Cholelly Rapes Pecola Essay

Pecola evaluated herself ugly, and wanted to have a pair of blue eyes so that every problem could be solved. Pecola was an African-American and lived in a family with problems. Her father ran away because of crime, her brother left because of their fighting parents, and was discriminated simply because she has dark-skin. Pecola is a passive person. She is almost destroyed because of her violent father, Cholly Breedlove, who raped her own daughter after drinking. Because of this, Pecola kept thinking about her goal- to reach the standard of beauty. However, she was never satisfied with it. Pecola believed once she become beautiful, fighting between her parents would no longer happen, her brother would come back, and her father would no long be a rapist. No problem would exist anymore.

As a child, he was not loved by his mother. She prefered her cat to her own son. Junior saw this at an early age and “spent some happy moments watching it suffer” (86). Junior locked Pecola in a room, becoming the perpetrator with the same turn of attitude as Cholly. When he saw that the cat liked Pecola, he threw the cat, killing it, because the thing his mother loved more than himself loved her. Pecola’s wish could be paralleled to the cat. It had blue eyes, and was loved dearly by someone, which could explain the attention she gave to the cat. Junior even said, “Gimme my cat! (90). Up to this point, he wanted nothing to do with the cat and even tortured it, but with it being the only connection to his mother, he called it his own. Pecola’s dream, or having the same attention as the cat, was killed when the cat was killed. Junior was not loved by his mother, only taken care of to live. She did not “allow her baby, Junior, to cry…[she] did not talk to him, coo to him, or indulge him in kissing bouts” (86). This unlove for her family caused Junior to be victimized, and then alter his ways, and become the perpetrator. Pecola is the victim in the rage of Junior, only because his mother did not love him. She wanted someone to be kind to her, and love her, but that was only met with

In the third chapter of The Bluest Eye, entitled "Autumn", Toni Morrison focuses on Pecola's family, the Breedloves. Morrison goes in depth about the family dynamic of the Breedloves and how it affects Pecola and her self-image. The passage starts after one of many arguments between Cholly and Mrs. Breedlove, Pecola's parents, turns violent. Mrs. Breedlove wants Cholly to fetch some coal from the outside shed. Cholly spent the last night drinking and does not want to get out of bed. The passage begins with the children becoming aware of the argument. Mrs. Breedlove starts to hit him with cooking pans while Cholly mostly used his feet and teeth. After the fight is over Mrs. Breedlove just lets Cholly lie on the ground and she goes about her

What Janie’s grandma experienced was not warm, caring love. Getting love was the worst thing to ever happen to Nanny. The child conceived by the horrific effects of the rape, Leafy, was also sexually assaulted at a young age. One day Nanny explains to Janie, “But one day she didn’t come home at de usual time and Ah waited and waited, but she never come home all dat night… De next mornin’ she came crawlin’ in her hands and knees… Dat school teacher had done hid her in the woods all night long, and he had donerped muhbaby and run on off just before day” (Hurston 18). This shows that someone as sensitive as your first love and virginity can be the worst thing to ever happen to a little girl. Leafy gave birth to Janie and left the newborn with her mother, Nanny, to live the rest of her life drinking away the pain. When Nanny explains how Janie’s mother left it further highlights the idea of love being the worst tragedy in one’s life. The rape left Janie’s mother absolutely broken, to the point she could not raise the child. Janie never met her mother and never got the love she wanted from her maternal mom. The love and sexual interest the Crawford women hoped to get wasn’t what they

Cholly Breedlove, foreign to the idea of the unconditional love a parent provides, was rejected by both his parents. His mother left him on the side of a railroad as an infant and his father, already being absent from the time of his birth, told Cholly, after he has completed in journey in finding his father, to leave because his mother already received money for Cholly’s birth. A parent’s responsibility is to provide the guidance

Women berate other women for the loss of their virginity, whether it be by choice or not. When Pecola is raped and impregnated by her father, no one barring Frieda and Claudia are concerned. This upsets Claudia due to the fact that “...our sorrow was more intense because no one would share it. They were disgusted, amused, shocked, outraged or even excited by the story” (Morrison 190). There are no comforting words for a girl violated by her father, only criticism and isolation.

After his great aunt's death, he is humiliated by two white men while having his first sexual encounter with Darlene. They force him to continue having sex with her while they watch and laugh. He couldn't strike back at the white men because, "such an emotion would have destroyed him" (150), he bottled up his emotions and transferred them to his hatred of women in general. The reader could feel and understand Cholly's description of the emotions running through his head when he describes the incident a day after. He could not save Darlene from the taunting and laughs of the white men, and therefore was resigned to loathing her, hating "the one who had created the situation, the one who bore witness to his failure, his impotence" (151).

