Mullins 1

Emily Mullins

Jeff Jaeckle

English 210

24 November 2006

Love, Through Violence

Sexual and violent experiences depicted through violations of characters and

acted out in a mixture of emotions, as well as with contempt for oneself or for another

being, play a major role in understanding the characters, Jewel and Cholly, and their

psyches in the novels As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner and The Bluest Eye by Toni

Morrison. The perspectives of the characters with which the experience deals are

important in understanding the significance of the sexual experience or violent acts,

specifically with what brings the characters to commit those acts, and the emotional and

psychological explanations for how these acts might be justified. The experiences

witnessed in these novels are important in the context of who is being subject to the

violence or sexual act, the race or age of those involved, and their comprehension of the

occurrence. The childhood violations and pivotal moments in each respective character’s

history are crucial in understanding the behavior of acting with violence, out of love.

Childhood experiences or the loss of a parent or parents can have detrimental

effects on the psyche of a child, which takes a toll on their mind and behavior. The

memories of their childhood can lead them to take their frustrations out on different

beings with confused feelings, based on the emotional connection they feel, or the

emotional connection they lack in most cases. Morrison gives a sympathetic narration of
 Mullins 2

Cholly’s history, which helps the reader to better understand how Cholly might come to

act “with a violence born of total helplessness” (Morrison 116). The given background

allows for Cholly to not be dehumanized, and to make sure readers feel compassion for

his haunting upbringing and childhood. The nature of Cholly’s past is that of a man who

has struggled throughout his entire life against a society that treats him, intentionally or

not, without compassion or sympathy. It seems Cholly is driven by a reaction to the

forces and pressures around him, but others see him as having no viable path towards

anything. The images of the incidents which have befallen Cholly “provide [readers with]

sympathy for a downtrodden, uneducated black orphan” (Portales 502). Readers,

seemingly, feel sorry for Cholly and can legitimately not hold him completely responsible

for the actions his unparalleled despair might lead him to do.

As a baby, Cholly was raised by his Great Aunt Jimmy after she rescued him from

a “junk heap by the railroad,” where his mother “who wasn’t right in the head,” left him

when he was four days old (Morrison 105). The story of Cholly’s parents can be

summarized in a word: abandonment. He was abandoned by a railroad by his mother,

after his father had left both him and his mother before he was born. Years later his father

rejected him once again for a craps game. “He was alone with his own perceptions and

appetites”, and these shape his life as a way to make him a free man, free to do as he

pleases and with whom he pleases as a way of subconscious thinking (Morrison 160).

Cholly is invariably guided by how he feels at a certain moment. “He was free. Free to

feel whatever he felt—fear, guilt, shame, love, grief, pity. Free to be tender and violent”

(159). He was free to be gentle or free to be aggressive, and free to act without

knowledge of consequences to his life or to his conscience.

 Mullins 3

Cholly Breedlove, Pecola’s father, was a victim of overt dehumanization as a boy.

While in the midst of losing his virginity, Cholly and his sexual partner, Darlene, were

discovered by two white hunters carrying guns. The men forced Cholly to continue the

act while they watched and critiqued his sexual performance, all the while calling him

derogatory names. The white men turned this act of consensual sex into rape, as Cholly is

forced to physically rape Darlene, while the white men rape Cholly psychologically,

emotionally, and spiritually. For Cholly, the act of sex is transformed from an act of

pleasure and desire into one of hate and control. This violation has many racial overtones

involving dogs and white men with guns which invoke feelings of slavery and lynching.

This situation stirs a myriad of emotions in Cholly, causing hatred misdirected towards

Darlene. “He hated her. He almost wished he could do it-long, hard, and painfully, he

hated her so much” (Morrison 148). His hate for her is astonishing to readers, disturbed

by the fact he never even considers hating the hunters for the taunting. He wanted to

“strangle” Darlene, but “his subconscious knew what his conscious mind did not guess-

that hating them would have consumed him, burned him up” (Morrison 149-151). He

could hate Darlene because a black woman was the one person who a black male could

dominate or treat poorly. He hated Darlene for the way she had been a part of their

embarrassing sexual encounter, and the fact she could not shield him from it, made him

more desperate to distance himself from her. She became a part of his memory he hated, a

time which was humiliating, defeating, emasculating; thus he hated her. This traumatic

event understandably disorients Cholly and we see how Cholly might feel lost and alone,

especially at the point in the novel in which his Aunt Jimmy has died, the one person who

ever loved him.

