Morrison’s portrayal of Pecola’s mother, Pauline, initially stirs hatred and resentment in readers. It’s only until Spring do we find she felt neglected and ugly her entire life and then finally rescued when Cholly approaches her. It’s only after economic trouble does all her sadness come back. She has always  identified with being ugly and only for a small part of her life she doesn’t. This time would be when her and Cholly first got married and were still in love.

“He came, strutting right out of a Kentucky sun on the hottest day of the year. He came big, he came strong, he came with yellow eyes, flaring nostrils, and he came with own music.” (114) 

 Other than that she spent most of her self-reflection based on her color, economic status, home-town, and deformities. She finds pleasure in tidying up and movies, but these only aid to her superficial ideas of love and self-hatred. She always found cleaning and organizing as a personal interest to be liked. I believe because she felt secluded and shoved aside, even in her own family did she try to “fix” things and use that to be accepted. She goes so far to make it her profession and get ahead in life. Her movies also enable what her true definition of love is. Media morphs  Pauline into believing that true love revolves on money and skin-deep beauty, both of which she thinks she does not have much of. It was of these false ideas did she even fall in love with Cholly, for if she truly saw their dysfunction, she would not have considered his, “[firm] but [gentle],”(118) touch so valuable.

In a way, Cholly was her way of escaping her own self-immolation and simultaneously, the same entity to put her right back where she was as a younger girl. Pauline uses the abuse for the power she feels as a victim or a martyr, by “holding Cholly as a model of sin and failure,” (126-27) as she stays with him. She likes to go to church and come home to an abusive husband to accredit herself for being a good person. She never truly grows out of the narratives she created for herself as a child. Narratives with shallow and distorted ideals as its foundations. She uses these to daydream, and recreates them even as an adult. The same desires she had as a child, and never fulfilled, she finds as an adult. When she starts working for a family with money, and clothes, and food does this hunger get slightly fed. Her work then became her life, because it was the only place she had meaning, other than feeling ugly. When she worked she was, “queen of canned vegetables,” with “power, praise, and luxury.” (128) And when her shift ended she went back home to the store-front and the family she in turn neglected, and abused.

One of the most hard to read moments in the novel comes at the culmination of Cholly Breedlove’s story, which ends with Cholly raping his daughter, Pecola. This scene can feel like a slap of harsh reality to the face of the reader, because up until that point we are reading Cholly’s backstory, sympathizing with him, waiting for him to overcome the hardships of his environment, yet that ending shows he never truly overcomes any emotional hardship he faced. The ending shows that Cholly was completely destroyed by the hardships of his childhood. Instead of using them to develop into a better person, he is a victim of his own environment that turns into an abuser, a predator, which is unfortunately a reality of abuse and predatory behavior to this day.

Cholly’s story begins with the information that his mother left him out to die, and he was basically saved by his aunt. When he asks about his dad, his aunt gives him very little information, and his aunt dies when he is thirteen, leaving him virtually alone in the world with no real parental guidance. After the traumatizing interaction he has with the white boys that caught him having sex with Darlene and made fun of him, encouraging him to continue as they shined their flashlights at them, he runs away to find his father.  He travels a long way to find his father, just because he goes through this experience and has no one to turn to about it, he’s dwelling on his emotions and in that moment he needed a parent, he needed someone that he could turn to and talk about what happened to him. His father, though, throws money at him, and essentially makes it clear that he wants nothing to do with him. This cements the fact that Cholly had no real parental figure when he needed them the most, and it’s something that Morrison capitalizes on right before he rapes Pecola. She writes “had he not been alone since he was thirteen” then “he might have felt a stable connection between himself and the children” (pg 160-161). This suggests he’s unable to be a healthy parental figure to his children, he has no idea how to view his children as his children, because of the absence of parental figures in his childhood.

While Cholly’s relationship to his children is a product of his own relationship with his parents, I think it’s also important to note that Cholly’s relationship to women is also explored and his distorted view that is explored in his backstory aids to his ultimate predatory view of his daughter. After the altercation with the white men, Cholly is embarrassed and places all the hate he has towards Darlene and not the white men. He blames Darlene because she is “the one who bore witness to his failure”, “the one who had created the situation”, and “the one he had not been able to protect” (pg. 151). Cholly is embarrassed for Darlene seeing how powerless he is against the white men and also for not being able to protect himself or Darlene from them. The idea that he would feel obligated to protect Darlene, places himself above her, because she is a woman, but the white men’s appearance is a reminder to him that just as the woman is below him, he is below them. He doesn’t want to fight his oppressor, and instead would rather blame the person beneath him, the person he can have power over, the person he can oppress. So Cholly’s view of women can be defined by his unresolved emotions of this encounter and his anger that is incorrectly places at Darlene, his anger that will continue to dwell in him and fuel a hatred towards women. He uses women as a scapegoat for his own oppression and ultimately, in turns, becomes their oppressor.

The inclusion of Pauline and Cholly’s past is interesting, especially seeing how their experiences translate to Pecola’s perception of beauty. It feels like Morrison has created a scenario of intergenerational trauma, a passing on of pain and internalized disgust from parents to their offspring, kept alive through rituals of self-hatred and a deep yearning for what can never be theirs.

