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Plot summary

Two of the main characters, Claudia MacTeer and Frieda MacTeer, live in Ohio with their parents.The MacTeer family takes in two other people into their home, Mr. Henry and Pecola. Pecola is atroubled youn irl with a hard life. Her parents are constantly fihtin both physically andverbally. Pecola is continually bein told and reminded of what an !uly" irl she is thus fuelinher desire to be a white irl with blue eyes. Throuhout the novel it is revealed that not only hasPecola had a life full of hatred and hardships but her parents have as well. Pecola#s mother onlyfeels alive and happy when she is workin for a rich white family. Her father is a drunk who wasleft with his aunt when he was youn and ran away to find his father who wanted nothin to dowith him. $oth her mother and father eventually lost the love they once had for one another. %hilePecola is doin dishes, her father, Cholly, rapes her. His motives are unclear and confusin&they#re a combination of both love and hate. Cholly flees after the second time he rapes Pecola,leavin her prenant. The entire town of 'orain turns aainst her e(cept Claudia and Frieda. )nthe end Pecola#s child is born prematurely and dies. Claudia and Frieda ive up the money theyhad been savin and plant flower seeds in hopes that if the flowers bloom Pecolas baby will live.The mariolds never bloom.

)n the afterword, Morrison e(plains that she is attemptin to humani*e all the characters thatattack Pecola or cause her to be the way she is& and she hates the fact that she becomes a

tomboy.

)deas of beauty, particularly those that relate to racial characteristics, are a ma+or theme in thisbook. The title refers to Pecolas wish that her eyes would turn blue. Claudia is iven a white babydoll to play with and is constantly told how lovely it is. )nsults to the appearance are often iven inracial terms& a liht skinned student named Maureen is iven favoritism at school. There is acontrast between the world shown in the cinema, the one in which Pauline is a servant, the%-P society, and the e(istence the main characters live in. Most chapters titles are e(tractsfrom a /ick and 0ane readin book, presentin a happy white family. This family is contrastedwith Pecolas e(istence.1111111111111111111111111$luest 2ye Plot ummary 3ploaded by bestalb on ep 4, 5667

$luest 2ye Plot ummary

Claudia and Frieda MacTeer live in 'orain, Ohio with their parents. Their lives are hard, but theirparents provide a lovin household. To make money, their parents take in a boarder, Henry%ashinton. oon after, another youn irl, named Pecola, comes to live with the MacTeers afterher father, Cholly, burned down her house. The three irls become friends. Pecola loves milk andhirley Temple& it 8uickly becomes clear that she believes that all thins white are beautiful. )talso becomes clear that Pecola considers herself uly because she has such stron blackfeatures. he does not believe she can be loved.

Pecola eventually moves back in with her family. 'ife there is not pleasant. Her father is analcoholic, her mother is seems not to care for her, and the two of them often fiht. Pecolas olderbrother, amuel, often runs away from home. Pecola also runs away but into her own fantasies9

she dreams of havin the bluest eyes in the world. Pecolas life away from her family is no better.he is often picked on and called uly by those around her. Claudia and Frieda reali*e that theentire neihborhood arees with Pecola that white features are beautiful.

Pecolas parents have both had difficult lives. Pauline always felt like an outsider in her family andconstantly suffers throuh feelins of loneliness and uliness. he wants to love her dauhter butfinds Pecola unattractive. Pauline works for a wealthy white family and finds her comfort in theirhouse. Cholly was abandoned by his parents and brouht up by his aunt. He was oftenhumiliated by white people and built up a reat rae toward whites and women. %hen he met andmarried Pauline, thins were ood for a time, but he soon felt trapped and unhappy. The marriae

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is dull, e(cept for those moments when they are fihtin.

One day, as he returns home and finds Pecola washin dishes, Chollys life of desire wells up andhe rapes his dauhter. Pauline blames Pecola for the rape, seein it as Pecolas fault. Pecolabecomes more obsessed with ettin blue eyes and visits oaphead Church, a psychic, whopromises to help her. )nstead, he uses her to help kill a do he doesnt like. Pecola discovers sheis prenant. Over the course of her prenancy, Pecola oes mad. he believes she has beeniven blue eyes and imaines a friend who admires her ood looks. Cholly rapes her aain, butPecola doesnt tell anyone. 3nlike the rest of the neihborhood, Claudia and Frieda desperatelywant the child to live. They come up with a childish scheme they think will help, in which theyplant mariolds. The mariolds do not bloom& Pecolas baby is born prematurely and dies. Chollyeventually dies in a workhouse. Pauline continues workin in the houses of the wealthy whitefamily. Pecola remains in her madness.11111111111111111111hort ummary

The $luest 2ye is split into an untitled prelude and four lare units, each named after a season.The four larer units bein with :-utumn: and end in :ummer,: with each unit bein split intosmaller sections. The first section of each season is narrated by Claudia MacTeer, a womanwhose memories frame the events of the novel. -t the time that the main events of the plot take

place, Claudia is a nine1year1old irl. This device allows Morrison to employ a reflective adultnarrator without losin the innocent perspective of a child. Claudia MacTeer lives with her parentsand her sister in the humble MacTeer family house in 'orrain, Ohio. The year is ;4

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reference to what Cholly ends up doin with his own dauhter.

