Quotes from the bluest eye:

Prompt: Explore how race or ethnicity contributes to tension or conflict in the work you have
studied.

1. “The distaste must be for her, her blackness. All things in here are flux and anticipation.
But her blackness is static and dread. And it is the blackness that accounts for, that
creates, the vacuum edged with distaste in white eyes.”

2. She had explained to him the difference between colored people and niggers. They were
easily identifiable. Colored people were neat and quiet; niggers were dirty and loud.

3. Sullen, irritable, he cultivated his hatred of Darlene. Never did he once consider directing
his hatred toward the hunters. Such an emotion would have destroyed him. They were
big, white, armed men. He was small, black, helpless.

4. Frieda and she had a long conversation about how cu-ute Shirley Temple was. I couldn't

join them in their adoration because I hated Shirley. (1.1.35)

5. Occasionally an item provoked a physical reaction: an increase of acid irritation in the

upper intestinal tract, a light flush of perspiration at the back of the neck....The sofa, for
example. It had been purchased new, but the fabric had split straight across the back by
the time it was delivered. (1.2.6)

6. It had occurred to Pecola some time ago that if her eyes...were different, that is to say,
beautiful, she herself would be different."

7. They hold their behind in for fear of a sway too free; when they wear lipstick, they never
cover the entire mouth for fear of lips too thick, and they worry, worry, worry about the
edges of their hair.

8. This disrupter of seasons was a new girl in school named Maureen Peal. A high-yellow
dream child with long brown hair braided into two lynch ropes that hung down her back.
She was rich, at least by our standards, as rich as the richest of white girls, swaddled in
comfort and care. The quality of her clothes threatened to derange Frieda and me.