The bluest eye

Question 1

Maureen Peal is

Answer 1

a light-skinned black girl who is the darling of teachers and students at school

Question 2

The fact that the children use the word “black” as an insult against each other shows

Answer 2

that black people have internalized the loathing whites feel for them

Question 3

The narrator tells us that for the Breedloves, ugliness comes from

Answer 3

their own conviction that they are ugly, shaped by social constructions of beauty

Question 4

Claudia and Frieda discover that Mr. Henry

Answer 4

has prostitutes over at the house while the MacTeers are gone

Question 5

Geraldine’s reaction to Pecola reveals

Answer 5

that there are many blacks who internalize white bourgeois standards of behavior and beauty

Question 6

6. The face of the cat (blue eyes and a black face) and the cat’s death foreshadow

Answer 6

Pecola’s madness

Question 7

Mr. Henry is kicked out of the house because

Answer 7

he makes a sexual advance at Frieda

Question 8

When Frieda and Claudia go looking for Pecola, they find her at the home of the white folks for whom Polly Breedlove works. From Mrs. Breedlove’s treatment of her employers’ daughter and Pecola, we can see that

Answer 8

Mrs. Breedlove treats the white girl with far more affection and tenderness than she treats her own child

Question 9

Mrs. Breedlove, when younger, was obsessed with

Answer 9

movies and the world of movies, especially the beautiful Caucasian movie actresses

Question 10

Mrs. Breedlove and Cholly Breedlove, like many of the blacks in the industrial towns of Ohio, migrated from

Answer 10

the South

Question 11

When Mrs. Breedlove was in the hospital ready to give birth to Pecola, a white doctor said to a group of medical students that

Answer 11

the birth would be easy because black women give birth with no pain, like horses

Question 12

Cholly was raised by

Answer 12

his Great Aunt Jimmy

Question 13

M’Dear is the name of

Answer 13

the wise old woman whose advice to Great Aunt Jimmy was not followed, causing Great Aunt Jimmy’s death

Question 14

When young Cholly was humiliated by the white men by the river (forced to continue having sex with Darlene while the two white men watched), Cholly felt mostly anger directed at

Answer 14

Darlene

Question 15

Soaphead Church uses Pecola to

Answer 15

poison a dog

Question 16

Pecola, after being raped by her father and impregnated

Answer 16

loses her mind, manufacturing a second personality and believing that at last she has blue eyes

Question 17

The image of the barren soil, with which the novel begins and ends, among other things suggests that

Answer 17

Pecola’s tragedy has been produced largely by social forces, which continue to exist

Question 18

The novel is divided into an untitled prelude and four sections. The four sections are named after

Answer 18

the four seasons

Question 19

The very first section of the novel, elements of which are used later as chapter headings, is

Answer 19

a passage from a grade school reading primer, repeated and altered

Question 20

Claudia MacTeer, the novel’s main narrator, is Pecola’s

Answer 20

friend

Question 21

Claudia tells us in the beginning of the novel that Pecola

Answer 21

was impregnated by her own father

Question 22

The date given in the prelude for the denouement of the novel’s events is

Answer 22

1939

Question 23

The time of the novel’s events ties the story to

Answer 23

World War II and the Nazi regime’s ideas of beauty

Question 24

In the prelude, Claudia says that when facing the tragedy of Pecola, one

Answer 24

asks “why” and then, because “why” is too difficult to handle, asks “how”

Question 25

The above-mentioned question posed by Claudia in the prelude shows that

Answer 25

philosophical questions like “why” might be impossible to handle, but a novel can dissect a social situation and an event, tackling the troubling question of “how”

Question 26

Claudia’s parents could best be described as

Answer 26

stern but loving

Question 27

The MacTeer family gets a new boarder named

Answer 27

Mr. Henry

Question 28

The second new boarder at the MacTeer home is

Answer 28

Pecola Breedlove

Question 29

The second and temporary boarder comes to stay with the MacTeers because

Answer 29

her father, Cholly, hit her mother and tried to burn their house down

Question 30

The actress that everyone seems to adore and Claudia hates is

Answer 30

Shirley Temple

Question 31

Claudia’s violent dissection of the blond haired and blue-eyed dolls parallels

Answer 31

the work of the novel, which examines and deconstructs social constructions of beauty and the source of black self-loathing

