Blaming others for situations allows people to feel better about themselves. Toni Morrison’s novel, The Bluest Eye, depicts acts of misplaced blame that cast its characters into a cycle of cultural repression. In her novel, Morrison provides background information on characters that have committed acts of rage and frustration in such a way as to provide an explanation and understanding for why these characters behave the way they do. Morrison provides scapegoats for her characters to foster the understanding that these black people, suffering from racism, are stuck in a cycle of hegemony, where they are placing blame on other black people, when they should be looking outward to the white community that is keeping them oppressed.
The first character, Cholly, neglects his family, is often drunk, abuses his wife, and rapes and impregnates his daughter. Cholly’s story chronologically begins, “When Cholly was four days old, his mother wrapped him in two blankets and one newspaper and placed him on a junk heap by the railroad” (132). Thankfully, Cholly is rescued by his Great Aunt Jimmy. She raises him until her own death when he is fourteen years old. On the day of her funeral Cholly experiences the devastating embarrassment of being caught by two white men during his first act of sexual intimacy.
Their [Cholly and Darlene] bodies began to make sense to him…There stood two white men…The snicker was a long asthmatic cough…The flashlight man lifted his gun down from his shoulder, and Cholly heard the clop of metal. He dropped back to his knees…Darlene put her hands over her face as Cholly began to simulate what had gone on before. He could do no more than make-believe…Cholly, moving faster, looked at Darlene. He hated her. He almost wished he could do it—hard, long, and painfully, he hated her so much. (147-8).
In this moment the line between love and tenderness blends with lust and anger for Cholly. He loses all sense of what passionate intimacy can be, because he will forever carry this image of his first experience with it blemished by these horrible men. Furthermore, Cholly does not blame the men, but Darlene, making her out to be another woman who has put him in harm’s way. It is no wonder why Cholly is so abusive later in life.
Secondly, Pauline, is frustrated with her life as a mother and wife. Pauline is a house keeper in a white family’s home. She has created a world of make-believe where she pretends that the nice home and good family is her own, rather than her employers. Pauline grew up wanting more for her life. Her family moved to Kentucky because they heard about the work in mines and millhouses. While she was growing up she lived in a “real town…with water piped right into the kitchen…a five-room frame house for their family. The yard was bounded by a once-white fence which Pauline’s mother planted flowers and within which they kept a few chickens” (112). This was a comfortable living for Pauline, a living she expected to make for herself one day. She ended up with prostitutes living above her second floor, two room apartment, with four children and a drunken husband. One day, while Pauline is working she leaves her daughter in the kitchen to retrieve laundry for her to carry home. While her daughter is in the kitchen she accidently knocks down a hot berry pie that burns the girl’s leg badly. The daughter of Pauline’s employer is also in the kitchen, and when Pauline returns she beats her own daughter for making a mess and then comforts the other girl for being worked up over the commotion. The backwardness of the situation is nearly outrageous. Pauline has such high regard for the pretend world that she has created, that when her own child is suffering she only adds to the pain.
Morrison is making a statement in her novel. She is saying that regardless of the white racists that oppress and control the black community, it is that community that is keeping itself repressed. The characters in this novel are not blaming the right people, they are looking at their friends, their family, but they do not stop and look at the cause of all their anguish. The cultural hegemony expressed in this novel is displayed through all of its characters, including Cholly and Pauline. The couple does not take the time to evaluate why they feel the way they do. If they did they may be surprised to learn that the people and situations they are blaming for their misfortunes in life are simply bystanders to the cultural oppression occurring in their lives.
Posts
