When traumatizing events occur in a community, typically the people involved rally together for strength and resilience; in The Bluest Eye, the opposite scenario seems to occur. Nine-year-old, African-American, Pecola Breedlove is ostracized by her community after she is raped and impregnated by her own father. The community members not only turn against the child, but also actively hate her due to her blackness, ugliness, and her pregnancy, therefore destining Pecola and her child for ultimate failure. The community as a whole turns against the child in need, leaving only two young girls, Claudia and Frieda, to provide the necessary love and support for Pecola. Claudia and Frieda, however, are just as young and naïve as Pecola and therefore…show more content… Because the Breedloves were a low income, low class family, Pecola willingly assumes her community’s hatred as she sees it as justified. Pecola is treated as a social pariah in her community, with people regarding her as “’just nasty’” and more tragically people thinking that “’ [Pecola] be lucky if [the baby] don’t live. Bound to be the ugliest thing walking’” (189). The community members wishing the death of a child because of the child’s assumed appearance is a heartbreaking reality, a reality which is even more unsettling to Claudia and Frieda as “nobody else seemed to share” their sorrows and sympathies for Pecola. Instead of praying for the wellbeing of Pecola and the child, it became “the baby that everybody wanted dead” (190). This fact that people would wish death to a child because it would be ugly and a nuisance to the community is very confusing and unsettling to Claudia and Frieda. Race was one of the major features that set the young black children apart from what society told them they should strive to be. This standard of beauty was something that completely outraged Claudia especially, prompting her to decide that because the whole community hated and wished Pecola’s baby death only because it would be black and ugly, “[she] felt a need for someone to want the black baby to live – just to counteract the universal…show more content… Pecola’s madness seems justified in light of her circumstances, the community pressure and lack of support led to the ultimate and inevitable fall of both Pecola and her child. The novel opens with the entire story laid out for the reader, showing the reader that Pecola will only fail, which literally and figuratively fates her from the start (QUOTE). The reader throughout the novel only uncovers the reasons and truths behind Pecola’s tragic fall. Through inside look of family members and towns people’s lives, the fate of Pecola is seen as due to the community that surrounded her; a community that was inhabitable for the growth of Pecola. Pecola’s eventual demise characterized by her insanity as she believes she has blue eyes, is her way of coping and dealing with not only the loss of her child, but also destructive idea that Pecola believes that her situation could have been avoided if she measured up to the ideal standard of beauty. If the situation changed and Pecola had white skin and had blue eyes and therefore was considered beautiful, maybe the community