Pecola Breedlove's mind is preoccupied by the idea of whiteness. This idea was originally gained from her mother, Pauline, who envisions everything good in the world to have blonde hair and blue eyes, therefore setting a white scenario in her home. It is here in the "white" home, that Pauline takes the new identity, Polly. She separates from her self, physically, and enters into a world of the white person, where she forgets her family, characterized by disorder, and blackness (ugliness). She sees the "white" world with vivid colors, while she sees the "black" world, where she comes from, in plain ugly black and white. In her "black" world, she sees no possibility of order or color. She found a substitute for her family, a substitute that will bring the colors back into her life. The real damage to her family lies within the "white" world. It is from this world, that Pecola obtains her desire for "the bluest eyes".
             Pecola is bombarded with visions of blonde children with bright blue eyes. Shirley Temple and Jean Harlow in movies; the figure of a little blonde Mary Jane, on the candy she eats, and the blonde baby dolls she receives as gifts, are all ways of reinforcing the stereotype of beauty and goodness that a black child could never hope to achieve. This dilemma is offset by the attention received from loving parents, but this is a love of support that was never present in Pecola's life.
             Pecola was not capable of understanding that perfection does not lie within the white world she so desperately wanted to enter. She is also unaware that she is not a part of this world. Unlike Claudia, Pecola does not have the family support to draw strength from and realize her own black identity. She gets no positive input from her parents because they are trying to realize their own identities. This lack of parental support causes Pecola to, "search painfully for self-esteem as a means of imposing order on the chaos of her w...