Taking Refuge in “How:” Dissecting the Motives Behind Cholly’s Rape in The Bluest Eye

Undergraduate Review Volume 6 Article 25 2010 Taking Refuge in “How:” Dissecting the Motives Behind Cholly’s Rape in The Bluest Eye Rebecca Andrews Follow this and additional works at: http://vc.bridgew.edu/undergrad_rev Part of the Modern Literature Commons Recommended Citation Andrews, Rebecca (2010). Taking Refuge in “How:” Dissecting the Motives Behind Cholly’s Rape in The Bluest Eye. Undergraduate Review, 6, 140-143. Available at: http://vc.bridgew.edu/undergrad_rev/vol6/iss1/25 This item is available as part of Virtual Commons, the open-access institutional repository of Bridgewater State University, Bridgewater, Massachusetts. Copyright © 2010 Rebecca Andrews Taking Refuge in “How:” Dissecting the Motives Behind Cholly’s Rape in The Bluest Eye REBECCA ANDREWS Rebecca is a senior at Bridgewater State College with a double major in Elementary Education and English. The following piece was mentored by Dr. Kimberley Chabot-Davis; it was originally written for the Recent American Fiction course. After graduation, Rebecca plans to attend graduate school and pursue a career in education. M ost parents see parts of themselves in their children. They see their own familiar eyes, their sense of humor, and their long legs. Parents desire to nurture their child’s every hope and dream, and also want to raise their children in a safe and secure environment. However, what if a father saw in his daughter everything that he hated in himself? What if this same father never learned to love in a nurturing way from his own parents? The effects would be devastating. Toni Morrison examines such a scenario in her 1970 novel The Bluest Eye through the rape Pecola by her father Cholly Breedlove. The incestuous rape is nearly impossible for a reader to comprehend. While literary critics have postulated that the rape is the soul product of Cholly’s desolate past or an expression of his hatred of women, I argue that Cholly is giving his daughter the only form of love he knows how to express and is simultaneously abusing the image of himself as a child that Pecola embodies. To better understand Cholly’s action of raping his own daughter, it is important for the reader to acknowledge his past. Since he was abandoned by both parents, Cholly did not grow up in an environment where he was successfully nurtured. His father skipped town when he found out that he had impregnated Cholly’s mother, who then abandoned Cholly in a trash pile soon after he was born. Cholly was left to be raised by his elderly Aunt Jimmy. Although Aunt Jimmy genuinely cared for him, he had difficulty connecting to her as a real parent. He even thinks as a child that “when she made him sleep with her for warmth in winter and he could see her old wrinkled breasts sagging in her nightgown ---then he wondered whether it would have been just as well to have died [in the trash]” (Morrison 132). If Cholly really saw her as a legitimate parent, then he would enjoy sharing a bed with her in winter. Sharing a bed with a parent is generally a pleasant memory for most children. Conversely, Morrison makes this moment between Cholly and Aunt Jimmy uncomfortable and loveless. Since Aunt Jimmy raised Cholly since birth, it would be expected that he would view her as his parent; however, his disgust of sharing a bed with her proves otherwise. Cholly is also affected by his nonexistent relationship with his birth mother. Aunt Jimmy openly tells Cholly that “[his] mama didn’t name [him] nothing. That nine days wasn’t up before she throwed [him] on the junk heap” (Morrison 133). After this incident, Cholly “didn’t ask anything else” (Morrison 133). It is clear from this reaction that Cholly is bothered by the fact that both 140 • THE UNDERGRADUATE REVIEW • 2010 BRIDGEWATER STATE COLLEGE of his parents abandoned him; he chooses never to ask more questions about his parents. Cholly understands from a young age that a parent/child relationship is not necessarily one that is filled with love. Cholly’s first example of parenting was to be left nameless in a “junk heap,” and then later to be coldly reminded of it by his surrogate mother (Morrison 133). Cholly was not offered any example to show him how to foster a healthy and successful relationship between a parent and child. By looking through Cholly’s past, the reader should not be surprised that he is a broken man. Cholly was sent into the adult world with so little to prepare him for interpersonal relations. In the article “Failures of Love: Female Initiation in the Novels of Toni Morrison,” the critic Bakerman persuasively describes Cholly as being “set adrift by the death of his guardian, taunted and humiliated by white men during his first sexual encounter, […Because he] does not know about nurturing love, and feeling love, he is incapable of expressing it healthfully” (544). As people grow and mature, it is essential for them to have lessons on how to relate to others. Cholly never learned from a parent how to be a parent, and he did not learn from a first lover how to love. With so little to guide him, it is no surprise that this lack of nurturing love would catch up with him in a devastating way. However, his past is not enough to explain how he comes to rape his own daughter. Other aspects of the story, like Cholly’s relationship with sex, and his feelings about his daughter Pecola, must be examined. As Cholly grows older, he finds an outlet to express his affection for someone: sex. Yet Cholly’s experiences with sex are still flawed. During his first sexual experience with a girl, Darlene, he is interrupted by two white men who make him continue to have sex and climax while they watch. This situation is extremely damaging for both Cholly and the girl. However, Cholly does not focus his anger and feelings of injustice on the intruders, but instead he chooses to focus them on Darlene. While he is having sex with her in front of the men, he “looked at Darlene. He hated her. He almost wished he could do it–long, hard, and painfully, he hated her so much” (Morrison 148). Even after the men leave, the seething hatred for Darlene lingers. When “Darlene [does] not move… Cholly want[s] to strangle her” (Morrison 149). From this experience, Cholly learns that there is another emotion that can be expressed through sex: anger. After Cholly is married to Pauline, he eventually loses his ability to make love to her; instead “most times he’s thrashing away inside [Pauline] before she’s woke, and through when [she] is” (Morrison 131). This is significant because it demonstrates that even with his wife, whom he should both love and enjoy having sex with, he is no longer able to express himself in a sexually healthy BRIDGEWATER STATE COLLEGE manner. The only way he knows how to express his affections is through sex, and his selfish approach to it shows proves that he is losing this ability. Sex is becoming a one sided experience for Cholly. He can express his love for Pauline physically, but he l (...truncated)