Recitatif by Toni Morrison Summary and Analysis Example For Students

Recitatif by Toni Morrison Summary and Analysis Nowadays, race is considered more as an ideological or social construct rather than just a biological fact. This phenomenon is visible in many literary works. Toni Morrison, who is against all literary racism, presents in her works a new way to read American literature and enables the reader to see the hard racial truths that it contains. In her experimental short story Recitatif she purposely deprives her characters of their racial identity and creates ambiguity by constantly oscillating between racial codes that might apply both to black and white people. Morrison challenges the readers expectations and any solution that is based on stereotypes by first creating and then re-creating the characters racial identity. Her aim, by doing so, is to make the reader aware of the racial stereotypes, which are often contradictory. Toni Morrisons Recitatif has lyrical and ironical undertones, achieved by such narrative strategies as allusions to race stereotypes, racism, perception of racial otherness, reversal and indirection. She plays with the readers expectations by many plot enigmas, language tricks and storyline gaps. She also encourages the reader to deeper engagement with the text and much closer reading. Such textual elements push the reader to solve the mysteries, fill in the gaps, and thereby complete the story. By participating in making meaning out of the text, readers experience the story on a much deeper level than they otherwise would. Furthermore, they respond on a meta-analytical level, encouraged to consider why the texts elements influenced their responses in particular ways. Morrison starts her story with reference to the issue of race and pretends to donate their characters and the reader with the notion of race. Two main characters Twyla and Roberta are eight-year-old girls who grow up in St. Bonnys orphanage because their mothers could not take a proper care of them. The author makes it clear that the girls are form different ethnic background. In the beginning of the story Twyla makes a comment we looked like salt and pepper, however, does not mention who was white and who was black. Even the girls names are misleading because both Roberta and Twyla are names usually associated with African-Americans. On the other hand, both names have English origins, and white girls are also named by these names. In the beginning of the story we get to know how the racial difference was perceived by the girls. When Twyla gets to know that her roommate will be a girl of a different race it makes her feel sick to her stomach. She says It was one thing to be taken out of your own bed early in the morning it was something else to be stuck in a strange place with a girl from a whole other race. This sense of an impossible-to-cross racial divide inhibits Twyla and Robertas friendship throughout the whole story. In the beginning of Recitatif the author gives a hint, a very misleading one, that Roberta is the one who is black. Twyla says that her mother told her that they never washed their hair and they smelled funny. Roberta sure did. A white reader instinctively makes an assumption that Roberta is black because according to a well-known stereotype black people are those who smell funny. However, white people often forget that for black people the whites are those who actually smell funny. The quoted passage is also misleading because Twylas mother might have been talking about children raised in an orphanage, who are not bathed properly and consequently smelling funny. When the girls mothers are presented to the reader it does not get any easier to decide who is white and who is African-American. Twyla describes Robertas mother as follows: She was big. Bigger than any man and on her chest was the biggest cross Id ever seen. I swear it was six inches long each way. And in the crook of her arm was the biggest Bible ever made. This description suggests a stereotypical black person big, wearing a huge cross and carrying a Bible. But again it might be very misleading. Not only African-Americans are associated with such image of a very religious person. It also resembles very religious white people living in the Bible Belt an area in the south in which socially conservative Christian Evangelical Protestantism is a dominant part of the culture. The name is derived from a heavy emphasis on literal interpretations of the Bible in the local denominations. Mary Twylas mother, is also presented in a very ambiguous way. It is written that she looked so beautiful even in those ugly green slacks that made her behind stick out. It is a common stereotype that black people generally have larger behinds than the whites. That is why one can assume that Mary was black. However, she might have been just a heavy white woman with a large bottom. There is a Problem with Having Cable Television on College Campuses Eleven o'clock on a Tuesday night EssayOne of the very significant characters of Recitatif is Maggie a figure of racial ambiguity. She is a mute, bowlegged kitchen woman at St. Bonnys orphanage. Important thing that Twyla says about her is that she was sandy-colored but at the time of her being in the orphanage she had assumed that Maggie was white. Later, when the women meet at the picket, Roberta suggests to Twyla that Maggie was black, saying: Youre the same little state kid who kicked a poor old black lady when she was down on the ground. Twyla does not seem to be as concerned about the fact of kicking Maggie, as about the color of her skin. Her thoughts perfectly demonstrate it: What was she saying? Black? Maggie wasnt black. She replies Roberta that She wasnt black. Maggies color seems very important for the story as it becomes almost an obsession with Twyla. At her sons graduation, when she did not encounter Roberta there, she rationalizes her lack of concern about the kicking of Maggie as she reflects on her argument with Roberta a years before. It didnt trouble me much what she had said to me in the car. I mean the kicking part. I know I didnt do that, I couldnt do that. Then her thoughts return to Maggies color: But I was puzzled by her telling me Maggie was black. When I thought about it I actually couldnt be certain. She wasnt pitch-black, I knew, or I would have remembered that. () I tried to reassure myself about the race thing for a long time until it dawned on me that the truth was already there, and Roberta knew it. But Roberta wasnt sure about Maggies color either, and at their last meeting a couple of years later, Roberta admits it: Listen to me. I really did think she was black. I didnt make that up. I really thought so. But now I cant be sure. Maggies significance is confirmed when in the last sentence of the story Roberta cries out: What the hell happened to Maggie? Through the trick in her story, Morrison calls the readers to reconsider their own reading of racial codes and prejudices. She reveals the relativity of all racial stereotypes. The trick that Morrison uses centers on the childish naivity and the cunning ambiguity in the presentation of characters as well as the simple tone of the story. She deprives her characters and the readers of the racial codes and signs and brings the arbitrariness of the race issue into question. The readers end up questioning their previous judgments and associations about race. Recitatif proves to be a noteworthy experiment which is toying with the readers emotions and effectively noting racial stereotypes and their characteristics. In her work of literary criticism Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination Morrison shows how language imposes stereotypes in literary works of classic American authors. In Recitatif she gives clues about racial identity of her characters and consequently forces the readers to consider the usual ways in which race is presented in literature. The best conclusion of this essay is a fragment of Playing in the Dark which follows: I am a black writer struggling with and through a language that can powerfully evoke and enforce hidden signs of racial superiority, cultural hegemony, and dismissive othering of people and language which are by no means marginal or already and completely known and knowable in my work. My vulnerability would lie in romanticizing blackness rather than demonizing it; vilifying whiteness rather than reifying it. The kind of work I have always wanted to do requires me to learn how to maneuver ways to free up the language from its sometimes sinister, frequently lazy, almost always predictable employment of racially informed and determined chains. (The only short story I have ever written, Recitatif, was an experiment in the removal of all racial codes from a narrative about two characters of different races for whom racial identity is crucial.)