the Importance of Candy

I have read exactly forty four pages in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye. This means, in having read only a third of the book, that I have only gotten a beginning sense of what is to come or of how the stories within the book will unfold. I know, because it is mentioned in the beginning, that Pecola Breedlove will go on to have her father’s child, and I know a little about the home life of Frieda and Claudie, but aside from that I have only a very narrow sense of what is happening in the book. The one thing that did stand out to me in first forty pages, however, was the idea that Pecola’s ugliness lies in her being black. The scene in the book that stood out to me the most was when Pecola goes to the store and buys a candy called Mary Janes. Pecola’s love for the candy lies just as much in the appealing wrapping the candy comes in. It seemed, to me, that as much as the taste of the candy itself, Pecola enjoyed eating something that was packaged in something that looked so “pretty” (white, blonde hair, blue eyes.) Pecola’s spending money on a Mary Jane candy seems to point to Pecola’s desire to look like the little girl on the front of the package more than anything else.

Pecola’s family had, “…small eyes set closely together under narrow foreheads… low, irregular hair lines, which seemed even more irregular in contrast to the straight, heavy eyebrows which nearly met. Keen but crooked noses, with insolent nostrils. They had high cheekbones, and their ears turned forward…” (28) Pecola’s “ugly” features only add to the fact that she is black, which during this time, was still considered by mainstream (white) American society to be uglier than white. So because Pecola is not only “ugly” but also black, people (she believes) regard her as unimportant and even worthless. Her entire sense of being is wrapped up in her unimportant identity. On the other hand, Mary Jane ( the girl on the wrapper who the candy is named after) is described as, “Smiling white face. Blond hair in gentle disarray, blue eyes looking at her out of a world of clean comfort… to Pecola they are simply pretty.” (38) Mary Jane represents the opposite of Pecola. She is young, pretty and white (therefore carefree.) In buying and eating the candy, Pecola gets to have a piece of that girl inside of her, she gets to be that little white girl for a brief moment.

I’m excited/scared to see how this theme of develops later on in the book. The fact that Pecola only feels important/worthwhile/happy when she is eating a piece of candy with a little white girl on the wrapper is beyond heartbreaking. The idea of a little girl having to wish to be something entirely different than she is, or to look the exact opposite of what she does, will no doubt play a large role in Pecola’s growing identity as she ages and is forced to reevaluate her life as a pregnant teen.