Beginning of Essay
The Breedlove family has moved from the rural south to urban Lorain, Ohio, and the displacement, in addition to grinding work conditions and poverty, contributes to the family's dysfunction. Told from the perspectives of the adolescent sisters, Claudia and Frieda ....

Middle of Essay
.... Jane reader. Much as Pecola's world falls apart in the novel, the Dick & Jane passages, repeated three times, degenerate into formless, meaningless print: "seemothermotherisverynice." The object of scorn for her "ugliness" from her family and acquaintances, Pecola yearns to become beautiful and, (she thinks) as a result of her beauty, loveable. That beauty is strictly defined by white and unattainable standards; however, a Shirley Temple mug and Mary Jane candies become the emblems of that for which Pecola yearns. The same racism that underpins the standards of beauty under which Pecola and her mother, Pauline, suffer, is also at the root of Pecola's ....