A Not-So-Pretty Flower
Isolated: In Need of a Hero?
When I was in elementary school, probably kindergarten or so, my teacher gave us a piece of paper with a flower on it. This flower was special, because each petal had a phrase on it that told you what color you should color it. There were phrases like 'your favorite color' and 'your hair color' and 'your mom's favorite color' and 'your eye color'. Each flower would turn out to be a rainbow of colors that uniquely described you.
I thought my flower was ugly.
It had two brown petals - one for eye color, one for hair color - right next two each other, which made my flower look like it was dead or dying. I remember wishing, like Pecola, that my eyes could be different, and that my flower, and my body, could be more beautiful. I didn't want my flower to be unique then, and the isolation I felt because of it (now, granted, this situation does not at all compare to the gravity of Pecola's) was a bit hurtful.
It is really this sense of isolation that destroys our self-esteem and thus our happiness the most. Dass notices how destructive this lack of unity can be, arguing that "the degree to which we believe ourselves to be individual, isolated entities has consequences for how we care for one another…a habit of self-protectiveness buried within may still hold us back" (Dass 22-23). Pecola is isolated by almost every person in her life, with no one willing to help her, even though she herself is often the victim of cruelty and mischief, rather than the cause. People in town look at her with "total absence of human recognition - the glazed separateness" (Morrison 48), and when she is impregnated by her own father against her will there are no "eyes creased with concern…only veils" (Morrison 190). Pecola reacts to the physical isolation forced upon her by others with a self-created mental isolation in the end. The saddest part is - how many people would notice the difference? Probably not many.
As much as Pecola was in need of a hero to save her from her isolation, she herself was a strange sort of hero to all of those around her. She herself became the solution to many people's problems. When Soaphead Church had a need to get rid of a dog and boost his own self-confidence about his ethically-questionable life, Pecola appeared and gave him the answer for both. When Junior needed an outlet to express "his hatred of his mother [indirectly through] the cat," he further misdirected his feelings by bullying Pecola, and eventually making it look like she had killed the cat (Morrison 86). All of the anger, fear, and hate felt by those around Pecola could not be taken out on the real objects of those emotions - like the decrepit dog, or Junior's mother - but Pecola, like Chetna mentioned, could be and was made to be the scapegoat. She was "the victim, whom, for their own sake, they were prepared to sacrifice to the flaming pit" (65). And because the people forced onto Pecola all the characteristics and emotions that they loathed in themselves, they pushed her away all the more, unwilling to be reminded that they themselves were tainted with the same sins. Pecola was, to an extent, a more modern-day Christ-figure. Just as with Jesus, "we esteemed him not. Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted" (Isaiah 53:4-5). Pecola was a sacrificial lamb - a hero for many, but where was her hero when she needed one?
