When Pecola Breedlove in Toni Morrison's "The Bluest Eye" "walks down Garden Avenue to a small grocery store which sells penny candy", she pays attention to "the familiar and therefore loved images" that she passes – in particular, the "dandelions at the base of the telephone pole." When she then "wonders [why] people call them weeds", she may be projecting the ostracism she experiences in her community onto the flowers, but she also asserts her own epistemic agency: "She thought they were pretty." Further, as flowers "whose white heads, last fall, she had blown away" to make a wish, dandelions are also figures for wishes, such as Pecola's prayer for blue eyes. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 17 March 2021)
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