In the novel, The Bluest Eye, the Breedlove family were the most frowned upon and talked about family due in part to Cholly, the patriarch’s, violence toward his family. He quarreled and physically fought his wife habitually, successfully burned down their house and even fathered a stillborn with his own daughter. Some characters in the novel say that Cholly is just a crazy old drunk who doesn’t care about anyone and, since he is the only one causing all of the drama in his family, should be the one to blame for the chaos. Yet, Cholly had a very rough childhood filled with fear, hatred, and abandonment.
Also, his wife Polly’s behavior toward him may also play a huge part into his violent nature. The novel goes back into Cholly and Polly’s past to give readers a closer look at their backgrounds and to let the readers decide who or what is really to blame for the Breedlove’s horrible family lifestyle. The novel does not point the finger, it just highlight’s why certain people may be to blame. Cholly Breedlove‘s humiliating childhood memories and his own wife’s hatred towards him are the real culprits to the drama circulating the Breedlove family because Cholly does not know how to not let these things affect him.
Cholly Breedlove’s childhood in Georgia was far from perfect. Both his mother and father abandoned him as an infant so his great Aunt Jimmy took care of him until she died when Cholly was only fourteen. It was at this age when Cholly faced some humiliating encounters. “When he was still very young, Cholly had been surprised in some bushes by two white men while he was newly but earnestly engaged in eliciting sexual pleasure from a little country girl.
”(pg. 42) They not only surprised him, they shone a flashlight on him and stood there to watch him make love to the young girl.This experience must have been very traumatizing for Cholly because in order for him to let out his frustrations, he lashed out on his wife; “He poured out on her the sum of all his inarticulate fury and aborted desires. ”(pg. 42) Since the novel describes Cholly’s anger as “inarticulate’, it is revealing that Cholly has been harboring in his emotions for quite some time and never knew how to express his anger nonviolently.
Therefore, blame can be put on this memory and Cholly himself. When Cholly married his wife, Pauline, they were in love with each other.But, once they moved from Kentucky to Ohio, their relationship had started to suffer. Cholly went to work and sometimes would go out with his friends while Pauline stayed home all day keeping house and wanting desperately to fit in with the northern black women in Ohio. She wanted money for clothing so she could dress how they dressed, but Cholly wanted to keep his money so he could drink, thus the habitual quarrellings began. “Money became the focus of all their discussions, hers for clothes, his for drink.
”(pg 118) Even though Pauline got a job to support her shopping, she had to quit due to Cholly showing up drunk asking for money.Pauline was getting upset at the fact that she was losing teeth so anytime Cholly did something or said something wrong, Pauline would get highly upset. “More and more she neglected her house, her children, her man…” (pg. 127) Once Pauline joined a new church, this got even worse. “Mrs. Breedlove considered herself to be an upright Christian woman, burdened with a no-count man, whom God wanted her to punish.
”(ps. 42) If Cholly cam home drunk and didn’t argue with her when he got home, she would make sure to start an argument that very next morning.To deprive her of these fights was to deprive her of all the zest and reasonableness of life” (pg. 42) And they weren’t just arguments, they were full on fights. He, slapping her and she, hitting him with whatever was close. They argued so much their oldest child and only son, Sammy, ran away from home twenty-seven times.
She didn’t want her children to end up like their father so she put Cholly down any chance she could get; “…and felt she was fulfilling a mother’s role conscientiously when she pointed out their father’s faults to keep them from having them…” (pg. 28) Pauline’s actions toward her husband may have been one of the reasons why he set his house on fire. He might not have wanted to go home to her constant bickering.Also, Pauline may also be the reason why he raped his daughter, Pecola. Pecola had made subtle movements that reminded him of what his wife was doing the day he met her; “The timid, tucked-in look of the scratching toe- that was what Pauline was doing the first time he saw her in Kentucky” Again the novel does not state that Pauline is to blame, but it does elude the fact that she as some credit in her husbands actions.
This novel does not have a position on blame because it wnts the reader to use the information about the different characters and choose who they think is really to blame. Cholly Breedlove ended up dying as ‘the crazy man who tried to burn his family”. But maybe if those people would have taken a look into his life and, gotten to see how his wife had treated him, they may have thought twice before pointing the finger.
