The Bluest Eye Toni Morrison - Mark Ledbetter (essay date 1995)

Mark Ledbetter (essay date 1995)

SOURCE: Ledbetter, Mark. “Through the Eyes of a Child: Looking for Victims in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye.” In Literature and Theology at Century's End, edited by Gregory Salyer and Robert Detweiler, pp. 177-88. Atlanta, Ga.: Scholars Press, 1995.

[In the following essay, Ledbetter examines the characteristics of the victims in The Bluest Eye and the reader's response to them, investigating the ethical dimensions of writing and reading the novel.]

…
And then last night, I tiptoed up
To my daughter's room and heard her
Talking to someone, and when I opened
The door, there was no one there …
Only she on her knees, peeking into

Her own clasped hands

Imamu Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones)1

INTRODUCTION

Desperation characterizes the victim. The victim will do most anything to avoid his fated end, which is disappearance. Victims are a lost...

[The entire page is 4811 words long]

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