The Character of Cholly in The Bluest Eye
Morrison has divided her portrayal of a fictional town of blacks, which suffers from alienation and subjugation, into four seasons. I believe that her underlying message is to illustrate the reality of life's travails: the certain rhythms of blessings and tragedies. Some blacks understand and acccept this philosophy and Morrison's use of the seasons portrays and echoes the bible verse, "To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven"(Ec. 3.1). Perhaps this is a fatalistic approach or as Darrow says,
Man is the product of heredity and environment and that he acts as his machine responds to outside stimuli and nothing
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A Time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to pluck up that which is planted (Ec. 3. 2). Cholly was four days old when his Mother planted him on top of a junk heap. His great Aunt Jimmy plucked him out and took him home to rear. She loved him and he had a sense of belonging to a family, but he asked her, "Who was my father?" "Where does he live?" He had a name and place now, and who knew, maybe he could find his Dad: that became his dream.
Cholly quit school at a young age and went to work in the local feed store. There he met a man called old Blue Jack. During some of his darkest days, Cholly's memories of riding in the wagon, listening to stories, eating watermelon with old Blue Jack covered him with a warm blanket of love. He knew that another human being had loved him. He also remembered the love his family showered on him. At the time of Aunt Jimmy's funeral, his aunts and uncles cared for him. They treated him as the child he was. They saw that all his needs were met but more than that they treated him with tenderness and love. It was after the funeral that the bad times began.
A time to weep and a time to laugh; a time to mourn and a time to dance (Ec. 3. 4). Cholly began his growth to manhood on
In “Our Town”, Wilder conveys the passage of time with change of seasons and symbolically uses each season to represent a different stage of the characters’ lives similar to Foster’s interpretations of what the different seasons represent in his chapter “...So Does Season.”
For instance, Washington Irving, wrote in The Devil and Tom Walker, “One hot summer afternoon in the dog days, just as a terrible black thunder-gust as coming up, Tom sat in his counting house in his white linen cap and India silk morning gown.” Considering that the season, summer, can be referred to as growth and reflection, the reader can construe that Tom is about to experience change. The twelve months can also be related to the seasons; by its nature, the reader can recognize which months are in each season, due to their location. For instance, in The Raven, by Edgar Allen Poe, “Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December; and each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.” Despite the fact that Edgar Allen Poe did not verbatimly mention one of the four seasons, the reader can obtain the same mood from
The seasons are part of the mother's life, while the father goes through life as if all were winter. The mother runs her house according to the seasons. She grows "miraculous gardens and magnificent flowers…"(132), and during berry picking season, "She would walk miles…"(132). Growing gardens, flowers and picking berries are seasonal activities. Every flower and fruit has its cycle during the year, which alludes how the mother lived through this. The importance of the seasons as part of the mother's life is presented even in the end of the story when the narrator says that the "[mother] looks through her lonely window onto the ice of winter…"(140). Therefore, she is alone gazing out the window, waiting for her death, which is symbolized by the winter. On the other hand, for the father all the seasons are the same. All of them are winter. The narrator describes his father, "with blue eyes flossing like clearest ice
The father does not like “the sound of the place, an unfamiliar nervous sound of the outboard motors [that] sometimes break the illusion and set the years moving.” He always talks about how “there were no years” and how everything was so constant. However, he is getting to the point where he is starting to know that his future is near. He starts to realize that when a thunderstorm comes. This brought the father “the revival of an old melodrama that [he] had seen long ago with childish awe.”He is no longer confused about who he is anymore, and he knows that he is getting old. As he starts to accept this, the lake which he saw was “infinitely precious and worth saving [is now] a curious darkening of the sky, and a lull in everything that had made life tick.” Although he realizes that it is what it is, he knows that this is something he will have to accept, and his son is the new generations who is going to hold the future. His son, whom he always got confused as himself, now sees his son for his child. When the son goes swimming, the father “languidly, and with no thought of [swimming]. . .saw [his son] winch slightly as he pulled up around his vitals the small, soggy, icy garment.” Seeing how his son is strong and independent gives him the “chill of death.” He finally realizes that he is no longer a child, he is an adult who is going to die. A new generation will take his place, and
It isn't difficult to see how the changing climates affect the characters’ moods as well. Many of the squabbles between Jim and Antonia and hardships faced by the two families occur in the fall or winter, whereas the author focuses on the more pleasant aspects of life and the prairie when the weather is glowing. The very lives of the men and women on the frontier are almost entirely dictated by the world surrounding them. They learn to live by the months and the weather, and develop symbiotic relationships with the land they till. As proved in the novel through the characters, the more work man puts into the earth, the greater reward he will receive.