In The Bluest Eye, there’s a suffocating desire to become what one isn’t. We see the characters attempt this transformation through osmosis, acting, and other gestures. Pecola’s technique of trying to beautify herself comes in the form of consumption. In one scene, she drinks 3 quarts of milk from her Shirley Temple cup, an outrageous amount for a single person to finish in one sitting, and Ms. MacTeer spends all day ranting about it. Another instance of Pecola eating her desires: the Mary Jane candies wrapped with a picture of a little white girl with blonde hair and blue eyes whom they’re named after. Pecola says “to eat the candy is to somehow eat the eyes, eat Mary Jane. Love Mary Jane. Be Mary Jane.” This act of eating to Pecola is to somehow consume the creature itself, to become the desired. She prays to be the lovable little girl, the beautiful doll that Temple and Jane are.

Pauline’s desire to be beautiful is also something that consumes her and evidently this desire, as if transferable by blood, is passed on to Pecola. Pauline’s unhealthy obsession with beauty, with whiteness is seen in the period where Cholly begins to neglect her. Instead of consuming what she would like to be, Pauline imitates it. She often took herself out to the movies and obsessed over the gorgeous actors, two of them being Clarke Gable and Jean Harlow. Once she even attempted Harlow’s hairstyle to match her in the film, but after eating some candy, she loses her tooth and gives up, lets down her hair and accepts her “ugly.” Even before Cholly, before the films and attempts to be something she wasn’t, Pauline believed in her ugly. She blamed it on her bad foot. That was why she took such a liking to Cholly, he treated her special, in a good way, he was attentive to her and her leg. He was her ideal man, the man she dreamed of in her fantasies. After children, Pauline found a job at the place of her dreams. The family is like her movies come alive, her reality is different there. It almost feels like she’s playing house, storing, placing, fixing, and being praised for it.

The pining for whiteness and beauty is eased for Pauline as she starts work at her new location. She’s loved there, seen as essential. She gets to play a pivotal role in a white environment and life is different, is good for her now. She’s finally getting to play the role she saw on films and this eases her. The task to continue her yearning, her unending desire to be beautiful, white, precious is passed onto Pecola, who’s own mother looked at her and knew she was ugly.

Cholly Breedlove a young black man , was married to   Pauline Breedlove. In the course of his marriage he and his wife bore children. A son by the name of Sammy and a daughter call Peacola. They were a poor family, with their own private dramas and misery. One would say one has to learn to love themselves before they can love anyone. This sentiment can be said about Cholly and Pauline. These were two broken and lost individuals who seek to understand the feeling of love through each other. Instead of truly loving themselves first. This resulted in a toxic and hateful environment both for themselves and their children.

Cholly Breedlove at four days old was  abandoned by his mother on a junk heap. He was then taken in by is Great Aunt jimmy. Who raised him until he was fourteen. She was a nice woman who rescued him. However, never hesitated to remind him. Though Cholly was grateful he despised his situation. Cholly had no real understanding of love and what it meant to be loved. All he ever knew was the feeling of neglect, rejection and self hatred. In his quest to find himself  he started to ask about his father. He later came to understand that his father abandoned his mother before he was born.

In search for a father figure Cholly found interest in a wild man by the name of Blue Jack. Blue  was a old timer with crazy stories. He told Cholly about all his adventures and “how the black people hollered , cried and song. Stories about how a white man cut his wife head and buried her in the swamp( Morison).” He later then told cholly all his lustful encounters with women in his younger age. This fascinated cholly and he found great admiration in Blue. Having Blue as the closest male figure in his llife. Cholly went on to depicting the same lustful and aggressive nature.

Cholly encountered three women in his life that he felt affection for. These women were Darlene , his wife Pauline and daughter Peacola. Based on the novel Cholly seemed to be destructive in his nature when it came to being close to women around him. His first sexual encounter with Darlene exemplifies this. As they were caught  by two white men who forced him to continue having sex with Darlene. As they watched pervertedly , causing Cholly and Darlene to feel utterly shamed. Cholly targeted his anger towards Darlene who was very helpless in the situation. Instead of hating the men who subjected him to the act.  In the end Cholly decided to abandon Darlene at the thought that she might be pregnant. This was a repetition of what he knew as a child. He was rejected and abandoned  by the people who should love him. As fear makes him a coward so he retreats.

As the novel goes on, Cholly charms his wife Pauline sweeping her off her feet. However, as his responsibilities became real . He started to rebel resulting to aggressive sex,alcohol and abusing Pauline. Which seemed to be the only pleasures of his life. Cholly, seeking to find that sense of affection , acceptance and love, takes advantage of his young daughter Peacola. Then leaves her blacked out on the floor covered under a blanket. These scenes demonstrates Cholly’s confusion and fear. It reflected how childhood traumas can haunt you throughout your life.

Abandonment, and rejection is the most traumatizing experience a toddler could ever experience. Not having the warmth of a mother’s  bosom, or her loving tenderness. In my understanding left Cholly void of basic human empathy. Which is formed in the early developmental years of a child. There is just something about a mothers nurture that an old woman such as, Aunt jimmy could not substitute. Cholly, reflecting on the fact that he should have been left for death that day. Emphasize the darkness that dwelled in his heart . He  was a young man who thought he was unlovable. And didn’t know how to truly develop a healthy relationship with anyone close to him. Instead, he left people feeling as broken as he was . His character in the novel is truly sad . In addition, bearing the cross of being a black man. Along with seeing the devil as destructive, powerful and a reflection of  darkness. Signifying the way Cholly viewed his own self. So in the end he knew nothing good was expected of him. Therefore, he lived within that darkness . Which in turn resulted in him never truly healing from his pain .