Introduction:
Cholly Breedlove in the novel The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison is portrayed as a deeply complex figure, acting as both a victim of systemic racism and traumatic abandonment, and a perpetrator of atrocious violence. Morrison presents him not merely as a villain, but as a man whose inability to handle power or love leads to the destruction of his daughter, Pecola.
Tony Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye” is an untraditional novel having no plot of traditional nature. The whole story rotates round an ordinary man named Cholly who later on rapes his own daughter named Pecola. But before passing any judgement on Cholly’s character we ought to study the circumstances in which this man has passed his life.
Cholly’s Unfortunate Childhood:
Toni Morrison tells about Cholly Breedlove’s childhood almost in the middle of the story under the section Spring. When Cholly was four days old, his mother wrapped him in two blankets and one newspaper and placed him on a junk heap by the railroad. His Great Aunt Jimmy, who had seen her niece carrying a bundle out of the back door, rescued him. She beats his mother with a razor strap and wouldn’t let her near the baby after that. Aunt Jimmy raised Cholly herself, but took delight sometimes in telling him of how she had saved him. He gathered from her that his mother wasn’t right in the head. But he never had a chance to find out, because she ran away shortly after the razor strap, and no one had heard of her since. It may be concluded that she was a mad woman. Cholly was graceful for having been saved by the efforts of Aunt Jimmy.
He had four years of school before he got courage enough to ask his aunt who and where his father was.
“That Fuller boy, I believe it was,” his aunt said. “He was hanging around then, but he taken off pretty quick before you was born. I think he gone to Macon. Him or his brother. Maybe both. I hear old man Fuller say something about it once.”
“What name he have?” asked Cholly.
“Fuller, Foolish.”
“I mean what his given name?”
“Oh.” She closed her eyes to think, and sighed. “Can’t recollect nothing no more. Sam was it? Yeh Samuel. No. No. it wasn’t. It was Samson. Samson Fuller.”
But she too does not survive long and dies leaving Chólly alone in the wide wild world.
Cholly’s Early Sexual Experience:
The first female face that ever attracts Cholly is of the midwife M’ Dear who comes to treat ill aunt Jimmy. M’ Dear’s treatment gives strength to Jimmy but Cholly has a wet-dream. One night in his sleep his hands reach between his thighs. In a dream his penis becomes a stick and M’ Dear’s hands rub it. Later on, he has an intercourse with Darlene. By chance two men with a torch come there and laugh at him. Cholly feels as if his body were paralysed. Then after it he fails in copulation with her. He fears he is impotent but the three women at Macon recognize his manhood and he too feels that he is potent.
Cholly’s Attempt to have Parental Affection:
Great Aunt Jimmy is dead. Poor Cholly decides to meet his father. To arrange for the fare, he works as a domestic servant and reach Macon. He does not know his father. His Aunt Jimmy had told him that Samson Fuller was his father. Macon is not a big city. Cholly enquires about him. An old man guides him. When Cholly meets his father, he fails in giving his identity. His father refuses to accept him. It breaks Cholly’s heart. He goes to a river bank and puts off his clothes. He weeps bitterly. Now he has none of his own in the world.
Beginning of A New Life of Crime and Sex:
In this disappointing background Cholly begins a new life. He knows nothing about affection and protection provided by the father. He has no experience of mother’s love as well. He has recognised only one goes relationship and that is of sexual union. He feels every girl is ever willing to be fucked. This feeling is strengthened when three women call him. He to where they are. Inside it is dark and warm. They give him something to drink. They give him back his manhood. Now Cholly is free, dangerously free. He is too free to feel fear, guilt, shame, grief and pity. He is free to take a job as well as to leave it. He has already killed three white men. He is too free to take a woman’s insults. He is free to be gentle when she falls sick. When he is in jail, the jailor’s wife takes interest in him. He has to satisfy her when he visits her for domestic work.
Cholly’s Romantic Attitude (Meeting with Pauline Williams):
It is in this godlike state of utter freedom that he meets Pauline Williams. He marries her but it disappoints him that she does not provide any variety. To be required to sleep with the same woman is a curious and unnatural idea to him. When he meets Pauline in Kentucky, she is hanging over a fence scratching herself with a broken foot. The neatness, the charm the joy he awakens in her makes him want to live with her. Nothing else interests him now.
Pauline is recognised for the first time by anyone and Cholly has got a positive response from someone for the first time. It takes no time in coming together. They are attracted to each other and united.
