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

AbstractThis 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.