An Overview of Characters and Themes in Recitatif
缩写的方法Recitatif is the only published short story by luminary African-American novelist Toni Morrison. It appeared in a 1983 anthology of writing by African-American women entitled Confirmation, edited by Amiri and Amina Baraka. 铍青铜英文Recitatiffinity tells the story of the conflicted friendship between two girls—one black and one white—from the time they meet and bond at age eight while staying at an orphanage through their re-acquaintance as mothers on different sides of economic, political, and racial divides in a recently gentrified town in upstate New York.
The title alludes to a style of musical declamation that hovers between song and ordinary speech; it is ud for dialogic and narrative interludes during operas and oratories. The term “recitatif” also once included the now-obsolete meaning, "the tone or rhythm peculiar to any language." Both of the definitions suggest the story's episodic nature, how each of the story's five ctions happens in a register that is different from the respective ordinary lives of its two central characters, Roberta and Twyla. The story's vignettes bring together t
while和when的区别he rhythms of two lives for five, short moments, all of them narrated in Twyla's own voice. The story is, then, in veral ways, Twyla's “recitatif.” '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," writes Toni Morrison in her Preface to Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination.
First let us learn something about the author. Toni Morrison was born Chloe Anthony Wofford to George and Rahmah Wofford in 1931. The cond of four children, Morrison was raid in the small Ohio town of Lorain in a tight-knit black community. Morrison describes her father, a shipyard welder, as a racist. Having experienced virulent racism, he despid whites. Her mother, on the other hand, was an integrationist. Both of her parents and her larger community instilled in Morrison a strong n of lf-esteem and cultural identity.
Though she had no aspirations of being a writer in her youth, Morrison was always an avid reader and a precocious student. Her imagination was further nourished by the folk s
vanketories pasd down from her parents and grandmother. She attended Lorain High School and went on to Howard University, a historically black college.
Next let’s learn some information about characters; James Benson is Twyla's husband. He is a native of Newburgh, the town where the later part of the story takes place. He is "comfortable as a hou slipper" and is associated with the kind of family and continuity that Twyla's history lacks. Joph Benson is Twyla and James's son. Twyla becomes an activist in the busing controversy when Joph is bud out of district in order to ensure racial integration in the schools. Twyla is the main character and the story's narrator. She was raid, in part, at an orphanage—not becau her parents were dead, but becau her mother cho or needed to "dance all night" and was thus unable to care for her. The fact that Twyla lacks mothering is central to her character. insomniac>raphieShe marries into a stable, rooted family and becomes a mother herlf. It is in this capacity that she becomes involved in the controversy over racial integration in the schools and gets into a conflict with Roberta, a friend from the orphanage with whom she has recently become reacquainted.
Twyla is characterized throughout the story in terms of her relationship to Roberta, which is often one of contrast. As in their divide over the busing crisis, the contrasts are bad around the central issue of their racial difference. Despite the fact that Twyla and Roberta are of different races and also, as the story progress, different economic class, there are underlying similarities and shared experiences — particularly their relationships to their respective mothers — that suggest the possibility of understanding and friendship. However, the events of the story illustrate that this possibility is precarious due to the social and cultural pressures that discourage interracial friendship. Maggie works at the kitchen of St. Bonny’s, the orphanage where Twyla and Roberta meet. She is mute and bowlegged and was herlf raid in an institution. One of Twyla’s strongest memories of St. Bonny’s is an incident where Maggie fell down in the school’s orchard. Twyla remembers the intimidating older girls from the orphanage laughing at Maggie and that she and Roberta did nothing to help her. But during their argument over the busing controversy Roberta tells Twyla that they had both kicked Maggie that day, and further confus her by referring to Maggie as a black lady. Twyla had never considered Maggie
black. Roberta later admits that they had not kicked her, only that she had wanted to. But both women remain confud as to what race “sandy-colored” Maggie should be considered. Twyla and Roberta identify with Maggie’s weakness and also identify her with their mothers, and both regard her with a combination of sympathy and anger.
The issue of race and racism is central to the story. Twyla’s first respon to rooming with Roberta at St. Bonny’s is to feel sick to her stomach. “It was one thing to be taken out of your own bed early in the morning — it was something el to be stuck in a strange place with a girl from a whole other race.” Throughout the story Twyla and Roberta’s friendship is inhibited by this n of an uncrossable racial divide, played out against the background of national racial tensions such as the busing crisis. Racial conflicts provide the main turning points in the story’s plot. At no point, however, does Morrison disclo which girl is black and which is white. She offers socially and historically specific descriptions in order to flesh out her characterizations of Twyla and Roberta, and some of the descriptions may lead readers to come to conclusions about the characters” races bad on associations, but none is definitive. For example, when Roberta shows up at th
e Howard Johnson’s where Twyla works, on her way to e Jimi Hendrix, she’s described as having “hair so big and wild I could hardly e her face.” This may suggest that Roberta is black and wore an afro, a style for black hair popular in the 1960s. During this same period, however, hair and clothing styles (and music such as that of black rocker Hendrix) crosd over between black and white youths, and many whites wore their hair big and wild. Likewi, Roberta’s socioeconomic progress from an illiterate foster care child to a rich executive’s wife may suggestbetweenlegs that she is white becau of the greater economic power of whites in general. In Twyla’s words, “Everything is so easy for them.” Although economic class can be associated with race, there are plenty of white firemen and black executives. Race divides Twyla and Roberta again and again, and Morrison’s unconventional approach to character description suggests that it is the way that blacks and whites are defined (and define themlves) against each other that leads to this divide.
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