend and the younger sister of Frieda MacTeer. The MacTeer family serves as a foil for the Breedloves, and although both families are poor, Mr. and Mrs. MacTeer are strict but loving parents towards their children- a sharp contrast to the dysfunctional home of the Breedloves. Claudia narrates parts of The Bluest Eye, sometimes from a child’s perspective and sometimes from the perspective of an adult looking back. Like Pecola, Claudia suffers from racist beauty standards and material insecurity, but she has a loving and stable family, which makes all the difference for her. Whereas Pecola is passive when she is abused, Claudia is a fighter. When Claudia is given a white doll, she does not want, she dissects and destroys it. When she finds a group of boys harassing Pecola, she attacks them. When she learns that Pecola is pregnant, she and her sister come up with a plan to save Pecola’s baby from the community’s rejection. Claudia explains that she is brave because she has not yet learned her limitations—most important, she has not learned the self-hatred that plagues so many adults in the community.

Claudia is a valuable guide to the events that unfold in Lorain because her life is stable enough to permit her to see clearly. Her vision is not blurred by the pain that eventually drives Pecola into madness. Her presence in the novel reminds us that most black families are not like Pecola’s; most black families pull together in the face of hardship instead of fall apart. Claudia’s perspective is also valuable because it melds the child’s and the adult’s points of view. Her childish viewpoint makes her uniquely qualified to register what Pecola experiences, but her adult viewpoint can correct the childish one when it is incomplete. She is a messenger of suffering but also of hope.

Frieda MacTeer

Claudia’s elder sister and close companion. The two MacTeer girls are often seen together and while most of the story is told through Claudia’s eyes, her sister Frieda plays a large role in the novel.

Henry Washington

A man who comes to live with the MacTeer family and is subsequently thrown out by Claudia’s father when he inappropriately touches Frieda.

Soaphead Church

A pedophile and mystic fortune teller who grants Pecola her wish for blue eyes. The character is somewhat based on Morrison’s Jamaican ex-husband.

Great Aunt Jimmy

Cholly’s aunt who takes into raising him after his parents abandon him. She dies when he is a young boy.

Rosemary Villa Nucci

Claudia and Frieda’s white next-door neighbor. She lives above her father’s café and has many things, including arrogance, good food, a nice car, and a sense of ownership that make Claudia and Frieda jealous.

Mrs. MacTeer

Mother of Claudia and Frieda. She is a strong woman who sometimes comes off as cold, but she loves her children dearly, and they know it. She works hard to keep their house nice. She hates American ideals of beauty and tries to teach her children that they have to have self-respect and self-worth.

Della Jones

Mr. Henry’s former landlady. Her husband supposedly ran off with a woman named Peggy, because Della was too clean for him. After having suffered a stroke, Della seems a bit crazy and Mr. Henry looks elsewhere to live.

Peggy

A woman from Elyria. She is the woman whom Della Jones’ husband supposedly ran off with.

Old Slack Bessie

Peggy’s mother.

Hattie

Della Jones’ sister. She is often made fun of, as she frequently grins absent-mindedly.

Aunt Julia

Della Jones’ aunt. She is often made fun of for walking up and down the streets talking to herself.

Mr. Yacobowski

The owner of the vegetable and meat store Pecola goes to for candy. She buys Mary Janes there, and realizes that Mr. Yacobowski does not even want to touch her hand when she reaches out to give him the money for the candy. Pecola thinks he dislikes her because she is black and ugly.

China, Poland, and Miss Marie

The three black prostitutes that live in the apartment above the Breedloves. Pecola often goes up there and talks to these women. They adore Pecola and make her feel comfortable.

Dewey Prince

Marie’s ex-boyfriend. She ran away with him when she was younger and she tells Pecola all about him. From this, Pecola wonders about love and what it must feel like.

Maureen Peal

New girl in school, she is a light-skinned black girl with long brown hair in two braids and dark green eyes. Classmates and teachers admire her, as her features are lighter than the average black person’s. Claudia and Frieda are very jealous of her beauty, wealth, and charm. They even go so far as to search for and point out flaws that Maureen has to make her look bad, and make them feel good.

Bay Boy, Woodrow Cain, Buddy Wilson, and Junie Bug

Young black school children that torment Pecola by calling her names and harassing her. They are ashamed of their own blackness, and thus take it out on Pecola, whom they see as ugly as themselves.

Geraldine

A socially conscious middle-class black. She is concerned only with white things, and does everything possible to disconnect herself from her African roots. She mistreats her son, Louis Junior, as she prefers to give love and affection to her black cat with blue eyes.

Louis Junior

Son of Geraldine. He is neglected by his mother, who shows affection only to her blue-eyed black cat. Louis Junior is strongly affected by this neglect and takes it out on others, specifically Pecola.

The Fishers

The well-to-do white family that Pauline Breedlove works for down by Lake Shore Park. She is their maid, and she idolizes everything they have and do, including their perfect little daughter. Pauline even shows their daughter more affection than her own daughter, Pecola.

Chicken and Pie

Pauline Breedlove’s two younger twin brothers. She took care of them while growing up, as their mother and father both worked.

Samson Fuller

Cholly’s birth father. He was never around, even when Cholly was born.

Blue Jack

Older black man whom Cholly meets at one of his first jobs. They become great friends, and Blue even becomes a sort of father figure to Cholly. Cholly loves and respects Blue, and enjoys listening to Blue tell stories.

M’Dear

An older woman who lived in shack near the woods, near Cholly’s house, while growing up with Aunt Jimmy. M’Dear was a midwife and was known for her knowledge of herbal medicine. She was called in to diagnose Aunt Jimmy when she became sick.

Jake

Cholly’s fifteen-year-old cousin. Cholly meets Jake for the first time at Aunt Jimmy’s funeral. They fool around together and meet girls.

Darlene

Cholly’s first girlfriend and sexual partner. Their first sexual experience is tarnished when they are caught having sex in the woods by two white men.