A. Pecola Breedlove: pathos to critical judgment

1. Piecing the story together: dramatic irony

a) "'We thought, at the time, that it was because Pecola was having her father's baby'" (5).

b) "After a long while she spoke very softly.  'Is it true that I can have a baby now?'"  "'How do you do that? I mean, how do you get somebody to love you?'" (32).

c) "What did love feel like? she wondered.  How do grown-ups act when they love each other?  Eat fish together?  Into her eyes came the picture of Cholly and Mrs. Breedlove in bed . . . . Maybe that was love.  Choking sounds and silence" (57).

d) "'That's dirty.  Who wants to see a naked man?' Pecola was agitated. 'Nobody's father would be naked in front of his own daughter. Not unless he was dirty too'" (71).

2. The unspeakable

"So when the child regained consciousness, she was lying on the kitchen floor under a heavy quilt, trying to connect the pain between her legs with the face of her mother looming over her" (163).

1.Narrative placement and accumulation

a) "She listened carefully to the music and let it pull her lips into a smile. . . .  She laughed aloud and turn to see.  The whistler was bending down tickling her broken foot and kissing her leg.  She could not stop her laughter--not until he looked up at her and she saw the Kentucky sun drenching the yellow, heavy-lidded eyes of Cholly Breedlove" (115).  

b) "When Cholly was four days old, his mother wrapped him in two blankets and one newspaper and placed him on a junk heap by the railroad" (132).

c) "Cholly loved Blue" (134).

d) "Just as he felt an explosion threaten, Darlene froze and cried out.  He thought he had hurt her, but when he looked at her face, she was staring wildly at something over his shoulder.  He jerked around.
    There stood two white men . . ." (147).

e) "Cholly was afraid to stir, even to relieve himself.  The bus might leave while he was gone.  Finally, rigid with constipation, he boarded the bus to Macon" (153).

f) "'Tell that bitch she get her money.  Now, get the fuck outta my face!' . . .  He knew if he was very still he would be all right.  But then the trace of pain edged his eyes, and he had to use everything to send it away" (156).

g) "While straining in this way, focusing every erg of energy on his eyes, his bowels suddenly opened up, and before he could realize what he knew, liquid stools were running down his legs" (157).

2. The thinkable is the unspeakable.

a) "So it was on a Saturday afternoon, in the thin light of spring, he staggered home reeling drunk and saw his daughter in the kitchen" (161).
  . . . "He wanted to break her neck--but tenderly.  Guilt and impotence rose in a bilious duet . . .  What could a burned-out black man say to the hunched back of his eleven-year-old daughter?" (161).

b) "she shifted her weight and stood on one foot scratching the back of her calf with her toe. . . .  The timid, tucked-in look of the scratching toe--that was what Pauline was doing the first time he saw her in Kentucky. . . .   It was such a small and simple gesture, but it filled him then with a wondering softness. . . .  He did it then, and started Pauline into laugher.  He did it now" (162).

c) "Removing himself from her was so painful to him he cut it short and snatched his genitals out of the dry harbor of her vagina" (163).

C. Commentary and Reflection

1. Imitation of Life -- Peola & Maureen Peel (67)

2. "Racial self-loathing" (Afterward, 210)

3. Pecola "stepped over into madness" (206).

4. The novel's attempt at commentary