Pauline and Cholly love each other. He loves her company and talking about her foot. He tries to prove that Pauline has no imperfection. For the first time in her life, she has felt that she is not invalid.
Cholly’s Happy Married Life:
Cholly touches Pauline firmly but gently. He is very kind and lively. They agree to marry and go to north where workers are in demand. They are young, loving and full of energy when they reach Lorain, Ohio. Cholly works in the Steel Mill and Pauline keeps the house. Cholly loves Pauline and she too waits for him to have that experience of perfect love.
Cholly’s Disappointment:
Cholly becomes a drunkard. His wife Pauline earns. He tries to dominate her by physical assault. She responds. For one day he refuses to bring coal. Pauline asks for that again and again. Pauline takes a hard step and throws cold water on Cholly’s face. He leaps from the bed all naked to hold his wife. He knocks her down. She takes support of Sammy’s bed and begins to hit at Cholly’s thighs. He puts his foot in her chest and hits hard in her face. By chance his hand hits Sammy’s bed. Sammy begins to hit his father calling him a naked fuck. When Cholly is unconscious, she throws a quilt on him. Sammy cries to kill him. Cholly begins to hate his wife and children and one day tries to burn the house. He is jailed.
Cholly’s Mental State:
Cholly’s whole life is passed in an abnormal way. He has no experience of father’s love. When he tried to be familiar to his father, he got rebukes. In a way the feeling of love was absent in Aunt Jimmy also. Her behaviour towards Cholly was inspired more by pity than affection. Cholly has got love only from his beloved wife Pauline but she too with the passing of time has grown fed up of him. She is devoted to her masters more than to her husband and children.
Cholly’s son Sammy has no respect for him and beats him like a beast. Now Sammy is young and Cholly old. Besides it, Cholly has weakened himself by drinking in excess. He has a daughter Pecola but he does not feel any affection or responsibility towards her. He has no idea how to behave with children.
Cholly-As a Rapist:
It is a Sunday afternoon. Cholly comes home in a drunken state. Pecola is working in the kitchen. She is washing dishes. Her small back is towards Cholly. It is difficult to tell what he sees in her or what he feels. But he feels upset. Suddenly his discomfort dissolves into pleasure. He thinks why she looks so worried. She is a child and she has no burden. She should look happy. His misery is responsible for it. Either he should get rid of misery or this girl. He wishes to break her neck. But then his mind passes through a conflict between guilt and impotence. He can do nothing for her. He can give nothing to his eleven-year-old daughter. She is washing a frying pan. Her hands are going around and around the pan. By chance she scratches her foot with the toe in the manner in which Cholly had found Pauline in his first meeting with her.
Cholly remembers how attractive Pauline was looking leaning over a fence. Her creamy toe was scratching her velvet ieg. He remembers how affectionately he had kissed her leg and she had showered a treasure of love on him. He forgets that Pauline is not there. He fails to mark that his own daughter Pecola is there.
Cholly bends his knees and looks at the foot of his daughter. He raises his hand and catches the foot in such a way that her balance is lost. Pecola falls but Cholly supports her hips with the other to save her from falling on the ground. His mouth trembles at the firm sweetness of her flesh. He closes eyes. His fingers dig into her waist. He feels excited and a bolt of desire runs down his genitals, giving it length, and softening the lips of his anus. He wants to fuck her-tenderly. But the tightness of her vagina is more than he can bear. He makes gigantic thrusts into her. Removing himself from her so painful to him, he cuts it short and snatches his genitals out of her dry harbour of vagina. She appears to have fainted. He hates her too much to pick up. His tenderness forces him to cover her. It is a great misery that he rapes her again when she is reading on the couch. She is pregnant and gives birth to a child. She grows insane.
Conclusion:
Thus, Cholly becomes neither a good husband nor a good father. We may say that he fails in living like a man. He is a deprived creature but his case forces us to think where he went astray. If his mother was inclined to throw him on the railroad from where Aunt Jimmy took him, it was his fate for which he was not responsible. If he got preference anywhere it was for his manhood. He developed a psychology that the best thing he can give to please others specially women folk is sexual enjoyment. He did it for his daughter also. He did not succeed perfectly in the first attempt; hence he tried again and made her pregnant. It is to be marked that he became normal when Pauline loved him. It is perhaps the want of love for him that turns Cholly into a filthy beast.