Who is Cholly in The Bluest Eye?
Pecola’s father, Cholly is a violent and severely damaged man. From a young age Cholly has been free—his mother left him on a trash heap as an infant, and his caretaker dies when he is an adolescent—but his freedom is both isolating and dangerous, allowing him to commit heinous acts without remorse.
What does Cholly Breedlove represent?
Cholly represents a negative form of freedom. He is not free to love and be loved or to enjoy full dignity, but he is free to have sex and fight and even kill; he is free to be indifferent to death.
What does Sammy want Mrs. Breedlove to do to Cholly?
Breedlove and Cholly need each other—she needs him to reinforce her identity as a martyr and to give shape to an otherwise dreary life, and he needs to take out a lifetime of hurt upon her. When Cholly was young, two white men once caught having sex with a girl.
What does the narrator mean by the phrase quiet as it’s kept on the first page of the prologue?
“Quiet as it’s kept” means “Nobody talks about this — it’s sort of a secret between us . . .” She seems to be confiding to us what was whispered about years ago.
Why did Cholly Breedlove burn down his house?
The county places Pecola with the MacTeers because her father, Cholly, burned their house down. Claudia explains that Cholly put the family “outdoors”, which is different than being homeless and seen as a great sin by the community.
Why did Cholly Breedlove go to jail?
Cholly goes to Macon to search for his real father. The man he thinks is his father rejects him and goes to a crap game. Cholly runs away, and cries. He kills three men and goes to prison.
Why does Cholly hate Darlene in The Bluest Eye?
We learn that Cholly hated Darlene only because his subconscious knew that directing his hatred towards the white men would have consumed him, and while having an explanation does not make the action any less inexcusable, we are told the emotions and thoughts that lead him to rape his own daugther.
Why does Mrs. Breedlove stay with Cholly?
Cholly’s immorality allows her to feel superior and self-righteous, and those are the feeling on which she props herself up, on which she survives. Likewise, Cholly stays with Mrs. Breedlove because he needs someone to unload the hatred instilled in him as a boy by two racist men.
Where does Mrs. Breedlove work in The Bluest Eye?
She joins the church and becomes the family breadwinner, securing a job with the Fishers, a wealthy family who appreciate her good work. She loves her work because it allows her to make things beautiful and orderly. She begins to neglect her own house and family.
Is The Bluest Eye Based on a true story?
The story was in part true; it was based on a conversation with a childhood friend who wanted blue eyes. “Implicit in her desire,” Morrison observed, “was racial self-loathing.” The soon-to-be author wondered how her friend had internalized society’s racist beauty standards at such a young age.
Why was The Bluest Eye written?
Morrison said that she wrote “The Bluest Eye” because she wanted to read it. She began the book in 1965, when she was thirty-four years old. She had majored in English at Howard University, after which she did her M.A. at Cornell.