Comentary_on_the_Bluest_Eyes

Aubrey Blackshaw English commentary From Pg. 43 ‘Cholly and Mrs. Breedlove fought each other…’ to Pg 44 ‘Sammy screamed, ‘Kill him! Kill him!’ Mrs. Breedlove is first seen waking up first and begins to bang about in the kitchen. Pecola is awake in bed and knows that her mother will pick a fight with her father, Cholly, who came home drunk the previous night. Each of Cholly's drunken scenes ends with a fight with his wife. Mrs. Breedlove comes in and attempts to wake Cholly to bring her some coal for the stove. He refuses, and she says that if she sneezes just once from fetching the coal outside, she’ll start a fight.   The narrator, Claudia, comments that Mrs. Breedlove and Cholly need each other. She needs him to reinforce her identity as a martyr and to give shape to an otherwise dreary life, and he needs to take out a lifetime of hurt upon her. The fights between Cholly and Mrs. Breedlove have a similar pattern, and the two have an unstated agreement not to kill each other. Sammy usually either runs away from home or joins the fight. Pecola tries to find ways to endure the pain.   Predictably, Mrs. Breedlove sneezes, and the fight begins. She douses Cholly with cold water and he begins to beat her. She hits him with the dishpan and then a stove lid. Sammy helps by hitting his father on the head. Once Cholly is knocked out, Sammy urges his mother to kill him, and she quiets him. Pecola, still in bed, feels nauseated. As she often does, she wills herself to disappear. This passage portrays victimhood as a complex phenomenon rather than a simple, direct relationship between oppressor and oppressed as well as a dysfunctional family that thrives on hatred anger and violence. The Breedloves' ugliness is one of the central mysteries of the novel. It cannot be attributed to their literal appearance (we are told that their ugliness “did not belong to them). But the ugliness in their behavior in front of their children is deplorable. The protagonist in the prose, Pecola wishes that her parents would kill each other or that she herself could die. This reveals her strained relationship with her parents and her deep darkest desire for their demise. This is not the first time in the novel that she has been a victim of such domestic violence. To be an observer of such hatred, anger and pain allows Pecola to endure. The mood in the passage is grim, tense and full of suspense. The tension and suspense intensifies as the passage progresses. Even Sammy full of hatred and anger for his father yells out “You naked fuck!” and orders his mother to kill him. Pecola, on the other hand, secretly hopes for her parents to kill each other. The reader can only imagine Pecola crouching in a corner, trembling in fear, praying to god to end the pain that she’s experiencing. The structure of the passage is in narrative form punctuated with striking dialogue and action. The plot is built up as Mrs. Breedlove taunts her husband. What provokes the vileness of husband and wife to partake in this violent act is simply Mrs. Breedlove sneezing. The climax of this passage is when Sammy “who had watched in silence their struggling at his bedside, suddenly began to hit his father about the head with both fists shouting “You naked fuck” over, and over, and over. Mrs. Breedlove does nothing to stop her son in partaking in this violence. The most striking words uttered in this passage is the violent outburst from Sammy. The choice of expletives spouted by a young boy is shocking and causes the reader to gasp in horror. Morrison by selecting these words creates the shock element within the reader. The intensity with which Sammy shouts out for his mother to kill Cholly (his father) is frightening and way beyond his age. Through the language that Morrison uses in this passage she reveals a whole lot about the state of his dysfunctional family. In contrast, Pecola’s response is muted. She does not verbalize her hatred and anger towards her parents. Instead, she whispers under her breath, a silent plea, “Don’t Mrs. Breedlove. Don’t.” The fact that both children call their mother ‘Mrs. Breedlove’ shows their fear for their mother. Morrison has used appropriate language for the subject and genre of this passage. While it is clear that in some sense she consents to, and even chooses, the abuse she takes from her husband, it is also clear that this abuse damages her. The violence gives her life meaning, gives her days dramatic shape, and gives her the opportunity to exercise her imagination, but it is clear that these things are deeply wrong. The meaning she finds is senseless violence, the dramatic shape is tragic, and this exercise of her imagination is self--destructive. It appears that the will to make meaning out of one's life can be a negative power as well as a positive one, especially if one's life has been damaged by mistreatment. Onomatopoeia, oral imagery, dominates this prose. The reader is transported into Pecola’s home. Experiencing the sounds of water being thrown at Cholly’s face, him choking and spitting both hitting the floor. The reader paints the violent picture of domestic violence in his mind as Mrs. Breedlove hits her husband’s thighs and he returns her attacks with punches, kicks and slaps. In the end, he gets knocked out cold by his own wife who launches a surprise attack on her husband. There are various images that have affected me strongly in this passage, such as the actions shown by husband and wife. I do not think that a couple should harm each other, especially not to the same stage as the Breedloves. The violent actions they do shock readers and scare them showing the ugly side to humanity. Sammy’s violent outburst and his spewing of his vulgarities to his own father stresses the disorder and chaos happening in the family.