The Burnt Joke

When an author writes about three experienced women (be that sexual, chronological AKA senile, or intellectual capacities or other forms of experience), an allusion to the three fates is often present.

The three whores who live above Pecola's home, China, Poland, and Miss Marie represent those three fates. They each have their own personality. Their shared humor inspired by years of experience together gives them an eeriness comparable only with that of one who knows enough pain to last an eternity. That is, enough pain to become a joke. Their humorous experiences entertain them in a way that makes them bearable. "They abused their visitors with a scorn grown mechanical from use. Black men, white men, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, Jews, Poles, whatever—all were inadequate and weak, all came under jaundiced eyes and were the recipients of their disinterested wrath" (56). We could even say that "these women hated men, all men, without shame, apology, or discrimination" (56), and that each recount of how they cheated them describes how they slit their string of life. Their eternal toil that forces them to live together becomes unbearable and comic, as we see in this depiction from the Disney cartoon, Hercules.

Regarding the idea I mentioned in my previous blog, we see that Pecola's ignorance remains untainted by the whores' witty comments, or their very obvious profession. Pecola doesn't seem to grasp the implications of such employment. She didn't even know what "mininstratin'" (27) was. On one hand, she asks profound questions, like "how do you get somebody to love you" (32)? This is the type of enviable objective thought some children use to perceive reality. The contrasting figures of the three experienced fates, with that of the innocent Pecola, creates polarized characters. The interaction between the two is definitely interesting to read.