AP English III
Summer, 2012
AP Short Form: The Bluest Eye * Main Characters * Pecola Breedlove: She is an eleven year old black girl who believes she is ugly. She wishes for blue eyes to make her feel beautiful which is granted at the cost of her sanity. * Claudia McTeer: The narrator for parts of the novel. She is a very strong minded nine year old who fights for good causes. She is a stable force throughout the story. * Minor Characters * Cholly Breedlove: The always intoxicated father of Pecola and husband of Pauline. He experienced traumatic events that influenced him to hate the women he encounters in his life. * Pauline Breedlove: As a child she lived with an unfortunate foot and got herself in a marriage which turned deadly. She considers herself ugly only finding comfort watching romantic movies and working. * Main Setting * The Bluest Eye takes place during the end of the Great Depression (1940-1941) in Lorain, Ohio. * Summary
The exposition of the novel tells the reader about Claudia and Frieda McTeer looking back at their childhood, particularly remembering Pecola Breedlove. The main conflict surrounds young Pecola as a target for abuse who wishes to be beautiful and feel loved. The rising action begins when the McTeer family took in Pecola after her father burned their house down. She soon left and returned to her family where many misfortunes took place. The only person to love Pecola enough to touch her was her father, Cholly; and the climax reaches when he rapes her and impregnates her. The resolution of the novel comes about when she loses her baby and goes out and asks Soaphead Church for blue eyes. This wish is achieved through Pecola’s madness and she now lives on the edge of Lorain with her mother. * Style * Flashback: An event that takes the narrative back in time “When he was still very young, Cholly had been surprised in some bushes by two white men while he was newly but