A social group is a group of people who have similar characteristics and contain a sense of unity. There are many ways to socially group people such as age, sex, income, and profession. Many psychologists have different definitions of what a social group is. A social group has been defined as “two or more persons are in communication over an appreciable period of time and who act in accordance with common function or purpose” as referenced from an internet article shared by Puja Mondal page 1. While A. W. Green describes a social group as “an aggregate of individuals which persists in time, which has one or more interest or activities in common and which is organized.”
Emory S. Bogardus defines a social group as “a number of persons, two or more who have common objects of attention, who are stimulating to each other, who have common loyalty and participate in related activities are called as a group.” A major social group that are represented in The Bluest Eye are neglected children. Almost, every character in The Bluest Eye has experienced some form of child neglect, whether it be physical, sexual, or emotional. Child neglect is defined as a form of child abuse, and is a shortcoming in meeting a child’s basic needs. The biggest examples of this in The Bluest Eye are Cholly and Pecola Breedlove.
Cholly Breedlove was neglected throughout his childhood. Cholly was an angry and violent person. Morrison reveals and puts an importance on the events that occurred in Cholly’s past in order to create a justification for Cholly’s unforgivable actions. Morrison provides description of Cholly’s early years. ‘When Cholly was four days old, his mother wrapped him in two blankets and one newspaper and placed him on a junk heap by the railroad’ (Page 132). His mother whom was the most important woman to any child rejected him.
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Morrison provides a description of Cholly’s first sexual experience in which two white hunters come upon Cholly and the girl Darlene and force them to continue as they watched. Instead of becoming angry at the men Cholly become angry at Darlene and later in life takes it out on the other women in his life. ‘Cholly, moving faster, looked at Darlene. He hated her. He almost wished he could do it – hard, long, and painfully, he hated her so much’ (Page 148). It is transparent that Morrison intended to sympathize and justify the heinous crimes committed by Cholly. After Aunt Jimmy died he had no one to love him. Cholly then decided to meet his father Samson Fuller, and finds a fierce looking man.
Samson thinks that Cholly was sent by a creditor or the mother of another child he has fathered and curses him. Cholly stumbles back into the street and trying not to cry pees himself. He hides under the pier, and washes his clothes after dark. Cholly wanted to be a loving father to Pecola but did not know how. The way Cholly expressed love was through sex.In the novel, Cholly was seen as the antagonist. He was an angry person, who got in fights with his wife, and did not take care of his children. Morrison wanted to prove that the a person is not born evil but society has the power to make a person evil.
Pecola Breedlove, had been abuse by mostly everyone in her life. She encounters racism every day by not only people of the opposite race but as well the same race. She believes her skin is too dark and that the color of her skin makes her inferior and that she is ugly. She believes if she abtants blue eyes everyone will love and accept her, such as her mother Pauline Breedlove. When Pauline becomes pregnant with Pecola she made a promise to “love it no matter what it looked like” (Page 124). Pauline unintentionally makes a judgment which regulates Pecola throughout her life, ‘But I knowed she was ugly.
Head full of pretty hair, but Lord she was ugly’ (Page 126). Pauline’s view of Pecola cuts her off from being able to have a nurturing mother and child relationship. Pecola is called a “nasty little black bitch” (Page 93) by an African American mother. While Pecola does not know what the word bitch means she does understand nasty. Pecola believes she was called nasty because of her dark skin as this women had lighter skin then Pecola. Being called a nasty, by a person the same color then her hurt Pecola more then if a white person called her nasty. This leads Pecola to feel even more ashamed of herself and want to change her appearance to be accepted and trusted. Her family treated her the same way; Pecola’s father Cholly Breedlove raped her, her mother did not pay attention to her. This ultimately causes Pecola to become mentally insane.
Morrison does an outstanding job of illustrating how certain events in someone’s early life scar them for the rest of their lives. Cholly neglects his family physically and emotionally and has a hate for everyone that he acquired during his early life. He knows alcohol will not solve his problems, but he doesn’t care he lies in his self-pity. Pecola, never had a chance of a normal life because of the environment she was raised in. She eventually loses all of her mental stability. If a person’s childhood is characterized by difficult circumstances, trials, and heartache, then in turn their outlook on life may be tarnished and they may become vexed and mentally unstable individuals.
