Summary
The narrator tells the history of Soaphead Church, a self-declared “Reader,
Adviser, and Interpreter of Dreams” in Lorain’s black community.
A light-skinned West Indian, he was raised in a family proud of
its mixed blood. His family has always been academically and politically
ambitious, and always corrupt. Family members have always tried
to marry other light-skinned people, and, if unable to do so, they
have married one another. Soaphead Church’s father was a sadistic
schoolmaster and his half-Chinese mother died soon after he was
born. Born Elihue Micah Whitcomb, Soaphead Church soon learned the
art of self-deception and developed a fascination and revulsion
for dirt and decay.
Soaphead married a woman named Velma, but she left him
two months afterward. Next, he pursued the ministry but soon discovered
that the profession was not right for him. He studied psychiatry and
other social sciences, took different jobs, and finally came to Lorain.
He rents a back room from an elderly lady named Bertha Reese, and
his only hardship is her old dog, Bob, which disgusts him with its
runny eyes. Soaphead buys poison to kill the dog but is too repulsed
to go near it.
At this point, Pecola comes to ask him to give her blue
eyes. He is touched by this request—his own attraction to whiteness
makes it easily comprehensible. He knows he cannot help her, but
he tells her to give meat—which he has secretly poisoned—to the
dog. He tells her that if the dog reacts, her wish will be granted.
The dog convulses and dies, and Pecola runs away.
Soaphead then writes a rambling and incoherent letter
to God in which we learn more about his understanding of his life.
He still feels rejected by Velma, who left him “the way people leave
a hotel room.” He describes his love for the newly budding breasts
of young girls (we have already been told that he is a pedophile).
He remembers two girls, Doreen and Sugar Babe, who let him touch
them in exchange for money and sweets. He tells God that
he did not touch Pecola and brags that he has rivaled God by granting
her wish—she will not literally have blue eyes, but she will believe
she does. Soaphead closes his letter and thinks lovingly about all
the miscellaneous objects he has collected. He is asleep when his
landlord discovers her dead dog.
Analysis
Like Geraldine and Pauline, Soaphead Church is another
example of how the worship of whiteness and cleanliness can deform
a black life. His mixed blood gives him a false sense of superiority,
which he maintains with delusions of grandeur. Indeed, he half-convinces himself
that he can work miracles and that he has a direct line to God.
His disgust at human physicality leaves him isolated and lonely
and leads him to direct his sexual impulses toward young girls.
The narrator ironically describes him as “a very clean old man”
instead of a dirty old man, and the implication is clear: his obsession
with bodily purity has made him more perverted than simple lust
would have.
While Pauline and Cholly are described with sympathy
despite their many flaws, Soaphead Church is more of a parody than
a multidimensional character. He is labeled as a type, a misanthrope (or
people-hater) who prefers objects to people. The narrator comments
ironically that like many misanthropes, Soaphead chooses a career
that puts him in direct, intimate contact with people. When Soaphead
is given the chance to narrate his own story, in his letter to God,
he is not made more sympathetic, as Pauline is when she narrates
her story. Instead, he becomes still more absurd, using pretentious
and frequently melodramatic language, blaming God for his own failings,
and justifying himself with hypocritical claims of good and pure
intentions. He writes in ridiculously precise and detailed prose,
saying of his claim to possess God’s power that “it was not a complete lie;
but it was a complete lie,” as if there were a
meaningful difference between the two.
