In the summer, Claudia and Frieda travel around the neighborhood selling seed packets in the hopes of earning money for a new bicycle. While in the homes of the townspeople, they hear rumors about Pecola. They hear that the girl’s father impregnated her. The women of the community gossip about why Cholly would do such a thing, about whether the baby will live, about whether Pecola is to blame, and about how ugly the child will be. Some doubt the baby will live because of how harshly Pauline has beaten Pecola during the pregnancy. Cholly has run off, convincing the community that he has been insane all along. People reflect on how little they know of the Breedloves, who “don’t seem to have no people.” 

Claudia hopes fiercely that the baby will live, to counteract the power of white baby dolls and girls like Maureen. Claudia and Frieda try to take matters into their own hands by burying the money they’ve made thus far and planting the remaining seeds they haven’t sold. They vow to watch them closely and will them to bloom into something miraculous. 

Meanwhile, Pecola bickers with her own reflection in the mirror, a sort of imaginary friend; she imagines that she has blue eyes. Pecola and her imaginary friend debate what they should do, and blue-eyed Pecola comments that Mrs. Breedlove hasn’t looked at her in the same way since she got her new eyes (though it’s the fact that she was impregnated by Cholly that changed her mother’s feelings toward her). The imaginary friend tells Pecola that she cannot be popular because she doesn’t go to school and no one, not even Mrs. Breedlove, will talk to her. 

Pecola and her imaginary friend debate whether she let Cholly rape her, and the reader learns that Cholly actually raped her more than once. Pecola tried to confide in her mother, but Pauline did not believe her. Pecola’s brother has also left, like Cholly. The conversation devolves into a discussion about how blue her eyes are and whether they are bluer than the sky and bluer than those of other girls. After feeling rejected by the friend, Pecola claims she will get even bluer eyes, “the bluest eyes” possible. 

The baby is born premature and dies. Claudia says that she and Frieda see Pecola only occasionally after that. The girl has become the subject of ridicule and gossip in the community. The MacTeer girls avoid Pecola because they are ashamed they could not help her: their flowers never blossomed. Over time, Sammy leaves town for good, Cholly dies on the job, and Mrs. Breedlove continues to perform domestic work. 

Pecola becomes a scapegoat for all of the community’s ills. In contrast to Pecola, others can feel beautiful, eloquent, and strong. Claudia knows, though, that the feeling of superiority is only a mirage. In reality, the community is neither compassionate nor good, and its mistreatment and ostracization of Pecola proves that fact. Pecola, on the other hand, went mad, and one small advantage of her mental state is that she is unaware of how others view her. Claudia wonders if anyone, including herself, ever really loved Pecola. The love of Pecola’s father “was fatal” because he was a “wicked” person. 

Claudia closes the novel by musing on how the conditions in their community were “hostile to marigolds” and how certain kinds of seeds cannot thrive there. Now it is too late to change that, just as it is too late to save Pecola.