Examining the Character of Cholly Breedlove

    Off the bat, Cholly is portrayed as the villain, and rightfully so. After all, what could possibly be more villainous than impregnating your own daughter? No amount of childhood trauma or difficult life situations could ever begin to justify what Cholly did, as incest is by nature unjustifiable and despicable. However, Morrison refuses to take the easy road of strict condemnation. While it would have been easy for Morrison to finalize Cholly Breedlove's characterization as an evil rapist solely by examining his perverted actions, Morrison decides to broaden her scope and tell the entire story of Cholly Breedlove, providing context for his actions. While Morrison doesn't attempt to provide justification for Cholly's actions, she does wish to give the reader an explanation as to what put Cholly in the mental state to consider such an act, making a point about the detrimental impacts of American society on the mental sanity of black people during this time period.

    To start, Morrison discusses Cholly's childhood. Days after Cholly's birth, he was abandoned by his parents, who left him "placed on a junk heap by the railroad" (132). His Great Aunt Jimmy took him in and adopted him, and while she cared for him intently, he never had a loving relationship with his parents. Cholly's trauma continued when he was ridiculed by a group of white men while having sex with Darlene. The shame he felt manifested itself in anger towards Darlene, developing a shameful hatred towards her. But the trauma didn't stop there. Soon after this funeral, Cholly went out to find his father in Macon, but was devastated to find his father wanted nothing to do with him, telling him to "...'get the fuck outta my face'" (156). It was all this trauma that boiled into the varying emotions of shame, anger, and depravity, that led Cholly to seek pleasure through his daughter. Cholly never knew what true love was, as he had never witnessed it himself or in the people around him, so he had no perception of how he was supposed to properly reciprocate the familial love his daughter had for him, and the fatherly love he had for his daughter. Depravity and desire are inherently connected, and Cholly's immense childhood depravity led to intense desire for which he had no manner of controlling, leading him to perfom an unspeakable act.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why Nameless Characters?

Image
        One of the first things that stood out to me while reading the first section of  When the Emperor was Divine was the decision of the author, Julie Otsuka, to omit the names of the characters, simply addressing them as "the woman," "the girl," or "the boy." There are plenty of reasons why Otsuka may have made this decision, and ultimately, we will never know without her outright explanation. Nevertheless, Otsuka's decision is a unique one, and one that most definitely was meant to serve a greater purpose in the understanding of the novel. Thus, my goal in this blog is to speculate as why Otsuka may have made such a radical literary move...         One possible reason for this decision is to take a step towards presenting the characters of the novel through the lens of American society. The Japanese population was not seen for their individual identities by the majority of the American people, seeing them instead as mere members of a threatening
Read more

The "Villain" in Kavalier and Clay

Image
 The "Villain" in Kavalier and Clay: In Kavalier and Clay, there is no singular villain. It is impossible to identify one person as the overarching villain like you can in Star Wars or Harry Potter or any Shakespearean work, but instead a group of people and/or ideology. For Joe, the villain is the Nazi regime, and by extension, the German population. Joe sees every German he comes across as the enemy, an extension of Adolf Hitler's deadly hand. Joe's life has been wrecked by the Nazis - he was forced to abandon his family, he lost his brother, his only beacon of hope, and has turned him into a marginalized spectacle of society as a Jewish refugee. Joe takes out this anger on every German he faces, judging them for their nationality and not for their personal values. For example, Joe's mission to kill the German scientist residing in Antartica was not at all a reflection of his hatred for the scientist himself, but instead his hatred for the German regime for whi
Read more

Analyzing the Mother: Why so nonchalant?

Image
        While reading the first section of When the Emperor was Divine , the mother's calm, nonchalant attitude stood out to me. Amidst a life-changing tragedy where you and your family are taken from your home to an open-air prison with no set return-date, I would expect a little concern. However, the mother goes about her business emotionless: killing their family dog like it is a bothersome chore, letting the family bird free with no parting words or emotions, or as Otsuka put it, "followed the rules" (9). One could chalk up this emotional disconnect from the narration of the story, being a manifestation of the emotional disconnection shown through the lack of names given the characters, but it also could be seen as a reflection of the woman's mental state.         Is the woman's nonchalance the result of her expectation? Did she expect this sort of incarceration was looming, allowing her to mentally prepare for the situation  she was about to face? This is a p
Read more