The Desire for Beauty: A Result of Mortality

"A little black girl who wanted to rise up out of the pit of her blackness and see the world with blue eyes. His outrage grew and felt like power. For the first time he wished he could work miracles. Never before had he really wanted the true and holy power-only the powers to make others believe he had it. It seemed so sad, so frivolous, that mere mortality, not judgement, kept him from it."(Morrison 174)

A pedophilic misanthrope feels sympathy towards the “ugliest” person in the community.  At first, this relationship astonished me but I began to realize that the abnormal love resulted because of Soaphead’s distaste for “mortality”.  Morrison denotes mortality in this passage as not only meaning “human”, but also meaning our limited lifespans. Soaphead understands that it is our limited lifespans that cause us to cherish whatever beauty we experience. When he sees Pecola, he is outraged that the desire for beauty that characterizes humans has “infected” the epitome of innocence, a child. Wanting beauty is what adulterates an adult and ruins the innocence of a child. However, Soaphead doesn’t realize that the beauty is never satiated as shown by Pecola’s desire for “the bluest eyes in the entire world”. Morrison shows that the desire for beauty is inevitable just like growing up, yet Soaphead can’t comprehend why God corrupts people by giving them this desire.

The misanthrope also describes Pecola as being in a “pit of her blackness”. This illustration shows why after Pecola goes insane, she imitates a bird in an effort to try to escape from this pit and enter the world of white people. However, as the story progresses, she moves her arms less and less which shows that her dreams of escaping the pit are slowly being crushed.