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  • Essay / Absolutely Nothing: The Problem with Cholly Breedlove

    Humans sometimes become infatuated with certain emotions, to the point of letting those emotions control them: a single force like anger determines their motivations and controls who they become. Anger, in particular, is a belligerent and dangerous emotion because it paves the way for many hostile acts. In the novel The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, we discover the embodiment of a dangerously angry man. Cholly Breedlove was a character created through pain and hardship, from a young boy abandoned by his mother to a grown man who never learned to love or be loved. Morrison sculpts the perfect statue of a man, cold as stone and driven by a single emotion: anger. Through Cholly's anger; disdain, resentment and hatred flowed; a deadly combination of feelings. Over the pages of the story, Cholly goes from an innocent young boy to a teenager scorned by embarrassment and rejection, then to a grown man who ultimately feels nothing. He is numb. Morrison brilliantly exploits the character of Cholly to inflict themes of anger and numbness; emotions that ultimately turn Cholly from a sad boy to an angry teenager to a numb man. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an Original Essay Childhood experiences may fade with time, but their effects can last a lifetime. Subconsciously, a person's childhood experiences form the foundation of who they will be. In the case of Cholly Breedlove, his first life-changing childhood experience occurred at the age of four days, when his mother wrapped him in a blanket and threw him away. Although far too young to remember or even understand what happened to him, the act of abandonment would somehow be etched into his being. It would become a part of who he is. The boy his mother threw him away. Saved and raised by his great-aunt Jimmy, Cholly was constantly reminded of the horrible and selfish act of the woman who was supposed to take care of him. A child should never have to endure sadness and rejection from a parent, it breaks their soul and degrades them. Therefore, the belief that there is something wrong with them and sudden feelings of worthlessness and abandonment weigh on the heart and mind of someone so innocent. Cholly was saved by his aunt but she didn't save him from the pain of rejection, only from death. He was raised but he was never healed and sometimes the burden was too much to bear, which can be proven by the quote: "then he wondered if it would have been just as well to die there . In the rim of a tire under a soft black Georgia sky. (133.) Young Cholly's sorrow is abundant in this quote. The quote expresses his sadness through his reflection on death. Innocent or not, Cholly suffered the pain of a broken heart at a very young age. Purity, innocence and cleanliness are all factors associated with virginity. This is a quality that every person will eventually lose. This is purely natural, but when such a beautiful act is hampered by mortification and shame, the result is never good. In the spring chapters of The Bluest Eye, Cholly loses her virtue to a young girl named Darlene. This experience erased the innocence of Cholly's younger years and replaced it with hatred and anger. Devils in Disguise: Two white men forced the two young children to fornicate in front of their eyes, forcing Cholly and Darlene to finish in front of them. With each blow, anger rose within the young, innocent boy who was once Cholly. His emotions are perfectly described in the quote: “Cholly, semoving faster, looked at Darlene. He hated her. He almost wished he could do it – hard, long and painful, he hated her so much. (Morrison, 148.) The tone of the quote alone allowed for a certain feeling of anger. It described Cholly's desire to punish someone, to hurt them the way he did. This quote described the anger and rage he felt towards the white men who had so willingly but unconsciously mortified him.Cholly projected his hatred for men onto Darlene. He couldn't hate these men, they were strong and scary and the fact that this story was set in the era of racism only made it even more impossible. His subconscious knowledge is demonstrated in the quote: "His subconscious knew what his conscious mind did not guess: that hating them would have consumed him, burned like a lump of limp coal, leaving only flakes of ash and a speck of fire." smoke interrogation. .” (151.) This quote explained Cholly's desperation allowing himself to face enemies he could never defeat. Without hatred for white men, untouchable men would have only destroyed Cholly and no one else. He could never get revenge on white men, so he hated the only person he could. Darlene, not only black like him but also a woman, was easier to hate. She was weaker, less threatening, and the only other person to bear witness to his indignity. Insecurities are created by bad experiences, embarrassing moments and painful memories; it is precisely this process that forms (or rather deforms) Cholly. As Cholly grew older, her mother's abandonment and the mortification of losing her virginity never seemed to subside. With nothing left to lose, Cholly set off in search of her father. Young and alone, he sets off in search of the only person he has left. He didn't know his father but his aunt had told him a little about him in his younger years. The young man left home in search of a man he may never find again in an act of desperation. He was alone and scared, but he didn't know that his father wouldn't improve his current situation. Cholly found his father but his search ended with the horrific image of him crawling in the fetal position by a river with dirty pants, like a baby waiting for his mother to come and change him. But no one would come and no one would change him, he was all alone. He was free. However, this apparent freedom has a dark side. Cholly is now a free man, able to do what he wants, to be whoever he wants, but when Morrison calls him "free," it's not as literal as one might think. Cholly's freedom comes not from his recklessness or adventure, but from relief. The word freedom symbolized Cholly's emotional state. After so much ordeal and so much anger, Cholly had finally become unresponsive. He could no longer feel the pain he felt as a young boy or the anger he felt as a teenager. He was liberated, he was free, he was numb. The reckless behavior, drinking, and even raping his own child were the result of a man who no longer cared. Not because he had no reason to stop but because he couldn't feel the weight of his action or the pain it inflicted on him. Cholly was free to burn down his own home to start a family and destroy each member, one by one, and yet he felt nothing. His screwed up way of loving was perfectly described in the quote: “Love is never better than the lover. The wicked love wickedly, the violent love violently, the weak love weakly, the stupid love stupidly, but.