Brooklyn Character Analysis in God Help the Child

Brooklyn is a white woman with dreadlocks. Bride describes Brooklyn as her closest friend and the one person she can trust completely. Morrison portrays Brooklyn, though, as an untrustworthy person, willing to betray Bride at a moment’s notice for her own gain. When Bride is recovering after being beaten by Sofia, Brooklyn is excited that she might be given a more important role at work while Bride is out of the office. And earlier, before the story’s present, Brooklyn attempted to seduce Bride’s boyfriend at the time, Booker, just for the fun of it. While Brooklyn’s duplicity never leads to a full-scale confrontation between Bride and Brooklyn, as Bride moves closer toward self-actualization, she drifts away from Brooklyn both physically and emotionally.

Brooklyn Quotes in God Help the Child

The God Help the Child quotes below are all either spoken by Brooklyn or refer to Brooklyn. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:

How can she persuade women to improve their looks with products that can’t improve her own? There isn’t enough YOU, GIRL foundation in the world to hide eye scars, a broken nose and facial skin scraped down to pink hypodermis. Assuming much of the damage fades, she will still need plastic surgery, which means weeks and weeks of idleness, hiding behind glasses and floppy hats. I might be asked to take over. Temporarily, of course.

Related Characters: Brooklyn (speaker), Lula Ann “Bride” Bridewell, Sofia Huxley

Page Number and Citation: 26

Explanation and Analysis:

Brooklyn Character Timeline in God Help the Child

The timeline below shows where the character Brooklyn appears in God Help the Child. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.

Arrested Development and Unconditional Love Theme Icon

...brought—out of the hotel room. Bride doesn’t go to the police but calls her friend Brooklyn—the one person she can trust completely. (full context)

Brooklyn meets Bride at an emergency clinic to pick her up and take her home. Bride... (full context)

...now, she thinks she almost looks beautiful again. Bride thinks working from home isn’t too bad—Brooklyn, who is in the office, sometimes overrides her decisions, but Bride is glad someone has... (full context)

Bride meets Brooklyn at a restaurant called Pirate. She admits to lying to Brooklyn about the rape: in... (full context)

Two weeks later, Brooklyn throws a launch party for YOU, GIRL at a museum where Bride is the center... (full context)

At first, Brooklyn thought Booker was a predator. Once, she saw him out front of the subway panhandling.... (full context)

...trusted Booker, Bride thinks. She told him everything about herself, and then he just left. Brooklyn calls and asks Bride what she thought of the launch party the night before. Bride... (full context)

While Bride is still at Steve and Evelyn’s house, she decides to write Brooklyn a note to tell her where she is. She isn’t sure what to write, though,... (full context)

Brooklyn hasn’t heard a word from Bride for weeks. Then one day she gets a note... (full context)

Brooklyn Character Analysis

Brooklyn Quotes in God Help the Child

Part 1, Chapter 3: Brooklyn Quotes

Brooklyn Character Timeline in God Help the Child