The Breedlove family knows pain. They know their ugliness, too, and therefore they know loneliness, hardship, and misery. Their poverty envelops them in shame, forcing them to accept their defect. The Breedloves find the confinement of their poverty distressing, frustrating, and oftentimes infuriating. Thus, each Breedlove senses that he or she may never experience happiness.
In her novel The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison depicts the piteous state of the Breedlove's rented storefront apartment; specifically, she describes their sofa as a "hated ... piece of furniture" which "produces a fretful malaise" and "limits the delight of things not related to it" (37). Furthermore, Morrison mentions how "the fabric had split straight across the back by the time [the couch] was delivered" and how the Breedloves still had "to pay $4.80 a month" for the sofa with the "gaping chasm" (36). …
