Entangled lives: a dialogic reading of the characters Heed and Christine in Toni Morrison’s Love

Abstract

This article investigates the construction of character in Toni Morrison’s novel Love, arguing that its characters are dialogically constructed in multiple ways and that this relational structure reflects the novel’s thematic focus on interhuman relationships. The primary focus for the discussion is the way that various genres are brought into play in the presentation of two of the novel’s most central characters, Heed and Christine, whose fraught relationship occupies a central place in the novel. The reading of the novel reveals that its dialogic narrative structure refracts the manifold and complex nature of their relationship and shows how the life of one individual is entangled in the lives of other people. Blame cannot be located in one specific place or in one specific character and the novel’s narrative strategy thus defers stable conclusions.

Keywords:

• Toni Morrison
• Love
• African American literature
• Bakhtin
• dialogue
• genre

REVIEWING EDITOR:

• Oliver Nyambi, English, University of the Free State, South Africa

Keywords:

• SUBJECTS
• Art & Visual Culture
• Cultural Studies
• Literature

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 This article is based on a part of a chapter from my unpublished dissertation Genre Polyphony in African American Literature (Søfting, 2020).

2 See for instance Axel Nissen: “Sula is centrally concerned with right and wrong interpersonal relationships forged by bonds of kinship, marriage, and, not least of all, friendship. What does it mean to be good? What is evil? What does it mean to be a friend?”

3 Houston Baker, Jr. chides reviewers for what he calls “the intellectual shallowness and implicit critical contempt” (17, 2013) with which the novel has been received. For less than enthusiastic reviews.

4 This is also noted by Elliott Butler-Evans in relation to Song of Solomon: “What is dialogically significant here is the manner in which individual consciousnesses present themselves as autonomous voices unmediated by either the narrator or Morrison, thereby opening the novel to numerous interpretive possibilities”.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Inger-Anne Søfting

Inger-Anne Søfting is an Associate Professor of American Studies in the Department of Languages and Literatures at The University of Southeastern Norway. Her PhD was in the field of African American literature. She has published articles on Toni Morrison, Jean Toomer, and Cormac McCarthy. Other research interests include the Gothic, literature and the environment, and literature and music.