[SAMPLE PAPER]

[HERE YOU MUST INCLUDE SUMMARY OF PLOT in a maximum of 6 lines]

The Bluest Eye depicts a world in which there is a strong division between beauty and ugliness. In fact, the

division occurs between white people, who have the exclusiveness of beauty, and black people, who have
Comentario [U1]: It is
assumed the ugliness they have been attributed and, as a consequence, they lack a sense of self-esteem. important to have a CLEAR and
SPECIFIC thesis
Comentario [U2]: When you
Pecola Breedlove belongs to the latter group. She sees how cute white girls are treated in a different want to underscore a specific
word or phrase, you use italics.
way. Her lack of self-esteem leads her to believe that by having blue eyes—being beautiful according to

white standards—everything will change: “It had occurred to Pecola some time ago that if (…) those eyes of

hers were different, that is to say, beautiful, she herself would be different” (40). She has seen so much

violence and misery around her through her brown eyes that, in order to be happy, they would have to

change. She feels that only if that miracle happened she could be loved and, therefore, she would be able to

love herself. Thrown into the binding conviction that only a miracle could relieve her, she would never know

beauty. She would see only what there was to see through “the eyes of other people” (40).

The Breedloves are considered ugly people by the rest of society and even by themselves, and it s
Comentario [U3]: The whole
this conviction of their inferiority that prevents them from getting out of the terrible situation in which they essay remains connected to the
main idea presented on the thesis
(the lack of self-esteem).
live: “You looked at them and wondered why they were so ugly; you looked closely and could not find the

source. Then you realized that it came from conviction, their conviction” (34). Pecola has been shown in so

many ways that she is worth almost nothing that she herself believes that she does not deserve anything

better than an alcoholic father capable of raping his own daughter: “As long as she looked the way she did,

as long as she was ugly, she would have to stay with these people. Somehow she belonged to them” (p. 39).

Mrs. Breedlove is also actually quite responsible for her daughter’s lack of self-confidence. She has

inculcated Pecola with “a fear of life”(102). Although she had promised herself that she would love her

daughter “no matter what she looked like” (98), she cannot avoid thinking that Pecola is ugly. Since the day

she was born Pecola has not received any love. We can see this lack of love when she asks Frieda: “How do

you do that? I mean, how do you get somebody to love you?” (29). In that society, black girls are despised

while everybody is fond of girls like Maureen Peal—white and with blue eyes.

At the end, and as a consequence of her lack of self-esteem, Pecola goes mad and thinks she has got

her desired blue eyes: “No one else will see her blue eyes. But she will. And she will live happily ever after”

(143). This happiness is caused by her madness, which becomes the only way for her to escape from reality.
Comentario [U4]: It is also
fundamental to write a specif
Pecola is bound to have a tragic ending because she does not fit in a world in which even God is a “nice old conclusion that ties up everything
else and is connected to what you
white man” with “little blue eyes” (106). stated in your thesis