This section begins with the madness of words run together, describing a pretty green and white house where two ideal white children, Dick and Jane, play. Dick and Jane are happy and their house is pretty. And then the words PRETTYPRETTYPRETTYP suddenly break off, and we are faced with the bleak, colorless, abandoned storefront building where Pecola lives. It stands in startling contrast to the pretty green and white house where the idealized white family lives.
Pecola's house is definitely not pretty; in fact, it is the neighborhood eyesore. The narrator says that it "festers." The building once had life — food was baked here, and gypsy girls occasionally flirted from its open, teasing windows. Now, however, all sense of life has long since drained from it. There is not even a sustained sense of life in the coal stove, which flares and dies erratically.
