Jackson's story was published in 1949, Morrison's novel in 1970, and at first glance, it seems that the two works have not very much in common, except that they each have a character who loses a tooth. Instead, their focus is on a part of the body that is rather small in size and thus, one might assume, would be the least of the body parts that could render any significant pronouncements about the human condition. It is not a missing limb that those authors explore to find meaning. For many, the results are not only the consequences that are obvious health issues-such as comparably high rates of arthritis, diabetes, and heart disease-but also the not so easily detectable consequence of psychosocial illness.Ī version of that illness is also at the heart of Jackson's and Morrison's works. The condition is not so much unlike what the amputee victims of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars suffer as they endure the anguish of first having had a limb blown off and then having to figure out what to make of the rest of their lives.

One envisions that an author might be more inclined to explore the meaning behind, for example, a missing limb such as what Herman Melville did by having Captain Ahab first lose his leg to a whale and then live in a state of perpetual torment. I N SHIRLEY JACKSON'S 'The Tooth' and Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, there is a focus on a particular part of the body that one might not assume could carry the full weight of symbolism. Clara Spencer and Pauline Breedlove have likewise been involved in a vicious struggle within which the missing body part is not a limb but something instead so small as a tooth, and yet the consequence of that loss leaves them just as much driven to the depths of emotional destruction as where we find so many amputee victims and indeed the tortured Ahab himself. Similarly, over the past few decades, we have come to understand that amputee victims of war can fall victim to such an extreme state of depression that it renders them all but helpless to confront their wartime demons. Captain Ahab, from the moment he lost his leg, was plunged into the depths of a psychological abyss that rendered him unable to function anymore as an emotionally healthy human being.

The Tooth by Shirley Jackson