Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors
used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.
The House
The novel begins with a sentence from a Dick-and-Jane
narrative: “Here is the house.” Homes not only indicate socioeconomic
status in this novel, but they also symbolize the emotional situations
and values of the characters who inhabit them. The Breedlove apartment
is miserable and decrepit, suffering from Mrs. Breedlove’s preference
for her employer’s home over her own and symbolizing the misery
of the Breedlove family. The MacTeer house is drafty and dark, but
it is carefully tended by Mrs. MacTeer and, according to Claudia,
filled with love, symbolizing that family’s comparative cohesion.
Bluest Eye(s)
To Pecola, blue eyes symbolize the beauty and happiness
that she associates with the white, middle-class world. They also
come to symbolize her own blindness, for she gains blue eyes only
at the cost of her sanity. The “bluest” eye could also mean the
saddest eye. Furthermore, eye puns on I, in
the sense that the novel’s title uses the singular form of the noun
(instead of The Bluest Eyes) to express many of
the characters’ sad isolation.
The Marigolds
Claudia and Frieda associate marigolds with the safety
and well-being of Pecola’s baby. Their ceremonial offering of money
and the remaining unsold marigold seeds represents an honest sacrifice
on their part. They believe that if the marigolds they have planted
grow, then Pecola’s baby will be all right. More generally, marigolds
represent the constant renewal of nature. In Pecola’s case, this
cycle of renewal is perverted by her father’s rape of her.