Question 32

Pecola drinks too much of the MacTeer’s milk because

Answer 32

she is so fond of drinking from the little cup that has Shirley Temple’s face on it

Question 33

When the girls are outside, Pecola notices that she

Answer 33

is bleeding between her legs

Question 34

Pecola’s bewilderment at her own first menstruation shows

Answer 34

the gap between her mother’s detachment and Mrs. MacTeer’s closeness to Claudia and Frieda

Question 35

Pecola’s first menstruation is ominous because

Answer 35

both we know that it makes it possible for her father to later impregnate her and the event is met initially with misunderstanding and even anger

Question 36

The Breedlove’s house is best described as being

Answer 36

cold, poor, and devoid of love

Question 37

The relationship between Cholly and Polly Breedlove could be best described as

Answer 37

violent and characterized by strange co-dependence

Question 38

The three women who live upstairs from the Breedloves work as

Answer 38

prostitutes

Question 39

The names of China, Poland, and Marie (aka the Maginot Line) refer to

Answer 39

countries that were invaded by fascists around the time of the novel’s events, linking the story and the America in which it is set to the Aryan ideal of beauty

Question 40

Pecola want to have blue eyes so that

Answer 40

people will look at her and think she is beautiful, and so her life will change

Question 41

The white shopkeeper’s attitude towards Pecola could best be described as

Answer 41

disdainful and distant

Question 42

Eyes and eyesight are important symbols throughout the novel of

Answer 42

subjectivity (meaning, sentience and status as a person and not an object) and the ability to recognize the subjectivity of others

Question 43

Claudia MacTeer

Answer 43

the first-person narrator of the first section in each of the four units. Claudia is nine years old, extremely bright, and comes from a loving family that owns their own house. She is warm-hearted and sensitive, but she is also angered by injustice and instinctively feels threatened by the standards of beauty that glorify Shirley Temple while ignoring black children. As a narrator, she fluctuates between an adult voice and a child’swithout problems.

Question 44

Pecola Breedlove

Answer 44

Pecola is twelve years old. Her family lives in a converted storefront. She is considered ugly, and is emotionally and socially awkward. She prays for blue eyes, because she knows from images in movies and on candy wrappers that to have blue eyes is to be loved. She is raped by her father, Cholly, in the spring, and becomes pregnant. Her baby comes too early and dies. Terrified of her parents, she is not free (due to gender and age) to run away from home as Sammy does. Either during the pregnancy or after the miscarriage, Pecola goes mad, manufacturing an imaginary friend who becomes her only conversation partner.

Question 45

Frieda MacTeer

Answer 45

Claudia’s sister, age 11. Frieda makes important decisions at several places in the novel, and she is the clear leader of the MacTeer sisters. Like her sister, she is sensitive and concerned about Pecola, and is willing to stand up for herself and others. She is the more fearless of the two girls.

Question 46

Pauline Breedlove

Answer 46

Mother of Sammy and Pecola, wife to Cholly. She has a lame foot and a missing front tooth. She is harsh and abusive to her children. She lavishes her love on the Fishers, her generous white employers, while her own family falls apart. She and Cholly battle constantly. Although once she longed to have nicer things and romantic love, she settles into surviving through her work and being a martyr by staying with Cholly. She is religious in a vindictive and vengeful way, hoping that the Lord will help her in her war against Cholly.

Question 47

Cholly Breedlove

Answer 47

A violent drunk, an unfaithful husband, an abusive father. Cholly was humiliated by white hunters when a young boy, and the shame stuck with him. Abandoned by both of his parents, he has no concept of parenting. He rapes Pecola, skipping town when she becomes pregnant.

