In the 1940s African American girls aspired to be white or were encouraged to be white. This unorthodox novel was dealing with the hardship through the main character and protagonist Pecola Bleedlove. Imagine being a poor pre-teenage African American girl living in a small old town in Ohio. You are abused, beat and mistreated. Your own father even attempts to burn your house down. You are having to live with other families because there is nowhere else to go.
   Claudia and Frieda take a girl in with a troubled life named Pecola. Pecola is a young African American girl who is abused and neglected. Pecola believes that if she had blue eyes she would be loved and her life would be different. Throughout the novel the struggle and hardship is revealed by young Pecola Bleedlove.
   I felt as if this novel was one of the more interesting books I have read in my lifetime. It is a great piece of literature but has very detailed descriptions on inappropriate scenes and they people who are thinking of reading this novel should be prepared for the vivid disturbing scenes. For example on page 174 it states “He further limited his interests to little girls. They were usually manageable…His sexuality was anything but lewd; his patronage of little girls smacked of innocence and was associated in him mind with cleanliness” The descriptions get worse than this at times but it will be spread though the novel.Bad descriptions don’t mean a bad piece. A great example of this is on page 46 “ It occurred to Pecola sometime ago that if her eyes, those eyes that held pictures and knew the sights of hers were different, that is to say, beautiful, she herself would be different”. African American girls during the 1940s were encouraged to aspire to be white. Pecola and the other African American girls grew up in a society that does not find them beautiful. They refer to the pretty white girls often and don’t realize they are pretty too.
Pecola is a character whose circumstances and fate are disturbing and even depressing to the reader. If you can get over a few detailed descriptions than you should defiantly read the book. A teen like myself was not a huge fan of the story but it was a very good piece of literature