Bluest Eye

The Social Sickness of Lorain

In the novel "The Bluest Eye" by Toni Morrison, the town in which the story takes place has three sexual abusers. The three sexual abusers in the story show the extreme effects of how people deal with racism. How it turns inward and how they blame others in the cycle of oppression. The town toleration of these three characters shows that there is a larger problem with the town's mentality. When you begin to blame the victim of a crime and the one that committed the crime, it shows lack of understanding and responsibility on the town's part. In a way they are each different degrees of the same person.

The first and worst of the sexual offenders is perhaps Pecola's father, Cholly Breedlove. The story starts out with him being knocked unconscious by his wife and it is then we learn about his troubled past. His first sexual experience was the source of a twisted joke and being powerless in this situation he lashes out at people weaker than him caught in the same cycle of oppression as he. Unlike the others we learn that Cholly rapes his daughter because he wants to give her comfort. It is the only way he knows to show that he loves her. When he sees her scratching her leg with her toe, he sees her in this sad state and believes that raping her is the only way he can be tender with her. This perverted justification along with his sexual desire and drunken state is enough for him to rape her twice. Pecola is blames for the rape and not her father.

The next offender is Soaphead Church. He is the one demonized African-American in the story. He believes that his is better than God. The source of his malaise is in his family's long history of internalized racism. Since its inception in the early 1800s, the Whitcomb family has practiced marrying only light skinned Africans. The idea that white is beautiful and black is ugly is played out again. The town thinks he must be ok since he is light skinned and do nothing about his offenses.

Mr. Henry is boarder at Claudia and Frieda's house for five dollars every two weeks. He tries to molest Frieda and when she tells her father about the incident he throws a bike at him and chases