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The Bluest Eye
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“Summer,” Section 1 Summary
Claudia resumes the narration in this section. Looking back to that time, Claudia realizes that she tends to confuse the summer of 1931 when a tornado destroyed much of Lorain (according to Mrs. MacTeer) with the summer of 1941.
Frieda and Claudia sold flower seeds that summer in an effort to earn money for a brand-new bike. They sold seeds to their neighbors, and as they went from house to house, they began to hear snippets of cruel and judgmental gossip about Pecola's pregnancy. The prevailing feeling was that it would be best if the baby died, both because of the incest that produced it but also because both Pecola and Cholly were perceived as ugly.
The girls were surprised and angered by the response of the adults, and they felt sympathy for Pecola. Claudia thought of the baby as tucked away "in a dark, wet place, its head covered with great O's of wool, the black face holding, like nickels, two clean black eyes, the flared nose, kissing thick lips, and the living, breathing silk of black skin” (190)—everything the blue-eyed and blonde-haired dolls and white girls of the world were not.
The girls were convinced that their judgment was the right one and that the adult's reactions to Pecola were accepted only because the adults were bigger.
The girls decided to intercede with God on Pecola and her baby's behalf by praying and giving up the money earned from the sale of the flower seeds. They agreed to bury the money. When the seeds bloomed, the girls would know that it was a sign God would listen to their prayers and allow Pecola's baby to live.
The second section of "Summer" is preceded by lines from the Dick and Jane primer in which Jane sees a friend approaching, one who will "PLAYAGOODGAME" (193) with Jane. These lines are also written in all capital letters without intervening punctuation or spaces.
“Summer,” Section 2 Summary
The second section of "Summer" is in the form of a dialogue between Pecola and a voice in her head. The voice ridicules Pecola for continually looking at her blue eyes in a hand-mirror. Pecola accuses the people around her of ignoring her because they are jealous of her blue eyes. Pecola even accuses the voice of being jealous of her blue eyes, but then asks the voice for reassurance that her blue eyes are "truly, bluely, nice" (194).
Pecola tells the voice that Mrs. Breedlove ignores her these days and has ever since the day she got the blue eyes. The voice speculates that perhaps it is because she misses Cholly, but Pecola finds this puzzling since Cholly was always drunk and would constantly beat Mrs. Breedlove. The voice says it must be love since Cholly was constantly having sex with Mrs. Breedlove.
Pecola scoffs at this idea and points out that Cholly probably made Mrs. Breedlove have sex with him. When the voice teases Pecola by pointing out that Cholly made Pecola have sex as well, first in the kitchen and a second time on the family's couch, Pecola becomes upset. Pecola did not bother to tell Mrs. Breedlove about the second sexual assault because she knew Mrs. Breedlove would not believe her this time either. The assault was "horrible" (200), and Pecola finally insists that the voice stop needling her about it.
Pecola then turns to asking the voice for reassurance that her blue eyes are prettier and bluer than those of all the white girls she knows and those of the characters in her storybooks. Pecola becomes so worried that there may well be someone with "the bluest eyes"(203) and that her eyes may not be blue enough after all. When the voice threatens to leave, Pecola gets her to stay by promising that she will go get the bluest eyes. The voice goes away for a little while.
Claudia resumes the narration. Pecola's baby was premature and died shortly after birth. The adults looked away when they saw Pecola, and the children ridiculed her. Pecola descended into complete mental instability and spent her days walking up and down the street talking to herself. Claudia and Frieda avoided Pecola because they believed "they had failed her" (205), a conclusion they reached because the marigolds they planted failed to bloom.
In the end, Sammy ran away, Cholly "died in the workhouse"(205), and Mrs. Breedlove carried on working for her white family. Mrs. Breedlove moved Pecola to a house on the edge of Lorain's garbage dump, a fitting place given how the town treated Pecola. Pecola became the repository for all the unloved and hated aspects of the black community in which she lived. This was a "fantasy" (205), one that concealed the frailties of each black person in Lorain. Pecola was insulated from the contempt and hatred of the community because she was too mentally ill to notice. People grew accustomed to and bored by her. No one ever truly loved Pecola. Cholly's love was "fatal" because "[l]ove is never any better than the lover" (206).
In the present, when Claudia sees Pecola picking through the garbage dump, she tells herself that Pecola's fate was not her fault, that all of the marigolds failed to bloom that year. It was the soil itself that killed the flowers because "[c]ertain seeds it will not nurture, certain fruit it will not bear, and when the land kills of its own volition, we acquiesce and say the victim had no rights to live” (206). Claudia knows this conclusion to be wrong, but knowing it makes no difference in the life of Pecola.
“Summer” Analysis
Claudia remarks at the start of the novel that the story she recounts is one that is designed to answer the question of "why. But since why is difficult to handle, one must take refuge in how"(4). The "Summer" section of the novel explores multiple reasons for why and how Pecola is psychologically destroyed by the end of the narrative. The resolution of the novel reveals that in every instance, the adults in Pecola's life, including Lorain’s black community, and the whole of American culture conspired to destroy her and people like her.
The role of Pauline and Cholly in Pecola's downfall is straightforward. Cholly raped his daughter; Pauline blamed her daughter for the rape to such an extent the Pecola did not bother to tell her mother when Cholly raped her a second time. Other adults also bear some culpability. Although early in the novel Pecola is aware of the difference between the objective reality of the world (the dandelions she observes as she walks to buy Mary Jane candy are evidence of this ability) and her subjective experience of the world, Soaphead Church's decision to trick her into poisoning Bob the dog leads her to believe that the impossible is possible. At a crucial moment in her life, the one adult to whom she applies for help fails her.
Morrison widens the circle of culpability to the entire black community of Lorain, however. Claudia and Frieda are made painfully aware of the lack of compassion of the community as they listen to the adults in their lives discuss the Breedlove family with titillation instead of compassion. Claudia concludes at the end of the narrative that this lack of compassion was only possible because the act of rejecting Pecola and her family served as a form of othering that helped to constitute the identities of the black inhabitants of Lorain as respectable and whole. Pecola was excluded from school once her pregnancy became obvious, and the relegation of the family to the town dump shows that the response of the community in the end is to engage in further devaluation of Pecola.
The outermost ring of the circle of culpability is American culture at large. As she reflects on Pecola's fate at the end of the novel, Claudia says that at the time she thought "the land of the entire country was hostile to marigolds that year," whereas the community maintained that to the land, "[c]ertain seeds it will not nurture, certain fruit it will not bear, and when the land kills of its own volition, we acquiesce and say the victim had no right to live” (206). Claudia draws parallels between the marigolds and Pecola, the soil and the anti-woman, anti-child, anti-black culture that served as the context for Pecola's life. Although Pecola is just the most extreme example of the consequences of this hostile culture, Claudia's own evolution from repulsion, to shame, to love when confronted with Eurocentric notions of beauty that value whiteness and proximity to whiteness show that she is also a victim.
Morrison has Claudia reject attempts to naturalize the destruction of Pecola and the Breedloves. Claudia concludes that the soil, not the marigold seeds, were responsible for the failure of the flowers to bloom. The soil in this case comprises adults, Lorain’s black community, and American culture, and the ending serves a powerful indictment of these groups for their failure to protect Pecola.
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