Claudia finishes the chapter detailing how they see Pecola walking and talking to herself. No one looks at her unless it is the children who laugh at her. She describes Pecola flailing her arms like a “winged, but grounded bird” (p. 205). Claudia explains in a poignant passage how they all received beauty from Pecola. They all used Pecola to make themselves feel better: “All of us — all who knew her — felt so wholesome after we cleansed ourselves on her” (p. 205). They were beautiful because they “stood astride her ugliness” (p 205). She was the town’s scapegoat.
In the last paragraph, Claudia concludes Pecola’s tragedy was not a result of Claudia’s planting the seeds too deeply. It was the earth in the town. In fact, “…the land of the entire country was hostile to marigolds that year” (p. 206). Pecola cannot thrive or grow in this hostile environment. She is left to flap her arms and dig in the garbage with her “blue eyes.”
Discussion Questions
- Claudia says some loved Pecola. Even Cholly. Does this make Cholly’s actions more sympathetic or understandable?
- What does Morrison mean with the comment: “…the love of a free man is never safe?”
- Sight is a motif in the novel. Pecola believes she will be seen differently if she has blue eyes. When she loses her mind, she believes she is shunned because everyone is jealous of her beautiful blue eyes. How does Morrison utilize this motif in other characters or themes?
To love a free man I think Morrison means to love freely. A man without conscious or remorse. A man free from moral and free from consequence of his actions. He freely and openly abuses pecola and tried to justify his actions by saying he loves her. The love he is speaking of is non existent for pecola accept for Claudia. In the end she dies fall into the same form of free expression like everyone else in the twin and pint out pecola and her flaws and blame her for things out of her or anyone else's control. The fact that she goes mentally insane doesn't surprise me since she only has herself to lean on and no one or no way to cope or escape her reality so she creates one as a post traumatic stress response and a defense mechanism. She makes herself feel like she has a place in this reality. The dangers of oppression.
ReplyDeleteThe way Cholly tried to show his "love" was very detrimental to Pecola, the fact of how he came to be like that and how Morrison writes it in the book doesn't frame it as sympathetic and nor should it be taken as such.I take Cholly's story as purely cause and effect rather than in Lolita it was "here's how i came to be let this be an excuse to do _____ even though it's wrong". Morrison described Cholly as a person who could beat a women as much as he could love her, he didn't have any type of moral obligations that were self placed so he was free to do whatever he wished in his eyes with little remorse, if any. I feel as though how the characters progressed , if Cholly had not raped Pecola she would have broken her self loathing nature.The last part is very sad because she finally starts to defend/deny things and talk back but these instances are brought on by denial and she is arguing to herself it is a difference in the Pecola we see at the store silently asking for candy though the context makes it less improved. Sight is used heavily in the text from Pecola wanting blue eyes or even this omnipresent force they believe is there, but never takes action, there's always a sense of someone watching. That said, along with sight i feel like judgement is a huge secondary motif, the time being one of great and outright prejudice.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Ashlyn. I feel like she's saying the love of a free man is unpredictable therefore unsafe, She states that wicked people love wickedly, stupid people love stupidly, but how does a free man love? There are no boundaries, no expectations, no confinements to categorize that love into so it could encompass any sort of thing whether it be healthy or dangerous. The love of a free man is free to do whatever it pleases and free to move on if it chooses.
ReplyDeleteKandace Fuller
-Sebastian
ReplyDeleteThe love a free man ment that , he did not really have a regular love he had the the type of love only for lovers, so physical and mentally there, not the parental type of love, agree with..(Ashlyn states).