evelop, then he would have an alternative to the materialism everywhere around him. He is too cynical to truly involve himself in the spiritual life which would allow him to transcend both materialism and his bitterness about the illusion of the American Dream. As it is, in the world as it is, Bob can only feel sorry for himself and for the boy, and for Columbus and everyone else ever taken in by fantasies, and a cynical, bitter, pessimistic, satirical and finally superficial sense of regret for the boy and anyone else still naive enough to be taken in by the dream.
3. Toni Morrison's dark vision in her novel Beloved is powerful and frightening in part because it is expressed without any attempt at satire or humor of any sort. The selected passage is not meant merely to be a pessimistic pause on the way to a more optimistic ending. To the contrary, there is no alleviating circumstance in Morrison's pessimistic portrait of racist America, no afterword designed to convince the reader that the book is not really as dark or hopeless as it seems. Morrison give
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