Season; noun, is defined as one of the four periods of the year beginning astronomically at an equinox or solstice, but geographically at different dates in different climates. The seasons plays a huge role in The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, a novel about a young wealthy man who has been trying to reunite with a woman who he deeply loves but, only to be reaching out for his death. Three seasons spring, summer, and autumn all have different meaning throughout the novel as it symbolizes the actions and tones of the characters, especially Mr.Gatsby. Spring represents sadness, depression, or love; Summer symbolizes anger, hatred, or fights/arguments; and Autumn indicates death,
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison takes place in Ohio in the 1940s. The novel is written from the perspective of African Americans and how they view themselves. Focusing on identity, Morrison uses rhetorical devices such as imagery, dictation, and symbolism to help stress her point of view on identity. In the novel the author argues that society influences an individual's perception on beauty, which she supports through characters like Pecola and Mrs. Breedlove. Furthermore, the novel explains how society shapes an individual's character by instilling beauty expectations. Morrison is effective in relaying her message about the various impacts that society has on an individual's character through imagery, diction, and symbolism by showing that
In chapter 20 of How to Read Literature Like a Professor, Foster describes the significance of seasons in literature. Seasons can mean many different things besides the obvious change in weather. Shakespeare uses seasons as literary devices to make comparisons. Seasons often act as metaphors for age in his work. Fall, for example, can also be seen as middle age; the turning point between old and young, summer and winter. Seasons were also used by Shakespeare to convey moods and emotions. Winter is often associated with bitterness, dissatisfaction, or anger. This works because elements of winter include harsh winds and freezing temperatures that make people uncomfortable. Furthermore, authors connect season with the human experience. Each season
It was two days before Christmas, when Josephine opened the door to her 12 year old son’s room. Chay was the oldest of her four children, and the one she related to most. As Josephine sat down on the edge of the bed, Chay opened his eyes slowly. The dim light that seeped through the partially opened door revealed tears in his mother’s eyes.
In the beginning of the short story, as Brother reflects on Doodle’s life, the author uses personification and foreshadowing to create a mood of remorse. As he gazes out of the window into his backyard, Brother states that “the graveyard flowers were blooming. ...speaking softly the names of our dead” (Hurst 1). The flowers provide flashbacks of the past, and foreshadow a loss of life. The loneliness felt by Brother causes readers to consider how they would feel if their loved one was gone. As Brother observes the seasons, it is noted that “summer was dead but autumn had not yet been born” (Hurst 1). The personifications of the seasons as stages in the cycle of life and death creates an unsure and uncertain mood. The shift between seasons creates an idea of change and uncertainty of events to come. Hurst creates a mood of remorse through
made by the pro camp is that man is a ‘biological machine’ and is conscious, ergo, a machine is
In The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison strongly ties the contents of her novel to its structure and style through the presentation of chapter titles, dialogue, and the use of changing narrators. These structural assets highlight details and themes of the novel while eliciting strong responses and interpretations from readers. The structure of the novel also allows for creative and powerful presentations of information. Morrison is clever in her style, forcing readers to think deeply about the novel’s heavy content without using the structure to allow for vagueness.
A person’s nature, or genetics, determines aspects of the psychology of a person before they’ve been born. There are many example of how genetics determine characteristics of a person, regardless of the environment, also known as
Aside from the biological image, humans have also been seen to be like a machine. The mechanical image started when there was a boom in technology; around the time robots came about. Some say that man is like a machine in the sense that man is a complex system behaving in lawful ways. Because of physics, it is a known fact that all things have their own distinct features according to a finite number of fixed laws. Everything happens according to strict forces controlled by the universe. So humans, like machines are programmed by a higher being. While everything does have certain laws that
simpler way to explain human behavior- simply that we are a product of our environment