Pauline is an unhappy woman who takes refue in the wrathful and unforivin aspects ofChristianity. he lavishes her love on the white family for whom she works, while her own familylives in s8ualor. Cholly is an anry and irresponsible man, violent, cruel, and uncontrollable. -ll ofthe $reedloves are considered uly, althouh part of the novels work is to 8uestion anddeconstruct what that uliness really means. To et away from her parents and to pass the hours,Pecola spends a reat deal of time with the whores who live upstairs. China, Poland, and Marietolerate her presence without providin any deep love for the irl.

Pecola is obsessed, we learn, with blue eyes. he prays for them constantly, and is convincedthat by makin her beautiful the blue eyes would chane her life. From Pecolas wish and frommany other events in the novel, it becomes clear that most of the people in 'orrains blackcommunity consider whiteness beautiful and blackness uly. The novel has many character wholon to look white, and also has several characters of mi(ed ancestry who emulate whites and tryto suppress all thins in themselves that miht be -frican. oaphead Churchs -nlophile familyand >eraldine are e(amples of this kind of black person.

The MacTeer family oes throuh their own small dramas, as Frieda and Claudia deal with stuck1up schoolmates and a lecherous boarder. Consistently, the MacTeer family is able to insulate the

irls from harm. %hen their boarder, a man named Mr. Henry, makes an indecent pass at eleven1year1old Frieda, Mr. and Mrs. MacTeer react with force, protectin their dauhter violently andwithout any doubt of her innocence. )n contrast, in the $reedlove family the se(ual threat comesnot from outside the family unit but from within. One aturday in sprin, Cholly rapes Pecola. Herapes her a second time soon afterward. Pecola then becomes prenant with her fathers child.

Miserable and desperate, Pecola believes more than ever that blue eyes would chane her life.he oes to a pedophilic fortune1teller named oaphead Church to ask for blue eyes. oapheadChurch decides that he can use her for a small task, and so he uses an unwittin Pecola to kill ado that he hates. he completes the task, which she believes will be like a transformative spell.The do dies in a ruesome manner, and Pecola runs away in terror. The ne(t time we seePecola, shes lost her mind. he spends all of her time talkin to a new :friend:& he?she is animainary friend who is now the only person with whom Pecola speaks. The topic of conversation

is most fre8uently the blueness of Pecolas eyes. Pecola spends the rest of her life as amadwoman.

The title of the novel provides some interestin insihts about standards of beauty. Morrison isinterested in showin the illusory nature of the social construction of beauty, which is created inpart by the imainary world of advertisin billboards and movie stars. The title uses thesuperlative of blue because at the end of the novel, when Pecola has one mad, she is obsessedwith havin the bluest eyes of anyone livin. $ut the title also has :eye: in the sinular=bydisembodyin the eye, Morrison subverts the idea of beauty or standards of beauty, tearin theideali*ed part away from the whole, creatin a beauty icon that is not even human. @einforcinthis non1human aspect of the ideal eye, Pecolas new blue eyes at the novels end are notdescribed with colors in the human rane=her eyes are blue like streaks of cobalt, or more bluethan the sky itself.

-t key points in the novel, important plot information is revealed throuh ossip. Morrison writeslon stretches of beautiful and uninterrupted dialoue, with reat sensitivity to oral lanuae.Pauline $reedlove ets a chance to speak in the first person near the middle of the novel& in asection divided between third1person narrator and Pauline, she ets to address the reader directlyand in dialect. Morrisons interest in carvin a place for oral lanuae in literary art is readilyapparent in this novel.

Morrison occasionally switches tense, movin fluidly to present tense when it serves her. Themove has different effects9 for some scenes, it provides a sense of reat immediacy. )n one

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se8uence narrated by Claudia, it creates the feel that Claudia is relivin the e(perience. )n otherscenes, it creates the feel of a pattern. %hen Pecola tries to by candy at a local rocers, we readabout the moment in present tense. )n this case, Morrisons use of the present tense sueststhat the unpleasant interaction between Pecola and the shopkeeper forms a template for all of herinteractions with other human beins.

Morrison, by employin multiple narrators, is tryin to make sure that no sinle voice becomesauthoritative. The ossipin women become narrators in their own riht, relayin criticalinformation and advancin the story at key points. Claudias perspective is balanced by the thirdperson narrator, and Pauline $reedlove narrates for parts of one of the middle sections of thenovel. This method of multiplyin narrative perspectives also demands more active participationon the part of the reader, who must reassemble the parts in order to see the whole. Morrison isstill workin somewhat clumsily with this type of narrative in The $luest 2ye. )n later novels, shehas a chance to e(periment and refine her forms further.1111111111111111111