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How Does Pecola's Character Change Throughout The Novel

729 Words3 Pages

However, as the incidents go on, Pecola is turned instead into a mad little girl. Being raped by her father and becoming pregnant has destroyed all her hopes of becoming beautiful in the eyes of her society. She is totally ruined after this accident that she has become crazy. Thus, this is the life of a little black girl who is the victim of a white-dominated culture that has set the standards of beauty regardless of anything. Cholly Breedlove is one of the major characters who helps to bring about the dilemma in The Bluest Eye. He is a helpless, hopeless, miserable, powerless black man who has suffered from humiliation and contempt throughout his life, so he impulsively destroys his family and his daughter's life. In order …show more content…

However, what happened is that cholly ''had not hated the white men ; he hated, despised, the girl" (42). He has seen his helpless weak self in his partner, Darlene. He has hated himself and the girl. He ''looked at Darlene . He hated her.'' He wanted ''to strangle her'' when she could not move after the men leave. Instead of feeling sympathy towards the poor girl, he has hated her so much because he has seen himself in her. He has never considered'' directing his hatred toward the hunters. Such an emotion would have destroyed him. They were big, white, armed men. He was small, black, helpless. His subconscious knew what his conscious mind did not guess- that hating them would have burned him up like a piece of soft coal, leaving only flakes of ash and a question mark of smoke'' (150). In the article'' failures of Love: Female Initiation in the Novels of Toni Morrison, the literary critic Bakerman 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). In other words, Cholly has found it really difficult to express love or any feeling because he has not been nurtured to do so and he has never found anyone to teach him to do so

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