d man Macteer misses with the rifle. Junior, the son of the prim and proper “Aiken” woman Geraldine, assaults Pecola with a cat, takes her as his prisoner, murders or seriously incapacitates the cat, and then blames it all on Pecola, who ends up taking the rap. And then there were the schoolyard bullies, Bay Boy and all the rest who gang up on Pecola and hold her at bay while they verbally assault her. All these male characters played the role of regulating the usual evils in a person’s everyday life. Unlike Cholly and Soaphead Church, whose evils were on a grandiose scale, and do not happen to people often, these characters represented the regular hardships and conflicts people go through everyday, and therefore they stimulate minimal development compared to the major evildoers in this story. To sum up this paper, I think that every male character in this novel played the important role of either positively, or aversely affecting the way the rest of the characters in this story developed. While most of the influencing was negative, there was the occasional bright spot shining through, such as Mr. Macteer, or some heroic or humorous act that pulled this story together. Overall the book was depressing, and I thought the plot line needed some fine tuning, but Morrison executed some good character development and conflict, and that combined with some creative point of view shifts made for an interesting chronicle of human life. I think Morrison made the male characters the way she did, because she wanted to portray this story in a way as real as possible. She based the story loosely on some of her childhood experiences, and don’t forget, she was around in the racist period of time that was in this country, so you can see where all this negativity comes from. So in short, Morrison essentially used male characters to stimulate character development, and to basically tell her story of someone’s poor, unfortunate ...