Question 48

Mrs. MacTeer

Answer 48

Mother to Frieda and Claudia. She is not an indulgent mother, but she is fiercely protective and loving. Her word is law with the two girlsat several points the girls attempt to decide what to do based on literal interpretations of things Mrs. MacTeer has said.

Question 49

Mr. MacTeer

Answer 49

Father to Frieda and Claudia. Like his wife, he is a harsh but loving parent.

Question 50

Sammy Breedlove

Answer 50

An unhappy and young teenage boy, constantly in trouble, constantly running away from home for months at a time. Unlike Pecola, he has freedom, as a male, to escape the Breedloves’ miserable home life.

Question 51

Soaphead Church (aka Elihu Whitcomb)

Answer 51

a man of mixed white and black ancestry from the Caribbean. He is the town fortuneteller, in addition to being megalomaniacal pedophile who plays God. His “magic” is the final snap that breaks Pecola’s sanity.

Question 52

Bertha Reese

Answer 52

an old, religious woman from whom Soaphead Church rents his room. She is the owner of Bob, the dog that Soaphead Church loathes.

Question 53

Mr. Henry

Answer 53

The middle-aged boarder taken in by the MacTeers near the beginning of the novel. Mr. Henry is charming but is somewhat lecheroushe invites prostitutes under the MacTeer roof when the MacTeers are gone, and later he makes sexual advances at eleven-year-old Frieda.

Question 54

China, Poland, and Marie (aka the Maginot Line)

Answer 54

the three prostitutes who live upstairs from Pecola. Pecola seeks refuge in their company when her family is too unbearable. All three women are long past their prime, but fat Marie is the most despised by Mrs. MacTeer and the most feared by Frieda and Claudia. Their names are heavily symbolic, as all three refer to countries where are occupied or facing invasion by fascist armies in 1939.

Question 55

Geraldine

Answer 55

A well-off black woman with a husband, one son, and a cat. Geraldine is concerned with being respectable, and despises poor blacks. When her son, Louis, Jr., lies to her and tells her that Pecola killed Geraldine’s beloved cat, her treatment of Pecola is brutal.

Question 56

Louis, Jr.

Answer 56

a little boy, son of Geraldine. He tricks Pecola into coming into his house, where he throws a cat in her face, kills the cat, and then blames her for it.

Question 57

Maureen Peal

Answer 57

the new girl at school. She is mulatto and very well-off. Walking home with the MacTeer sisters and Pecola one day, she starts out being civil but very quickly becomes haughty. She is the darling of teachers, and Claudia sees in her all of the social forces that she fears and despises. Claudia insists that the societal forces are more to be feared and hated than Maureen herself.

Question 58

Mr. Yacobowski

Answer 58

store owner who sells Pecola nine pieces of Mary Jane candy. Pecola can read in his eyes the impatience and disdain that he feels for her, and she internalizes all of it.

Question 59

Rosemary

Answer 59

a girl who lives next door. A tattletale. Claudia and Frieda dislike her immensely.

Question 60

Miss Dunion

Answer 60

A nosy neighbor who lives next door. When she insinuates that Mr. Henry might have “ruined” Frieda, she incites the wrath of Mrs. MacTeer.

Question 61

Great Aunt Jimmy

Answer 61

the woman who raised Cholly. She was already ancient when she took him in, right after he had been abandoned by his own mother. She dies when Cholly is a young teenage boy.

Question 62

M’Dear

Answer 62

An old wise woman who comes to give Aunt Jimmy medical advice. She is a tall woman, and her authority is considered infallible. Sure enough, when Aunt Jimmy violates one of M’Dear’s prescriptions, she dies.

Question 63

Samson Fuller

Answer 63

Possibly Cholly’s father. When Cholly is a young man, he tracks Samson down. Samson humiliates him and tells him to go away.

Question 64

Blue Jack

Answer 64

The closest thing to a father figure in Cholly’s early life. He shares a watermelon heart with Cholly and it’s one of the happiest moments Cholly ever knows.