 Mullins 4

After a while, Cholly develops a strong longing to see his father, whom he knows

ran off after impregnating his mother. Cholly finds Samson Fuller, his father, gambling in

a back alley in Georgia. After Cholly reveals his identity, Samson responds, “That bitch

she get her money. Now, get the fuck out of my face!” (Morrison 156). Cholly is not only

disappointed and overwhelmed, but he is so distraught that, “his bowels suddenly opened

up, and before he could realize what he knew, liquid stools were running down his legs”

(Morrison 157). This was Cholly’s one last attempt at hope at finding love and possibly

family, all to be shot down in a single moment.

The contradictory emotions of both hatred and love lead Cholly to be harmful to

his family and his wife, Pauline Williams. There was one point in their relationship where

Cholly and Pauline truly loved each other, but then, as the story and their lives proceeded,

the love seems to fade. Cholly begins to acts on his impulses, which may be violent

and/or sexual, affecting Pauline in ways which are detrimental to her and would continue

to bring her distress for the rest of her life. His behavior becomes uninhibited and

dangerous when it is directed upon her. “Cholly and Mrs. Breedlove fought each other

with a darkly brutal formalism that was paralleled only by their lovemaking” (Morrison

43). Pauline feels helplessness in almost every aspect of her life. Even when she is having

sexual intercourse with Cholly, she feels helpless and unable to move due to the weight of

his body and her desire not to disturb him as he performs. The quarrels they have seem to

mark their relationship; it is the only time the author uses dialogue to show their

relationship. It seems when they are involved in a sexual interaction, there is no

dialogue. These interactions are seemingly not passionate, but it appears to be what

satisfies them both, and these moments are the only points where Pauline can glimpse
 Mullins 5

love in him, as she “can’t come until I feel him loving me” (Morrison 131). Their sexual

encounters are the only unspoken and consensual moments they have together. Pauline is

very much aware of the sins her husband has committed and she sees “Cholly as a model

of sin and failure, she bore him like a crown of thorns, and her children like a cross”

(Morrison 126-127). The way she saw him was as a detriment to her life and her family, a

sin against God’s wishes.

Through violations as a child, and certain experiences, Cholly is found to be not

completely responsible for his actions. It is as if he cannot control how he feels about one

person or another, and the love he might feel is also tainted with emotions that bring him

to do terrible things. Readers can almost understand how Cholly’s behavior is driven by

love as well as anger. Readers see the rape of his daughter as a terribly tragic

“manifestation of a severely skewed upbringing”, and thus the blame for the harm he

does to his family cannot be placed solely on Cholly’s shoulders (504 Portales).

Morrison chooses not to dehumanize Cholly for his destructive violence and we see

Cholly as being capable of pleasure and even joy. But the violent and sexual impulses

upon which he acts are the most notorious. In the absence of love, hate and violence are

redirected to those he might love -- but he doesn’t know how to show love. Pecola is

Cholly’s daughter, and the only way Cholly knows how to show her love or protect her

comes out in the form of rape and incest.

Cholly is the symbol for the violence that lies at the heart of the novel and his

violence towards his daughter is the main focus. Cholly had “no idea of how to raise

children, and having never watched any parent raise himself, he could not even

comprehend what such a relationship should be” (Morrison 160). He never had his
 Mullins 6

parents in his life, and had no idea of the correct way to behave and raise children.

Cholly’s dreams had been lost long ago “before his daughter, Pecola, had been born into

her own world of loss. Abandoned by his mother, Cholly accumulates a lifetime of rage

and frustration that he unleashes upon his 11 year old daughter one day as she washes

dishes” (Alwes 93). He came upon her one day in a drunken state, and with a swelling of

emotions manifesting in different ways, he could not completely tell what he felt or what

he wanted to do.

The narration is done from Cholly’s perspective, and in his mind we see his

feelings change from “discomfort into pleasure. The sequence of his emotions was

revulsion, guilt, pity, then love” (Morrison 161). The scene that prefaces the rape is

uncomfortable, as Cholly begins to question what he could do to help her and the

relationship they have. The scene parallels the one earlier with her mother Pauline in

Kentucky and how both instances and potential sexual encounters uncover his passion. It

is a sickness of the mind which allows Cholly to compare mother with daughter. The

dashes the author uses show the two aspects of his personality, the one as a father figure

and the one as a rapist. The mixture of hatred and tenderness is evoked when “he wanted

to break her neck-but tenderly” and he wanted to “fuck her—tenderly” (Morrison 163).

His emotions and memories of his daughter and wife become swirled, and he forgets he

was ever uncomfortable, as he is excited that he might possess such desire to do

something so forbidden. But after the act is over, the excitement is gone, and the sexual

desire is no longer there. He is free of passion and “again [there is] hatred mixed with

tenderness. The hatred would not let him pick her up, the tenderness forced him to cover
 Mullins 7

her” (Morrison 163). The attention Cholly pays to her, the love (both abusive and wrong)

he shows to her is also the thing that destroys her.

