Pecola is the eleven-year-old black girl around whom the story revolves. She is abused by almost everyone in the novel and eventually suffers two traumatic rapes. Pecola's experiences, however, are not typical of all black girls who also have to grow up in a hostile society.
Except for Claudia and Frieda, Pecola has no friends. She is ridiculed by most of the other children and is insulted and tormented by black schoolboys because of her dark skin and coarse features. She realizes that no one — except Claudia and Frieda — will play with her, socialize with her, or be seen with her. She is raped by her drunken father and self-deceived into believing that God has miraculously given her the blue eyes that she prayed for. She loses her baby, and shortly afterward she loses her sanity.
All little black girls try to grow up into healthy women with positive self-images — despite the fact that white society seems to value and love only little girls with blue eyes, yellow hair, and pink skin. Today, most black girls survive the onslaught of white media messages, but even today, some fail. Pecola, a little black girl in the 1940s, does not survive. She is the "broken-winged bird that cannot fly."
