Portrait of a Victim: The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison The Bluest Eye (1970) is the novel that launched Toni Morrison into the spotlight as a talented African-American writer and critic social. Morrison herself states: “It would be a mistake to assume that writers are disconnected from social issues” (Leflore). Since Morrison is more willing than most authors to discuss the meaning of her books, a genetic approach is highly relevant. To be truly effective, however, the genetic approach must be combined with a formal approach. The formal approach allows us to reveal the rich language, images and metaphors of Morrison's writing, while the genetic approach places him in the broader context of his social consciousness. In The Bluest Eye, Morrison uses his critical eye to reveal to the reader the evil that is caused by a society indoctrinated by the inherent goodness and beauty of white and the ugliness of black. In an interview with Milwaukee Journal editor Fannie Leflore, Morrison said she "addressed and critiqued the devastation of racial imagery" in The Bluest Eye. The narrative structure of The Bluest Eye is important in revealing how pervasive and destructive “racialization” is. (Morrison's term for the racism that is part of every person's socialization) is (Leflore). Morrison is particularly concerned with the narrative in her novels. He says: “People crave storytelling. . . This is how they learn things” (Bakerman 58). The narrative in The Bluest Eye comes from several sources. Much of the narration comes from Claudia MacTeer as a nine-year-old, but Morrison also gives the reader the benefit of Claudia reflecting on the story as an adult, a first-person narration from Pecola's mother, and Morrison's own narration as narrator omniscient. . Morrison says: “First of all I wrote it [the section of The Bluest Eye about Pecola's mother] as an 'I' story, but it didn't work. . . Then I wrote it as a "her" story, and it didn't work. . . It was I, the author, in some sense omnipotent, speaking” (Bakerman 59). Morrison intentionally prevented Pecola from narrating the story in the first person. Morrison wanted to "try to show a little girl as a complete and utter victim of her surroundings", and to do that he needed the distance and innocence of Claudia's narration (Stepto 479).