The Bluest Eye

Foreword-Prologue

Reading Check

1. The house is “pretty” and is green and white with a red door. (Foreword)

2. Happy, dressed in red, and wanting to play (Foreword)

3.  Marigolds (Prologue)

4. As a “plot of black dirt” (Prologue)

Short Answer

1. The source of the text beginning, “Here is the house,” is the Dick and Jane early reading series. (Foreword)

2. “Here is the house” repeats three times on the pages. Each time the spacing between the words is reduced. (Foreword)

3. Claudia and Frieda attribute the lack of growth to the fact that Pecola is pregnant with her father’s baby. (Prologue)

4. The novel’s purpose is to explain “how” the fall of 1941 becomes a season of death. (Prologue)

Autumn

Reading Check

1. Mr. Henry and Pecola (Autumn)

2. White baby dolls (Autumn)

3. Shirley Temple and Jane Withers (Autumn)

4. Because she drank three quarts of milk (Autumn)

Short Answer

1. Being “put out” means that you have people and some other place to go. Being “put outdoors” means that you have nowhere to go. (Autumn)

2. Claudia hates white baby dolls. She dismembers and destroys them. (Autumn)

3. Pecola’s family lives in a storefront. They are depicted as impoverished, violent, and “ugly.” Cholly has an alcohol addiction. (Autumn)

4. Pecola feels connected to three sex workers who live upstairs above her family’s storefront: Miss Maria, China, and Poland. The women are welcoming and kind toward Pecola. (Autumn)

Winter

Reading Check

1. They taunt Pecola about her Blackness and her daddy’s sleeping habits. (Winter)

2. Frieda attacks Woodrow Cain and threatens the boys to leave Pecola alone. (Winter)

3. China and the Maginot Line (Miss Marie) (Winter)

4. Because the women do not eat from any plates (Winter)

Short Answer

1. Meringue Pie is a rich, light-skinned girl who moves into the neighborhood. Adults and children alike admire her. (Winter)

2. Meringue Pie insults Claudia and Frieda by implying she will buy them ice cream. Then, she buys ice cream for Pecola only. (Winter)

3. Junior traps Pecola by inviting her into her house to see kittens that don’t exist. (Winter)

4. Junior’s mother calls Pecola a “nasty little black bitch” and orders her to leave the house. (Winter)

Spring

Reading Check

1. For sexually assaulting Frieda (Spring)

2. A blackberry cobbler (Spring)

3. Cholly introduces himself by tickling her foot. (Spring)

4. His mother abandoned him on a trash pile. (Spring)

Short Answer

1. During Cholly’s first sexual encounter, white hunters assault him. They shine a flashlight on him and tell him to finish. (Spring)

2. When Cholly tries to reunite with his biological father, he gambles rather than talk with Cholly. (Spring)

3. Cholly sexually assaults Pecola in the family home while she is doing the dishes. (Spring)

4. Soaphead Church is a con man and pedophile. He chastises God for abandoning Pecola. He also claims to have granted Pecola’s wish for blue eyes. (Spring)

Summer

Reading Check

1. They gossip about Pecola and shun her family. (Summer)

2. Cholly dies in a workhouse, and Sammy leaves town. (Summer)

3. To herself (Summer)

4. Pauline continues doing housework, and Pecola becomes a town oddity. (Summer)

Short Answer

1. Pecola thinks she has blue eyes because she gives up rational thinking for fantasy. (Summer)

2. Pecola is worried because of the cost. Pecola paid for the eyes with her body and mental health, so she wants them to be the best. (Summer)

3. When the narrator says, “the horror…of her [Pecola’s] yearning is exceeded only by the evil of fulfillment,” she means that Pecola’s yearning is based on self-hatred, and the fulfillment leads to a loss of self or mental health. (Summer)

4. Claudia associates marigold seeds with Pecola because the seeds represent a sacrifice to God in exchange for the life of Pecola’s baby. Neither survives. (Summer)