The Bluest Eye: Chapter 8 Summary & Analysis

An unnamed narrator details Cholly's childhood. At four days old, Cholly's mother abandons him on a junk heap. His Great Aunt Jimmy rescues him, and later beats his mother with a razor strap. Afterward, Cholly's mother runs away. Aunt Jimmy takes delight in telling Cholly that she rescued him, and besides the fact that she makes him sleep in the same bed with her in the winter where he sees her wrinkled breasts, he is grateful that she saved him.

After four years of school, Cholly gets the courage to ask Aunt Jimmy what his father's name was. She tells him his father's name is Samson Fuller, and she thinks he ran off to Macon, Georgia. Cholly asks why he wasn't named after his father. Aunt Jimmy explains that his father was never around and his mother didn't give him a name, so she named him Charles Fuller after her deceased brother, who was a good man.

Two years later, Cholly quits school and takes a job at Tyson's Feed and Grain Store. At work he meets a man named Blue Jack. Cholly loves Blue Jack and enjoys Blue Jack's stories about what it was like during the Emancipation Proclamation. They also talk about the women Blue Jack has slept with, the fights he'd been in as a young man, and how he once talked his way out of getting lynched, while others hadn't.

One July 4th, Cholly and Blue Jack are at a church picnic. The father of one of the families lifts a watermelon over his head, preparing to smash it on the ground. As Cholly watches, the man lifts the watermelon over his head. To Cholly his arms look taller than trees, and his hands look bigger than the sun. For a moment, Cholly wonders if God looks like the man with the watermelon, but he quickly realizes that God is an old white man, with a white beard and blue eyes. He realizes if the man does not look like God, he must look like the devil. Cholly decides that if the man looks like the devil, he prefers the devil to God. When the man smashes the watermelon, the watermelon's heart spills out. The man gives Blue Jack the heart and he shares it with Cholly.

During a very chilly Spring, Aunt Jimmy gets sick. Her friends pray for her and read the bible to her, but she still doesn't recover. Eventually, they decide to fetch a local medicine woman named M'Dear. Cholly is surprised when he sees M'Dear. He expected a decrepit old woman, but M'Dear stands six feet tall, and has four white knots of hair that give off a sense of power and authority. After running her fingers through Aunt Jimmy's hair and over her body, she asks to see the slop jar to examine Aunt Jimmy's stools. She instructs them to bury the jar, and tells Aunt Jimmy to drink only pot liquor.

Over the next few days, Aunt Jimmy drinks only pot liquor and improves. Her friends spend time with her, and Cholly listens to them as they talk nostalgically about the pain they have endured during their lives. These women, now elderly, have reconceptualized their experience in their own minds. In their understanding, instead of laboring in white homes, they ran the homes, and while they beat their children with one hand they took care of them with the other. As elderly women, they are beyond the lust of men, and therefor spared the dangers faced by younger women—they are "finally free".

On a wet Saturday night a few days after M'Dear's visit, Aunt Jimmy eats peach cobbler, breaking the diet M'Dear prescribed to her. That night she dies. During the days after her death, Cholly does not immediately grieve her death. He receives a great deal of attention, food, a hot bath, and clean clothes. Before the funeral, Aunt Jimmy's family talks about how they will afford to bury her, and later decide that Cholly will go stay with Aunt Jimmy's brother.

After the funeral, Aunt Jimmy's family and friends gather at her house. Cholly finds his cousin, Jake, outside of the house. Jake offer's Cholly a rolled cigarette, but when Cholly is unable to light it, he throws it on the ground. Ashamed, he feels he needs to prove himself, so when Jake asks if there are any girls around, Cholly says yes and leads Jake to where the girls are. The boys take a spot on the porch beside a group of girls and listen to them talk. The girls begin to bicker with one another as they react to the boys' presence.

Jake eventually persuades a girl named, Suky, to walk around with him. After Suky agrees, Cholly turns to another girl, Darlene, and tells her to come along. They walk to a wild vineyard, and eat muscadine berries. The boys begin chasing the girls, pelting them with grapes. During the chase, Darlene and Cholly slip into a gully, and when they pause to rest, they notice Jake and Suky are gone. Darlene grows concerned because her dress is stained and her mother is going to hit her when she gets back. Cholly realizes then that Aunt Jimmy is dead, and he misses the fear of being whipped.

