"Father of mine, tell me where have you been? You know I just closed my eyes, and my whole world disappeared." These are words sung by the singer Art Alexakis of the band Everclear. Alexakis grows up and experiences life without a father to guide him. Although Alexakis becomes a successful musician, he lives his life with a void left by his father. Toni Morrison presents an extreme view of life without a father in The Bluest Eye. His incapability of showing love and feeling are shown through his interaction with those closest to him: his wife and children.
In order to truly understand Cholly's interaction with others, one must see the circumstances of his childhood. Cholly, never having a father figure himself, learns only from negative experiences in his life. A specific event that helped shape his attitude and effect on others was his first sexual experience. When Cholly sees Darlene at his Aunt Jimmy's funeral, his first impression of her is an innocent attraction. As their relationship transpires in a matter of hours, Cholly has his first sexual experience. However, the event becomes flawed when two white men find them in the woods. In his helplessness, Cholly's hatred for the white men becomes a hatred for Darlene.
Cholly, moving faster, looked at Darlene. He hated her. He almost wished he could do it - hard, long, and painfully, he hated her so much. The flashlight wormed its way into his guts and turned the sweet taste of muscadine into rotten fetid bile. He stared at Darlene's hands covering her face in the moon and lamplight. They looked like baby claws. (Morrison 148)
Later, Cholly finds that he has reason to believe that Darlene is pregnant. Left with the impression that his father left soon after he was born, Cholly decides to run away to Macon to find his father. Cholly's impression of his father is validated by the indifference his father showed to him. His father says, "Something wrong with your head? Who told you to come after me?" (Morrison 156) At this point, Cholly feels helpless, confused, and scared. Startled that his father would choose gambling over his own son, Cholly froze in his tracks.
...aVaughn a story about a blind lady, Jolly’s point is that you have to be careful with who you trust and that you can’t change your past. Plus, LaVaughn states,“I suddenly see the sign of her life: Nobody told me.” She also understands that Jolly didn’t get herself into her mess. Jolly learns from LaVaughn how to prioritize and that getting an education was a good idea. Jolly becomes more dedicated and responsible after she goes to school and it made her life easier. Jolly and LaVaughn may have diverse personalities, but they still learned something from each other.
Darl is the most complex character in the novel, and so his sections reflect a mind that contemplates the hardships of life. He is expressive and insightful specifically when he describes his night outings to drink water from a bucket. William J. Handy further explains, “the intention of the imagery is not to describe a Mississippi boy’s pleasure in drinking water on a hot summer night. Rather the passage means to objectify the strange quality of the boy’s sensibility.” Darl has the ability to perceive and sense everything, which is why he tends to be the narrator throughout most of the novel. Tull recalls the intensity of his stare, “he is looking at me. He dont say nothing; just looks at me with them queer eyes of hisn that makes folks talk. I always say it aint never been what he done so much or said or anything so much as how he looks at you” (125). Through others, Darl is perceived as an eccentric
The major characters in The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison were Pecola Breedlove, Cholly Breedlove, Claudia Mac...
The evidence is overwhelming; from his abusive mother and father, to the influence of Karl Marx on his life, to his admiration of Machiavelli. I think that these are the reasons behind Joseph Stalin’s reign of terror because it has been proven that children who grow up in an abusive household tend to become later in life, and because Marxism was a very popular idea at that time. I also believe Marxist beliefs had an impact because, to an abused farm boy, Marxism could appeal to him. I still hold firm to my claim that the reason that when we think of Joseph Stalin's Reign of Terror, we think of one of the most disgusting and horrifying crimes in all of human history, is because of his brutal childhood in rural Georgia, and his complete belief in various Marxist
... other children in the family. He is just mad that Jewel got most of the attention that he felt that he deserved. Darl feels like he got cheated. Darl resents his mother for not loving him as much as Jewel. All he wanted was acceptance and love, which he never got. It may have even driven him crazy. Jewel doesn’t show outward emotions, like Darl, so he may have even thought that Jewel didn’t appreciate the love his mother gave him. It probably made him even more upset that he probably didn’t show her affection back. In one chapter, he even states that he doesn’t have a mom; he says “I haven’t got ere one… Because if I had one, it is was. And if it was was, it can’t be is” (101). Darl’s relationship to Dewey Dale is also very awkward. Neither of them really talk about their feelings toward one another, although Darl is the only one who knows Dewey Dale is pregnant.
We don't meet the vulnerable Cholly at the opening of the book. What we first learn about him is that he burned down his house, and that he abuses his wife. Through Pauline's reflections, we learn how loving Cholly was and how much they loved each other. It is not until later in the novel that we begin to learn about his childhood, and all the humiliating and terrorizing experience he has had.
