Cholly Breedlove
hate
rape
in her afterword that she did not want to dehumanize her characters, even those who dehumanize one another, and she succeeds in making Cholly a sympathetic figure.
(1)He has experienced genuine suffering
(2)He is also capable of pleasure and even joy (3)Cholly represents a negative form of freedom
He is not free to love and be loved or to enjoy full dignity, but he is free to have sex and fight and even kill; he is free to be indifferent to death. He falls apart when this freedom becomes a complete lack of interest in life, and he reaches for his daughter to remind himself that he is alive.
Pauline Breedlove
inflicts a great
deal of pain
but Morrison nevertheless renders her
sympathetically. She experiences more
subtle forms of humiliation than Cholly
does—her lame foot convinces her that
she is doomed to isolation, and the
snobbery of the city women in Lorain
condemns her to loneliness.
(1)vulnerable to the messages
conveyed by white culture—that white
beauty and possessions are the way
to happiness.
(2)Pauline finds another fantasy
world—the white household for which
she cares.
This fantasy world is more practical than her imitation of Hollywood actresses and is more socially sanctioned than the madness of Pecola’s fantasy world, but it is just as effective in separating her from the people—her family—she should love. In a sense, Pauline’s existence is just as haunted and delusional as her。