Marigolds | Blue Eyes | Shirley Temple & Mary Jane Candy | The Breedlove Home | Fire | The “Dick and Jane” Primer | Claudia’s Narration | Key Takeaway

Marigolds

What Happens
- Claudia and Frieda plant marigold seeds, believing they will grow if Pecola’s baby lives. The marigolds never bloom.

Symbolic Meaning
- Represents fertility, hope, and communal care.
- Their failure reflects society’s refusal to nurture Pecola and other vulnerable Black girls.
- Suggests the environment itself (the “soil”) is hostile.

Quote
- “It never occurred to us that the earth itself might have been unyielding.”

Discussion Questions
- How do the marigolds symbolize the community’s failure?
- Why might Morrison connect Pecola’s survival to the growth of flowers?

Blue Eyes

What happens
- Pecola prays for blue eyes, believing they will make her beautiful and loved.

Symbolic meaning
- Represents the internalization of white beauty standards.
- Symbolizes erasure of Black identity and desire for invisibility.
- When Pecola finally believes she has blue eyes, she retreats into madness.

Quote
- “It had occurred to Pecola some time ago that if her eyes…were different, that is to say, beautiful, she herself would be different.”

Discussion questions
- Why are blue eyes a destructive wish for Pecola?
- What do blue eyes symbolize in American culture of the 1940s?

Shirley Temple & Mary Jane Candy

What happens
- Pecola drinks milk from a Shirley Temple cup and eats Mary Jane candy wrapped with a smiling white girl’s face.

Symbolic meaning
- Consumer goods teach children to associate whiteness with beauty, sweetness, and goodness.
- Consuming candy = consuming whiteness; a form of indoctrination.

Quote
- “To eat the candy is somehow to eat the eyes, eat Mary Jane. Love her. Be like her.”

Discussion questions
- How does consumer culture reinforce racism in subtle ways?
- Why might Morrison use children’s objects (candy, cups) instead of adult ones?

The Breedlove Home

What happens
- The Breedloves live in a storefront apartment, described as ugly, unloved, and broken.

Symbolic meaning
- Physical reflection of internalized ugliness.
- Contrast with the MacTeers’ home (poor but loving).
- Represents self-hatred projected onto a living space.

Quote
- “They lived there because they were poor and black, and they stayed there because they believed they were ugly.”

Discussion questions
- How does the Breedlove home symbolize their family identity?
- Why does Morrison make the home itself seem like a character?

Fire

What happens
- Cholly Breedlove is associated with fire and burns down the family home.

Symbolic meaning
- Represents passion, shame, and destructive masculinity.
- Fire becomes a metaphor for trauma turned inward—destroying family instead of oppression.

Quote
- “The fire seemed to love him.”

Discussion questions
- How does fire symbolize both love and destruction in Cholly’s life?
- What does the burning of the house reveal about cycles of trauma?

The “Dick and Jane” Primer

What happens
- Each section begins with lines from a white, middle-class reading primer. The text gradually breaks down (no punctuation, no spaces).

Symbolic meaning
- Represents the dominance of white cultural narratives.
- Breakdown of text mirrors Pecola’s psychological collapse.
- Suggests society’s “happy family” ideal is unattainable for Black children.

Quote
- “Here is the house. It is green and white. It has a red door. It is very pretty.”

Discussion questions
- Why does Morrison repeat and distort this children’s story?
- How does the primer contrast with Pecola’s reality?

Claudia’s Narration

What happens
- Claudia narrates parts of the novel with honesty and resistance. She dislikes Shirley Temple and destroys white dolls.

Symbolic meaning
- Serves as a counter-narrative to Pecola’s story.
- Represents resistance to internalized racism.
- Offers a possibility of survival through alternative storytelling.

Quote
- “I had only one desire: to dismember it. To see of what it was made, to discover the dearness, to find the beauty, the desirability that had escaped me.”

Discussion questions
- How does Claudia resist society’s beauty standards?
- Why does Morrison choose Claudia as a narrator instead of Pecola?

Key Takeaway