Pecola suffers a lot throughout this book. Her parents Pauline and Cholly Breedlove are the main reason in which she is damaged. Both her parents past were very tragic. Their past reflects the way they are and this is reflected in the broken relationship they have with Pecola. Cholly has  damage Pecola in a major way by raping her. However I want to talk about Pauline Breedlove relationship with her daughter and how much damage it brought to Pecola. Parents are suppose to have a secure relationship with  their child. This relationship helps the child learn to regulate emotions under stress and in difficult situations. It also helps the child boost up its own self confidence. Both Cholly and Pauline do the opposite of this. Cholly doesn’t have a secure relationship as it gets shattered by being violent and impregnating Pecola. Pauline in the other hand never had developed a secure relationship with Pecola. I felt as Pauline had good intentions with her daughter. However she leaves Pecola alone and distance herself with her family.

This all starts will Pauline herself, when bringing up her past Pauline mentions how much she dislikes how she looks. It started with a accidental injury “The wound left her with a crooked, artless foot that flopped when she walked-not a limp that would ..”(pg110). This accident is the beginning in which it breaks Pauline. This makes Pauline self esteem go down as she lets this accident take over her and she slowly starts feeling lonely. “He general feeling of separateness and unworthiness she blames on her foot” (pg111), she herself let her foot identify her. She felt ugly and isolated herself from others. Pauline own insecurities hurts her daughter relationship and the way in which Pecola thinks what beauty is.

The only thing that gave Pauline the feeling of living is being able to clean and organize. At a young age Pauline starts working as a maid for a white household, this provokes Pauline beauty standards even more. However it helps Pauline feel worthy, as she is needed to help around a house. “The stillness and isolation both calmed and energized her. She could arrange and clean without interruption…”(pg.112). This feeling of being energized and alive when she cleans will then take control of her and will destroy her relationship with Pecola. Since Pauline continues to work as maid when she gets older and has her kids.She starts to isolate herself with her own family, she spends more time in the white household then in her house. Her working in a white household also represents the different classes that many people think of when it comes to race. The white neighborhood is describe as clean and pretty and the black neighborhood is the opposite of it.

Pauline own insecurities also comes with her love of movies/film. Pauline idealizes the white actors since they are portrayed as the beauty standards. In some point in the book it mentions how she tried to dress like the white actors in the movie and act a certain way too, while chewing gum. This unfortunate event lead to her loosing a tooth which then made Pauline more insecure about herself. These ideologies that she is feeding herself then comes into play with how Pecola thinks. In the beginning it mentions how Pecola loves Shirley Temples as it references the love of hoping to hold blue eyes herself one day. Pecola just like her mother believes she is ugly and the only way too be up to beauty standards is have blue eyes.

Pauline  enforces Pecola to think having a dark skin is ugly and Pecola thinks to herself that everything happens to her because her skin color. That she rightfully deserves what she gets because of her fairly dark skin. Maureen is a example in which Pecola idealizes light skin color then her own as she mentions how pretty she is and how much wealthier she is.

Pauline damages Pecola self confidence as destroys her relationship with her as Pauline never once tries to get close with her family. Pauline renounced her own black family for the family of her white employer. Pecola then develops to be the spitting image as her mother. Wishing one day she have blue eyes and when that they comes she would be treated better.

 Pauline and Cholly are both fighting with their own demons. The way they are both reflect a spitting image on how Pecola thinks about herself and in no way are helping her change this mindset.

For many years and till this day our biggest challenge has always been using the terminology of race to describe one another. The question that is always ask in every important document… what is your race? I say why is it so important? Is race itself a form of racism? The stigma of always using race is a form of racism it puts this barrier to break down in what group of people you belong. At the end we are all humans.

“On Whiteness and The Racial Imaginary” The discussion of race is brought up and how it influences our everyday living. One major problem is the idea of being capable of writing about a certain race. Not only white writers but all writers in general do this. They write about a certain race and they put themselves in the characters shoes without having any real sense in how it feels to be part of that certain race they are writing about. “But it is also a mistake because our imaginations are creatures as limited as we ourselves are”(Rankine & Loffreda). Just like ourselves our imaginations have limits too. What gives writers the right to think that they are capable enough to write about a race only because it has been learned, heard, and seen. For example what gives white writers in particular the right to think they know how it feels to be a colored person when they have certain privileges. These privileges will built this fence on how the white writer writing will be influence on how they portray a person of color. Seeing that ones imagination is built in a position that illustrates their writing.

Everyone has a different perspective in life and it makes up these different scenarios in our imagination. We are only capable to write what we portray in our imagination as we create how it feels to be part of a certian race based on what we heard or seen. It’s not wrong to do this but it’s a problem. To be able to understand you need to experience it. “That what white artists might do is not imaginatively inhabit the other because that is their right as artists, but instead embody and examine the interior landscape that wishes to speak of rights, that wishes to move freely and unbounded across time, space, and lines of power, that wishes to inhabit whomever it chooses”(Rankine & Loffreda). The problem isn’t about writing in character of a color person is using our imagination to do so. Instead of relying so much on our imagination all writers should experience the race culture and like said embody that race.

However how much research can make our imagination right and form itself to not have limitation? Based on this article you can’t at the end of the day we are still stuck with the same problem. We all have different perspective in life and no matter what some races  will have more privileges then others. What can be said is that it’s not a problem for a writer to illustrate a different color as long as they are aware that it isn’t 100% accurate and that this perspective is shaped by their imagination.