Segregation in The Bluest Eyes

Toni Morrison formatted The Bluest Eyes in a unique way that allowed me to familiarize myself with the characters and have a greater respect for them because I actually see and experience their childhood, teen, and middle aged lives, leading up to the intro of the story. Each chapter of the book focuses on a different character, but the chapter about Cholly interested me the most.

When I first met Cholly, I labeled him as a bitter and violent husband and father.  He was always too drunk to care about anyone or anything and I added him to my mental "bad influences in the book list", but when I started reliving his childhood, I understood why he was such a hard person.

About six months after his birth, his mother left him on the train tracks preparing to desert him, but her mother found Cholly, beat her daughter and as a result her daughter left and Cholly was raised by his Great Aunt Jimmy, lovingly called Aunt Jimmy. After four years of school he asked his aunt about his father and all she could tell him was his name, Samson Fuller, and where he could have possibly gone after his birth, Macon. Sadly, his aunt dies and he has trouble realizing this reality, but at the wake, he fools around with a girl named Darlene in the fields near the house. To raise the stakes, two white men hunting in the nearby woods, stumble along the two and command Cholly to continue having sex with Darlene in their presence. 

Cholly's mind is quickly changed from fun and innocence to hard and unforgiving. He blames Darlene for what happens and runs away in search of his father. In Macon, his father sends him on his way without a nice word as he gambles in an alley. Cholly, at age fourteen, had already lost the one person who loved him and was now turned away from his biggest fantasy; a father that would welcome and love him.

Rereading the title I gave this post, I realized there is not only segregation with skin color in the book, but segregation within yourself. Cholly chooses to be mad at Darlene instead of the two white men that mocked him in the field because she is on the same level as him. The text says, "Sullen, irritable, he cultivated his hatred of Darlene. Never did he once consider directing his hatred toward the hunters. Such an emotion would have destroyed him. They were big, white, armed men. He was small, black, helpless."(pg.119) He settles on being angry with Darlene who is an equal because they are both small, black, and helpless. A white man seems so high up on the scale that Cholly decides to settle things with his own kind, by handling his feelings with the people he feels will understand, who are on his level.