;s interaction with the white shopkeeper who has little patience and less affection for her is very important. The present tense narration gives the scene a kind of timelessness, suggesting that it is a model for all of Pecola’s interactions with others. Eye imagery pervades the scene, as the shopkeeper cannot “see” Pecola. To see her would be to see her as a person, to encounter her subjectivity. To him, Pecola is nothing, and Pecola in turn can see in his eyes that she means nothing to him. She is practically invisible in this store. Moments like this reinforces Pecola’s conviction that she is hideous: she will never learn to see her own beauty, in part because no one else will show it to her. In one scene Pecola passes a patch of dandelions as she walks into Mr. Yacobowski's store. "Why, she wonders, do people call them weeds? She thought they were pretty" (47). Yet after suffering the embarrassment of Mr. Yacobowski's vacuous, shame inducing stare the faint glimmer of happiness she experiences in seeing the dandelion is destroyed. When she leaves and passes the dandelion again she thinks, "They are ugly. They are weeds" (50). She has unloaded society’s dislike of her to the dandelions. Ironically Pecola is often discriminated against by people of her own race. At Junior’s house, Pecola was brutally attacked by Junior, another black child. He punched her, and threw the black cat in her face out of hatred. Once again here, Pecola is the victim of other black’s cruelty. Morrison suggests that hatred of blackness often comes from other blacks. The moment when Geraldine, another black woman, looks into Pecola’s eyes is an interesting passage to compare to the passage in which Pecola buys candy from Mr. Yacobowski. Unlike the white shopkeeper, Geraldine does see something in Pecola’s eyes, although what she sees fills her with revulsion and fear. She sees in Pe...