The speaker now knows that his father’s acts were examples of fatherly love and he cherishes it. As a child, he never would have known what his father’s actions meant. “What did I know,what did I know of love’s austere and lonely

Cholly Breedlove grew up in a loveless environment where he was abandoned and left on a junk heap by his own mother. As a child he never knew his father, meeting him only when he was fourteen. His father never cared about him. Cholly was raised by a great aunt who loved him but, he did not respect her. Cholly quit school and went to work at a grain store where he met Blue, a kindly older man who was a father figure to him. For the first time in his life, Cholly felt the love of a father. Soon after his great aunt died just as Cholly was coming into puberty. At her funeral he met a young woman named Darlene, whom he had his first sexual experience. However it wasn't a pleasurable experience because two white men found them and forced them to

The bond between a mother and child is often spoken of as being unlike any other. Yet there are always exceptions to the rule where this connection isn 't as impenetrable as one might assume. This book is an example of this bond gradually becoming weaker over time. It shows how it affects the child, Bone, and leaves her vulnerable to the abuse of her step-father. Bone’s mother, Anney, had fallen in love with a man who abused her which at first, she’s unaware but eventually comes to realize but still chooses to stay with him. Throughout the book there are instances of Anney’s negligence in recognizing her daughter’s abuse and being of aid to her but wasn 't. In having to deal with her

Pauline eventually meets Cholly, who is Pecola’s biological father, and they fall in love. "He seemed to relish her company and even to enjoy her country ways and lack of knowledge about city things. He talked with her about her foot and asked, when they walked through the town or in the fields, if she were tired. Instead of ignoring her infirmity, pretending it was not there, he made it seem like something special and endearing. For the first time Pauline felt that her bad foot was an asset. And he did touch her, firmly but gently, just as she had dreamed. But minus the gloom of setting suns and lonely river banks. She was secure and grateful; he was kind and lively. She had not known there was so much laughter in the world." (Morrison, p. 115)

The problem about Cholly is that he has seen in his daughter everything he has hated in himself. When he abuses, rapes, and destroys her innocence, he abuses and hurts himself as a helpless man whom his little child embodies. Considering his past, Cholly's rape of his daughter makes more sense. Pecola represents Cholly as a child. She is an ugly little helpless girl who is rejected by everyone.

Pauline’s loss of a tooth destroys her chances of achieving her perception of white beauty, as shown through her obsession with looking like Jean Harlow, ultimately forcing Pecola to search for her own beauty to achieve the acceptance she was unable to receive because of her mother’s lack of love. During her pregnancy, Pauline’s loneliness contributed to her focusing her life on movies for entertainment because Cholly began to resist her total dependence on him by not being home as often. The movies, however, introduced her to the ideas of romantic love and physical beauty. After living a life attached to movies, “she was never able..to look at a face and not assign it some category in the scale of absolute beauty” (122). The importance of

The thirst for evil that Cholly Breedlove obtains in his adolescent life at the hand of Blue Jack, and the hatred towards women he gains in his teenage years from Darlene, come together later in his adult life, and lead up to Cholly raping his daughter, Pecola. A thirst for evil held by Cholly Breedlove forms when he and Blue Jack ate the heart of a watermelon at a Fourth of July picnic, at which Cholly witnesses a demonic scene making Cholly prefer the devil over God. Cholly, sitting on the ground at the picnic, looks up to a man holding a watermelon above his head, and thinks to himself, “It must be the devil who looks like that–holding the world in his hands, ready to dash it to the ground and spill the red guts so niggers could eat the sweet, warm insides. If the devil did look like that, Cholly preferred him”

Second, Cholly’s lack of a mother, and abusive father leave him with the inability to understand love or how to love. Being only four days old, Cholly had no chance of surviving when his mother abandoned him, but was saved by his great aunt Jimmy. Cholly grows up with Jimmy, but finds himself alone again when his aunt dies while he’s still only a teenager. In hope that Cholly can escape his lonely life, he heads out on a journey to find his father who left before he was born. Consequently, Cholly finds his father, but when trying to speak with him is mistaken for a money collector and is belligerently cussed out by his father, Fuller. As a result Cholly stumbles away and finds himself “pulling every nerve and muscle into service to stop the