The “bads” certainly outweigh the “goods” in his situation. Thus, the reader ought not to feel sympathy for Cholly. But, Morrison presents information about Cholly in such a way that it mandates sympathy from her reader. This depiction of Cholly as a man of freedom and the victim of awful happenings is wrong because it evokes sympathy for a man who does not deserve it.
Helene was raised by her grandmother because she mother was a prostitute in the New Orleans. When Helene has a family of her own, she refuses to make her background be known. Helene raises Nel with fear because she doesn’t want her to have the lifestyle she grew up in. Helene controls Nel’s life and makes her see the world how it is. Nel and her mother go on a train to New Orleans to attend the funeral for her great grandmother. On the train, Nel witnessed racial situation between her mother and the white conductor. “Pulling Nel by the arm, she pressed herself and her daughter into the foot space in front of a wooden seat… at least no reason that anyone could understand, certainly no reason that Nel understood,” (21). Nel was very uncomfortable throughout the trip and wasn’t able to communicate with her mother because she never learned how to since her mother was not supportive of her. Nel views her mother very negatively for the way she raised her. Nel starts to determine her life and great her identity when she became friends with Sula. The effect of negative maternal interactions on an individual is explained by Diane Gillespie and Missy Dehn Kubitschek as they discuss
Using the murder of Dee Ann’s mother as a means to intertwine the lives of the characters together, Steve Yarbrough examines the nature of relationships in “The Rest of Her Life.” The relationships in the story take a turn after Dee Ann’s mother is killed, with characters seeking to act more on their own, creating distance between many relationships throughout the story. Independent lifestyles prevent emotional bonds that hold relationships together from forming, thus preventing the characters from maintaining healthy relationships. The dysfunctional relationship present between Dee Ann and Chuckie in “The Rest of Her Life” is the result of the characters ' desire for self-gratification.
Throughout the book, Dally does not care for his life too much, due to him constantly committing crimes and such. “I knew he would be dead, because Dallas Winston wanted to be dead and he always got what he wanted”(154). Finally, Dally has gotten what he wanted his whole life. The only view of life that he has, due to him thinking that he is not worth being alive. Dally does not see life as a good thing, but a dread similarly to Johnny’s thoughts on life. Johnny has wanted to die for most of his life. “‘I’ll kill myself or something’”(47). He believes life is not worth it for himself. Johnny thought that life does not matter and that if he kills himself then everything would be better. If Johnny lives in a better home, then he may not want to kill himself. Unlike before, Johnny and Dally are bonded by their
Rejected by his mother, Darl exhibited signs throughout the novel of an ego at odds with itself; lacking a definitive way of identifying himself. He demonstrated in his narratives detailed descriptions of events but rarely did he reveal any emotional attachment to his subjects. When they are trying to cross the flooded Yoknapatawpha River, Darl was useless in trying to save the wagon or Addie's coffin. Later, when they stayed at Gillespie's place, he set the barn on fire where Addie's coffin was, supposedly to end the journey with Addie's decomposing corpse.
Also, the purpose of the coffin serving as the symbol of the Bundrens' gratitude to Addie leads to the coffin's purpose of serving as the symbol of the family's instability. Darl, the most perceptive and observant one in the family, realizes that the coffin is causing the family to destruction and that the journey is absurd. Darl desperately tries to burn the coffin at Gillipsie's barn to properly cremate her and “so she can lay down her life.” After he fails, because of the Bundrens' dysfunction, they prioritize burying the coffin over Darl and have him sent to the mental institution instead since, “it was either send him to Jackson, or have Gillipsie sue (them).” Darl's act of burning the coffin for his gratitude for Addie leads to him falling into the instability of his family, in which he goes insane.
Cholly is introduced in the first chapter. He is the father of Pecola. Because of his actions, the whole family has been put out of their home. It was a miserable apartment, as ugly in appearance as the family. Except for Cholly. In his youth he had been big strong long limbed and full of his own fire. Now his behavior was his ugliness. Years of despair, dissipation and...
Portales, Marco. "Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye: Shirley Temple and Cholly." The Centennial Review Fall (1986): 496-506.
Darl, who narrates much of this first section, returns with Jewel a few days later, and the presence of buzzards over their house lets them know their mother is dead. On seeing this sign, Darl sardonically reassures Jewel, who is widely perceived as ungrateful and uncaring, that he can be sure his beloved horse is not dead. Addie has made Anse promise that she will be buried in the town of Jefferson, and though this request is a far more complicated proposition than burying her at home, Anse’s sense of obligation, combined with his desire to buy a set of false teeth, compels him to fulfill Addie’s dying wish.