The thought of separating the lighter skinned blacks like herself from darker skinned blacks consumes Geraldine. All of it stems from letting others determine one's value. Morrison is using one atypical African-American family to demonstrate what the effects could be of this phenomenon. She has deliberately created an extreme situation to prove a point. Nevertheless all the building blocks of the story exist in reality. All of the characters are affected to some degree, but Pecola succumbs to the difficulties she is facing. This was deliberate. Morrison wanted to show how the most unprotected member of society: a child; the most vulnerable member; is a female. Blue eyes are a metaphor that is easily understood. When Pecola wants blue eyes, she is really saying that she wants to escape her life and herself. She has defined herself only by her degree of blackness. Pecola and her family regard being a dark skinned black as synonymous with being ugly.
At only eleven years of age, the solution Pecola can find regarding the feeling of inferiority and worthlessness is acquiring the symbol of beauty in her community. Blue eyes are regarded as beautiful by all the characters, including mothers and children who unanimously admire Shirley Temple. Pecola is in a desperate situation. She is not appreciated and cared for by her family. Instead, she is subjected to neglect and sexual abuse. Furthermore Pecola has no other person or place where she is safe and valued. In the surrounding community she is subjected to considerable intra-racism both by grownups and her peers. All this adds up and Pecola is becoming more and more obsessed with her wish for blue eyes. The wish is made because she wants to escape her life and become something she is not. When Pecola is raped by her father and becomes pregnant by him, she goes insane and starts to imagine that she actually got blue eyes.
Pecola Breedlove is the central figure in "The Bluest Eye.