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Bluest Eye Essay: Nurture Shapes Personality

979 Words4 Pages

Nurture Shapes Personality The novel The Bluest Eye, takes place at the end of the Great Depression. The Breedlove is a troubled black family who lives in Ohio. Cholly Breedlove, the father, grew up in harsh conditions. Four days after he is born his mother abandons him and leaves him to die. Fortunately Cholly’s Great Aunt saves him. She dies when he is young and when he is with one of his older cousins he tries to impress him by finding girls to hang out with. When they meet up with two girls Cholly had sex for the first time. While he was having sex two hunters who happen to be white watched and made him continue while they watched. Cholly pretended to finish but he was ashamed. After this he goes and finds his father where he gets rejected. He beats women and killed three white men and felt indifferent about all of it. He then meets Pauline and marries her because she is innocent and sweet. What Pauline does not know is that he is going to ruin her life. …show more content…

They have a child named Pecola and Cholly rapes her and impregnates her. Cholly ruins Pecola’s life and she attempts to run away. Cholly rapes Pecola for a second time and then he runs away and dies in a workplace. Pecola goes crazy and all she wants is blue eyes to regain her innocence. After a while she believes that she has the bluest eyes. In this case Cholly had both a bad childhood in the sense of nurture and nature. The nature side of his personality is from things that are genetic. The nurture part of his personality is from his upbringing by his aunt. Cholly obviously had cruel parents as they abandoned him on the side of the road. This ties into the way Cholly is a cruel human. Cholly also has some traumatic events occur in his life such as being watched while he had sex. This is a very different reason Cholly is cruel. Personality is based more on nurture than

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