This essay focuses on how Toni Morrison’s narrative style in The Bluest Eye encourages empathy. The essay will investigate how shifts in focalization, embedment strategies and emotive language used by Morrison may affect the way in which readers can understand themes of racism, neglect and abuse. This essay employs scholarly approaches to the novel and Morrison’s narrative techniques and considers the text from the perspective of reader-response theory, focalization, and narrative theory. I suggest that Morrison’s narrative style, including alternating focalization between characters in the novel, create narrative embedment to invite the reader into different mental states, and using emotive narrative engages empathy in readers, even for characters whose actions are indefensible. Rather than provide easy answers, readers are encouraged to contemplate the forces that forge chains of victimization and violence.