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Having Trouble Understanding Soaphead Church in the Bluest Eye
I had to read the book a few years ago for a competition, and despite knowing from page one what was gonna happen, I liked the book up until \*that\* scene, and it basically took a nose dive in the quality of the experience from there. (Not because I couldn’t handle inc\*st or r\*pe, but because of how it was written. I’m more used to hearing the gruesome details from the perspective of the victim or a sympathetic third party) I think the main reason why I came away hating this book so much immediately after finishing it, was because we went from what happened to Pecola, into pages upon pages of backstory for Soaphead Church, a character that, in my opinion, did not really need all that, specifically the part about his own pedophilic actions. At the time, it felt like we went from an importantly disgusting, awful, painful, but meaningful scene, to having a random side character be a pervert just because, because it added almost nothing to the scene he was in. At most, it mattered because even he, a pedophile that likes little girls around Pecola’s age, thinks she’s too ugly to groom. But everything else about that aspect of his character, like the speculations as to why he is that way, (which vary from being a repressed homosexual to being an extreme germaphobe) and how long Morrison dragged it on, felt like it was sick just for the sake of being sick. I guess I felt like I was tricked. For most of the book I was reading something profound, and every word had a purpose, but the ending reminded me of gruesome fanfictions I read as a kid that were made purely for gross out shock value. I genuinely think I wouldn’t have come away from that first read with that impression if it wasn’t for the lore drop on Soaphead Church.
So can anybody please tell me what the point of that was?
#entertainment
source
I had to read the book a few years ago for a competition, and despite knowing from page one what was gonna happen, I liked the book up until \*that\* scene, and it basically took a nose dive in the quality of the experience from there. (Not because I couldn’t handle inc\*st or r\*pe, but because of how it was written. I’m more used to hearing the gruesome details from the perspective of the victim or a sympathetic third party) I think the main reason why I came away hating this book so much immediately after finishing it, was because we went from what happened to Pecola, into pages upon pages of backstory for Soaphead Church, a character that, in my opinion, did not really need all that, specifically the part about his own pedophilic actions. At the time, it felt like we went from an importantly disgusting, awful, painful, but meaningful scene, to having a random side character be a pervert just because, because it added almost nothing to the scene he was in. At most, it mattered because even he, a pedophile that likes little girls around Pecola’s age, thinks she’s too ugly to groom. But everything else about that aspect of his character, like the speculations as to why he is that way, (which vary from being a repressed homosexual to being an extreme germaphobe) and how long Morrison dragged it on, felt like it was sick just for the sake of being sick. I guess I felt like I was tricked. For most of the book I was reading something profound, and every word had a purpose, but the ending reminded me of gruesome fanfictions I read as a kid that were made purely for gross out shock value. I genuinely think I wouldn’t have come away from that first read with that impression if it wasn’t for the lore drop on Soaphead Church.
So can anybody please tell me what the point of that was?
#entertainment
source
| 3,000 mlx | |
| 24 | |
| 0 |