The Bluest Eye Ananlysis

Male Dominance in The Bluest Eye

Over the course of about a dozen weeks or so I have been exploring many facets of oppression. From literary work such as Malcolm X’s autobiography to Sherman Alexie’s novel The Absolute True Story of a Part-Time Indian, oppression is an issue for the majority of people who are not white, upper class males. Race, class, gender, sex, religion, all things that the 14th amendment are supposed to protect, seems to only stand for equality rather than enforcing it and educating people of it’s often damaging effects. Gender and sex roles seem to be the most relevant topic for the times, but also one of the hardest to understand. Cholly Breedlove is a prime example of male dominance in society. We know the how, so for now we’re going to focus on the why.

To better understand Cholly Breedlove’s character it’s important for us to acknowledge his past. Without knowing it’s not hard to assume Cholly wasn’t raised in a loving family. His father left as soon as he heard there was a bun in the oven and as for his mother, “it wasn’t nine days before she throwed [him] on the junk heap.”(Morrison 85) He also had trouble bonding with his Aunt Jimmy. While Sleeping in his aunts bed for warmth in the winter, which is usually a delight for most children, Cholly “wondered whether it would have been just as well to have died [in the trash]”(Morrison 80) Being abandoned by his parents and then reminded so by his Aunt, Cholly was given no demonstration on how to foster a healthy relationship between parent and child. However, many people come from broken homes. so why does Cholly rape his daughter and beat his wife?

According to Steven Tayloy Ph.D., author of Back to Sanity: Healing The Madness of Our Minds, “the oppr...

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...iological imagination” in 1959; a theory that is basically the scientific way of saying “walk a mile in someone else's shoes.” Chollys actions can never be excused; it would not be fair to his victims to do so. It’s difficult to anybody to understand why someone would do such a thing, in a novel or in real life. The situations only leaves people asking why. Morrison states in an interview that the Breedlove’s are a “little nuclear family that doesn’t work. It doesn’t work for white people or for black people.” Dominance, whether racial, gender or class based, over anyone is destructive to all societal dynamics. Morrison says “you need a whole community, everybody, to raise a child.” An idea suggested by the rejection by the community of Pecola and Cholly. The why is never to clear, “since the why is too difficult to handle, one must take refuge in how.”(Morrison)