The Bluest Eye Trivia Quiz

Answer: So she can become a different, more loveable person

Claudia MacTeer, the novel's first narrator, unaffectedly states that the Breedloves' ugliness "was unique". Pecola understands that others revile her, but imagines that if her eyes were blue (like Shirley Temple's) she would become a different person. A blue-eyed Pecola would be loved, cherished, and protected. A blue-eyed Pecola would not be ugly.

Answer: His mother dumps him in a junk heap

Four days after giving birth, Cholly's mother wraps him up in blankets and a newspaper, and leaves him by the railroad tracks. Fortunately, his Great Aunt Jimmy saves him and brutally chastises his insane mother.

Answer: The girl

When Cholly is an adolescent, two white men stumble upon him during an intimate act with a young girl in the bushes. They taunt him and shine a flashlight on his body. Ashamed, he turns his hatred towards the helpless girl, not the young men or even himself. This impotent fury plagues him for the rest of his life.

Answer: She is humble and kind

Maureen Peal is a young black girl who is idolized by her peers. The school children are mesmerized by her light skin, long hair, and wealth. Even the white girls like her, and the teachers encourage her. Alas, despite all of her gifts, she evinces an "unearned haughtiness" that burns at Claudia's soul.

Her beauty and wealth, which were handed to her at birth, have given her a false sense of worth.

Answer: She thinks she's "ruined"

Henry Washington briefly lives with the MacTeer family. He cavorts with prostitutes when the MacTeers aren't home, and bribes Frieda and Claudia with ice cream and chips. He makes the mistake of fondling Frieda, which leads to him being ousted from the home, beaten with a broom, and shot at!

Answer: The Fisher child calling Mrs. Breedlove "Polly"

Mrs. Breedlove experiences beauty and order vicariously through the Fishers' lives. When the MacTeer sisters visit Pecola and Mrs. Breedlove at the Fisher residence, Claudia is amazed by the cleanliness and perfection of the place. She later encounters a young girl with golden hair and a pink dress, who flippantly asks: "Where's Polly"? It enrages Claudia that this young slip of a girl calls Mrs. Breedlove by a mere nickname (short for Pauline), while all of the black children call her Mrs. Breedlove.

Answer: Destroy little white girls

Claudia discusses how she destroys white baby dolls, searching for the secret of what makes them so lovable. Older women cannot understand her lack of regard for these prized treasures, intangible in their own childhoods. Claudia realizes with alarming detachment how she could dismember little white girls as easily as the dolls.

Answer: Washing dishes in the kitchen

Perhaps the most famous and heartbreaking scene in the novel is when Cholly finally reaches the height of his depravity and harms his own daughter in the worst way possible. Though his actions are animalistic and cruel, he mainly feels tenderness throughout the ordeal.

Answer: Marry blacks with light skin and Anglo features

Soaphead Church comes from a family that prides itself on its white ancestry. Indeed, the family members are irreconcilable Anglophiles, and only marry other light-skinned black people. Their goal is to collectively lighten the family complexion, thin out their features, and overall become more "beautiful".

This beauty, they believe, will make them more valuable and loved among their own people.

Answer: Yes

After Pecola's brutalization at the hands of her father and the loss of her baby, she sinks into a type of madness. People in town shun her. Her ugliness makes them feel beautiful; her poverty enriches them. Lost in her own world, Pecola imagines that she now has the bluest eyes of anyone she knows.

She is convinced that others are jealous of her blue eyes, and her only remaining fear is that there might be someone, out in the world, that has eyes bluer than her own.