Cholly's Ambiguity

In the novel The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison presents the reader with the complex question—“Can those who have committed sinful atrocities ever achieve redemption or sympathy?” Through purposely structuring the novel to first introduce Cholly Breedlove as a despicable villain before providing the readers with Cholly’s backstory, Morrison responds to her own complicated inquiry of morality with ambiguity. Instead, her ambiguity encourages the readers to provide their own interpretation on if Cholly Breedlove’s endurance of neglect and racism during his early years warrants justification or sympathy for his abhorrent physical and sexual abuse of his family members. Morrison initially portrays Cholly as an abusive figurehead through foreshadowing

Therefore, the third-person point of view allows the description of Cholly’s ugliness and pettiness to adopt a more objective manner—similar to a neutral outsider describing a situation—reflecting an impartial view of Cholly’s behavior. Cholly’s eyes were also described as “red and menacing” and Cholly was said to possess the “meanest eyes in town,” reflecting his hostile personality (Morrison 40). Cholly’s contemptible behavior is also potent through his lack of familial responsibility. In addition to purposely burning down his own home and forcing his family members to end up outdoors—a shameful act which was described as being “beyond the reaches of human consideration” (Morrison 18)—Cholly’s abuse of his wife further reveals his lack of benevolence, even to his own family members. Cholly’s acts of domestic abuse were described as a frequent event, and Morrison provides an example of his horrid act through illustrating a scene when, in response to his wife’s slightest provocation, Cholly “leaped from the bed, and with a flying tackle, grabbed his wife around the

When Cholly oversaw his daughter’s silhouette in the kitchen, he worried about her situation and remarked, “Her back hunched that way; her head to one side as though crouching from a permanent and unrelieved blow. Why did she have to look so whipped? She was a child—unburdened—why wasn’t she happy” (Morrison 161). Cholly’s repeated observations shows Cholly’s concern for Pecola and his desperate wish to improve her circumstances. However, since Cholly did not grow up with parental figures, he was clueless on how to comfort his own daughter. His obliviousness of how to display familial affection is further illustrated through his recurrent questions, “What could he do for her—ever? What give her? What say to her? What could a burned-out black man say to the hunched back of his eleven-year-old daughter?” (Morrison 162). Therefore, in order to comfort Pecola, Cholly sought out his only known method of affection—sex. Instead of “the usual lust to part tight legs with his own,” his act of raping Pecola was out of mistakened “tenderness, a protectiveness. A desire to cover her foot with his hand and gently nibble away the itch from the calf with his teeth.” (Morrison 162). By portraying the rape of Pecola through the perspective of Cholly, Morrison reveals that the rape occurred due to Cholly’s