Cholly feels sorry for Darlene and tries to help her tie the bow on her dress. As he ties the bow, Darlene slips her hands under his shirt and begins tickling him. Eventually they begin to have sex. During the act, however, Darlene suddenly stops moving and cries out. Cholly thinks he has hurt her, but quickly realizes that two white men with guns and a flashlight are watching them. The men force Cholly to continue having sex with Darlene. As he continues the sex act, the men humiliate him, shining the flashlight on his behind, and attacking him with racial slurs. Feeling powerless under their gaze, Cholly directs his hatred toward Darlene. Eventually, the white men hear their hunting dogs barking, and walk away.

Over the next few days, Cholly doesn't go far from the house, for fear of seeing Darlene. He continues to cultivate his hatred for her, never considering directing the hatred toward the white men as, subconsciously, he knows hatred toward the men he was powerless over would consume him because it would be a hatred he could do nothing about. One day while sitting on the back porch, Cholly develops the irrational belief that Darlene might be pregnant. He decides to run away and find his father. He knows that leaving Darlene is wrong, but in that moment he believes he knows how his father felt when he left. Cholly takes the money Aunt Jimmy had left in the stove flue and departs toward Macon, Georgia, to find his father.

Cholly works odd jobs as he makes his way toward Macon until he's saved enough money to buy a bus ticket that would bring him the rest of the way. When he arrives in Macon, he finds a group of men gambling in an alley. Cholly is excited by the commotion in the alley and sight of the money being gambled away. He asks one of the men if he knows where to find Samson Fuller. The man points to Cholly's father, who is arguing with another man. Cholly is surprised that he is taller than his father, as he'd imagined his father would be a large man. When Cholly approaches, Samson turns and stares at Cholly. He asks Cholly who sent him. When Cholly can't remember his mother's name, he says nobody sent him, and tells Samson his name. Samson, having left before knowing Cholly's name does not recognize him. As Cholly walks away, Samson tells him to, "Tell that bitch she get her money."

In shock after the incident with his father, Cholly exits the alleyway and his legs give way. He takes a seat on a crate turned over on the sidewalk. Cholly exerts all of his energy to abstain from crying, but in the process, defecates in his pants. He runs to the pier and passes out in the shade beneath it in the fetal position. When he wakes up, it is dark and he begins washing his clothes in the river. He thinks of Aunt Jimmy as he cleans his clothes. Suddenly a longing for her company overtakes him and he begins to cry.

After this experience, Cholly finds himself dangerously free. He is free to sleep in doorways, sleep with women, beat them, and take care of them when he chooses. He is free to go to jail and not care, free enough to kill three white men, and free to drink himself silly. He doesn't care how long he lives or how he dies. When he meets Pauline, he is drawn to her by the joy he awakens in her. After he marries her, the repetitiveness of the married life makes Cholly desperate and uninspired. Alcohol becomes Cholly's only interest. He is dumbfounded about how to act once his children are born due to his own lack of a male role model growing up. He reacts to them based on what he is feeling in the moment.

On a Saturday afternoon, Cholly staggers home drunk. He finds Pecola at the sink washing dishes. As he watches her he experiences a fury of passing emotions—revulsion, guilt, pity, then love. He is revolted by her helplessness, then guilty because he knows he cannot take care of her. He can't understand how Pecola could love him, and in that moment he feels a deep hatred for her. As he watches, feeling a sickening hatred for his daughter, Pecola lifts her leg and scratches her calf with her toes. This gesture reminds him of the day he met Pauline in Kentucky. He is filled with tenderness for his daughter and desires to cover her foot and nibble her calf. Cholly drops to his knees and crawls toward Pecola. He begins nibbling her calf, and then pulls her to the floor and rapes her. As he finishes the sexual act, "His soul seemed to slip down to his guts and fly out into her." As he stands up, he looks at his daughter and feels a mixture of hatred and tenderness. The hatred prevents him from picking her up, so he covers her with a blanket and leaves her on the floor.