The Yellow and Pink Girl (108)

"Another door opened, and in walked a little girl, smaller and younger than all of us. She wore a pink sunback dress and pink fluffy bedroom slippers with two bunny ears pointed up from the tips. Her hair was corn yellow and bound in a thick ribbon. When she saw us, fear danced across hr face for a second. She looked anxiously around the kitchen.

"Where's Polly?" she asked.

The familiar violence rose in me. Her calling Mrs. Breedlove Polly, when even Pecola called her mother Mrs. Breedlove, seemed reason enough to scratch her."

The progression of description and thought in this passage is representative of Claudia's feelings in her effort to be socially acceptable. Like Shirley Temple, this pink and yellow girl represents perfection and the fascination with perfect, innocent, Dick and Jane white kids. First Claudia describes the little girl with a slight reverence for her perfect ribbons and fluff. She has seen how society is obsessed with these types, and she tries to play along. Tries to find a reason for the greatness, to stop her hate. But then the violent response. The passage is demonstrative of her "adjustment without improvement" (Morrison 23). She feigns love but it just makes her hate them more.