Portrait of a Victim: The Bluest Eye by Toni MorrisonThe Bluest Eye (1970) is the novel that catapulted Toni Morrison into the spotlight as a writer and talented African-American social critic. . Morrison herself says: “It would be a mistake to assume that writers are disconnected from social issues” (Leflore). Because Morrison is more willing than most authors to discuss the meaning of her books, a genetic approach is very relevant. However, to be truly effective, the genetic approach must be combined with a formal approach. The formal approach uncovers the rich language, images, and metaphors of Morrison's writing, and the genetics places them in the broader context of his social consciousness. In The Bluest Eye, Morrison uses his critical eye to reveal evil to the reader. this is caused by a society indoctrinated by the goodness and beauty inherent in whiteness and the ugliness of blackness. In an interview with Milwaukee Journal editor Fannie Leflore, Morrison said she "confronted and criticized 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 of her novels. She says: “People are hungry for storytelling. . . That’s how they learn things” (Bakerman 58). The narration 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 seeing Claudia think about the story as an adult, first-person narration of Pecola's mother and a narration by Morrison herself as omniscient narrator. . Morrison says, "At first 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 “she” story, and it didn’t work. . . It was I, the author, in some sense all-powerful, who spoke” (Bakerman 59). Morrison intentionally kept Pecola from any first-person narration of the story. Morrison wanted to "try to show a little girl as a total and complete victim of everything around her", and she needed the distance and innocence of Claudia's story to achieve this (Stepto 479).