Cholly’s ‘love’ which is nurtured in self-hatred and contempt for a life with no

parental love, does not allow Cholly to comprehend the perimeters of love. He does not

realize the point at which “love turns into violence, the point at which self-hatred

consumes both oppressor and victim” (Alwes 94). The depth of despair Cholly shares

with the rest of the Breedloves is different from the anger he possesses, an anger which

drives him to do unlawfully horrible things. Cholly wanted to protect Pecola and rid her

of her despair, but the way he goes about it is through a brutal incestual rape. Pecola

becomes his victim, and through his helplessness and, specifically, his inability to help

his daughter, his emotions are manifested into anger directed upon a powerless Pecola.

Not only is the sexual act rape, but it is incest. There is a sense of fear and dread as well,

due to the already known pregnancy, which adds to the scene. Readers know that no one

is going to save her from this fate.

Jewel, in the novel As I Lay Dying, had an interesting childhood and relationship

with his mother, Addie. Jewel always seemed different than the rest of his siblings, and

his mother treated him differently too, as “ma always whipped him and petted him more”

(Faulkner 15). She loved him but couldn’t show him the way she showed love to the rest

of her children. It seems that Jewel and his mother had a bond most were unable to

understand, but Dewey Dell can tell from her mother’s draining eyes as she lay on her

death bed, that “It’s Jewel she wants” (Faulkner 47). She cherished him, yet to the outside

world, Jewel was not good to her, nor was she always good to him.
 Mullins 8

The way Addie expressed her love for Jewel is mirrored in the way Jewel

expresses his love for his horse, through a violent manner, simultaneously being loving

and violent. In the barn where Jewel is alone with his horse, “Jewel with dug heels,

shutting off the horse’s wind with one hand, with the other patting the horse’s neck in

short strokes myriad and caressing, cursing the horse with obscene ferocity” (Faulkner

12). The horse is the only animal, or being for that matter, Jewel has an emotional

connection too, yet he treats it with violence, in a mix of hatred and tenderness. Jewel has

a relationship with his horse in which he is fond of it, but he treats it with unusual

violence, calling his horse a “sweet son of a bitch” (Faulkner 13). He emotionally feels

loves for the horse, but he doesn’t know how to treat it, whether with kindness or

violence.

Jewel, as readers grasp through the novel, constantly tried to protect his mother,

especially as they made their way to Jefferson for the burial. The other characters in the

novel misunderstood their relationship, as Cora believes Jewel to be the one Addie

“labored so to bear and coddled and petted so and him flinging into tantrums and sulking

spells, inventing devilment to devil her until I would have frailed him time and time”

(Faulkner 21). As Addie was dying, it seemed unusual Darl and Jewel would leave and

risk not being able to say goodbye to their mother, but Jewel wanted to make the money.

He wanted to remember Addie as she was before she was on her death bed, before she

was so ill. Cora understood Addie was partial to Jewel, but assumed he was a “Bundren

through and through, loving nobody and caring for nothing” (Faulkner 22). As the novel

closes, readers see Jewel, after having saved his mother’s dead body from a flood and a

fire, receive closure from the burial of his mother -- a burial he contributed to with the
 Mullins 9

sale of his beloved horse. Readers also learn the reason Jewel was so unlike his siblings –

he had a different father. That was perhaps the reason he had such an unusual relationship

with his mother, and a similarly unusual relationship with his horse.

As the story unfolds, readers find Cholly and Jewel to be capable of both

tenderness and rage, and both have an inability to correctly channel their emotions into

respectable and understandable outlets. Their growing frustration with their earlier

humiliations and those who don’t understand them causes them to draw away from

others. Any emotional connection to those they love manifests itself with a certain

brutality. They don’t fit in with family and society and they certainly don’t trust others.

Cholly and Jewel live parallel lives throughout their stories. Their anger and misguided

emotions mingle, and violence and brutal sexual behaviors are their confused

demonstrations of love gone wrong.

Works Cited:

Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Washington Square Press, Simon and

Schuster. 1994.

Faulker, William. As I Lay Dying. New York, Vintage Books. 1990.

Portales, Marco. Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye: Shirley Temple and Cholly.

Centennial Review Volume 30, No. 4. Michigan State University. Ed. Linda

Wagner-Martin. 1986.
 Mullins 10

Alwes, Karla. “The Evil Fulfillment”: Women and Violence in the Bluest Eye, An

Essay Collection. Ed. Katherine Anne Ackley. New York and London,

Garland Publishing, Inc. 1990.