ichael Awkward points out in his essay about the novel, the family in the grade-school primer does not live up to the image of the happy, normal family. Thus, Morrison uses the primer to introduce us to a family that could never have been the image of the happy, normal family.
In his essay, Awkward points out that Morrison uses the primary not only as a preface to the text, but also as introductions to the various chapters throughout the novel. Specifically, Morrison only uses the primer in the text to introduce chapters that deal with members of the Breedlove family. As Awkward notes, however, the Breedlove family is "the very antithesis of the standardized, ideal (white) American family of the primer" (Awkward 57). He contends that Morrison uses the introductory primer to illustrate the way the Breedloves utterly fail to conform to the standards by which the beauty and happiness of the primer family and, therefore, all American families, are measured (Awkward 57).
The primer material before the seven chapters that deal with the members of the Breedlove family is tied thematically to the
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