Now that I finished the book, I guess I could say that the book is an example of bildungsroman. The characters that go through the maturing process are Frieda and Claudia. In the beginning, they were playful little girls who had so much more to learn and discover. By the end of the book, all those experiences that taught them different lessons helped them mature and comprehend more things. Pecola’s pregnancy had a great impact on them causing them to realize how foolish they were before. They claim “We had defended ourselves since memory against everything and everybody, considering all speech a code to be broken by us, and all gestures subject to careful analysis; we had become headstrong, devious and arrogant” (191). Their attempts to help Pecola, directly or indirectly, show their change significantly because they are not acting egocentrically as they did in the past.
For early teenage girls, what they had to go through was quite tough. However, it was worthy for them because it taught them valuable things. Their self-confidence and their ability to stand up for the right thing impacted their change as well as the experiences they had. Pecola, who experienced even more hardship, did not change so much but became more and more convinced that her life was a misery. I think Morrison uses the contrast between the two sisters and Pecola to show how a same experience can cause different consequences depending on the person.
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