Hi, I'm Rebecca Balcarcel. Let's talk about Toni Morrison's short story, "Recitatif."
First of all, the title: A recitatif, in an opera, is a portion of an opera where the formal singing
stops, and we just have a character singing in a more conversational
way with more conversational rhythm, just imparting some information. Twyla, here, is
delivering little portions out of the whole opera of her
life, we might say. Little conversational parts where she talks to us, and just explains,
in a fairly casual way, how the next encounter with Roberta is going, what happened, and
so on. It's an interesting title, and an interesting form
for a short story. Now, in these episodes, we see that the friendship between these two
women is explored over the span of their entire lives. What's
going on with these two characters? First of all, the race issue: Morrison has been
quite clever here in not telling us what race Twyla and Roberta are. We see that they're
different races. She says they're like salt and pepper standing
next to each other. So we know that one is African American, one is Caucasian, and we're
wondering, throughout the story, which is which. And our
wondering makes us try to find little clues, and figure it out. So maybe we have the first
clue is Twyla's name, and we think, "Oh, well maybe I have the impression that a name like
that must belong to an African American." But then later,
I find out that Twyla lives in a suburb that is prodominately Caucasian, so I'm thinking,
no, maybe she's White. And then one of the mothers
cooks chicken, and you think, well, is that a Black culture thing? Or maybe White people
eat chicken too. So no. And then you're thinking, well, the one lady wears green pants. Maybe
that tells us her race. But then you think, not necessarily.
Women who are religious, does that mean she's Black? Does that mean she's White? Toni Morrison
is playing with us, because as we go through, trying to find these clues, all we do is realize
our own stereotypes, and we realize, oh, you know, I'm trying to see if a woman who dresses
like this or does these things must be a certain race, when in fact, it's very hard to tell,
and as soon as you think, oh, I've got it, then you realize, no, maybe I don't. Even
when the two women are on opposite sides of the picket line, when
they're protesting the integration of schools (one is for, one is against) we're still not
sure. So Toni Morrison has left out this information on purpose, showing us that race, in a way,
doesn't matter. What matters is that they have an
issue about it. So while we can't even tell what race they are, to them, it's quite important.
I think Morrison is saying, "Race doesn't matter. What
matters is that people are hung up on race." Okay, so number two: Maggie. What is Maggie
doing in the story, and why does the reference to Maggie get that prominent place of the
very last line of the story? At the last moment, Roberta
says, "What happened to Maggie?" And she is very troubled by her memory of what happened
to Maggie, and Maggie is mute, possibly deaf. She may have a
mental challenge as well. She may be Black. One of them remembers her as Black. The other
friend remembers her as non-Black. So her race is also in question. Maggie's disability
trumps race. Maggie's disability is why she gets beaten
up by the gar girls. When she's being beaten up, Twyla, only eight years old, remembers
not the beating up, but just that Maggie fell. She's protecting
herself from remembering what really happened by telling herself, Maggie fell. Later Roberta
says, no, that's not what happened. Don't you remember? She was being beaten up. As
they piece this memory together over time, we do realize that
Maggie was being cruelly treated, abused by these girls, and Twyla and Roberta did not
help her, and did not tell any of the adults who might have
helped Maggie. They did not actually participate in the beating, but they wanted to. And Roberta
is honest enough with herself to admit that she wanted to participate, and that wanting
to is the same as doing it, she says. Now Twyla knows
that she didn't actually participate in the beating, but she admits to herself that she
wanted to too. And it's kind of scary, because you realize
these are eight-year-olds who are nevertheless feeling this desire to hurt another person.
Now what is that about? And maybe this story is actually about that impulse, not about
race, really, not about class, which is another issue between
these two women. One's rich, one's poor. They manage to deal with that, but what about this
woman who's disabled? How come that triggers so much
cruelty on the part of other people, or why are people feeling like they can beat her
and put her down when it's not just 'cause of her race? It's really because of her disability.
Well, let's examine that. First of all, I think Twyla
relates Maggie to her own mother. When we're asking, why does Twyla want to hurt Maggie,
this poor woman (and she feels guilty about it later) but why
would eight-year-old Twyla want to hurt this woman? Well, she says, "Maggie is like my
mother dancing." And her mother dancing, even though dancing sounds rather positive, we
know that that actually translated into neglect of Twyla.
So a woman who is not effective in the world, who is not able to take care of her child,
a woman who is vulnerable and non-functional makes her mad.
So Maggie, being non-functional, stands in for this non-functioning mother, and she hates
that. So that's one reason that Twyla has anger toward this poor, defenseless, disabled
woman, Maggie. Now there's another comment that Twyla makes.
She says that Maggie couldn't scream, just like me. So she's referring to Maggie as similar
to herself. Here she is, neglected, having a really
tough time, but she can't scream, she can't really express herself. And that hatred of
the silence may be another reason she wants to attack Maggie. She doesn't like that silence,
that muteness. She doesn't want to be mute, and she's angry
with herself for not sreaming and not standing up for herself, or whatever it is she wants
to express. She's not expressing, so she takes it out
on Maggie. Now remember, she doesn't actually beat Maggie, but she remembers wanting to.
So there's another possibility of why she would want to. She sees Maggie as her mother.
She sees Maggie as herself, and she doesn't like that part
of herself, that's mute and vulnerable. Alright, what else about Maggie? Roberta also admits
to wanting to hurt Maggie, and she feels guilty about it.
Now her motivations we don't have as much insight into. Morrison does not put us in
Roberta's head, but Roberta obviously is angry also at powerlessness, because she's powerless.
So Maggie's powerlessness reminds her of her own powerlessness,
so she's angry and wants to beat that up, powerlessness itself. Her mother is sick,
also ineffective, also not taking care of her, so she may
have similar issues. Does Maggie's race make Roberta even more likely to want to brutalize
her? I don't think so. Roberta does remember Maggie as Black, but it doesn't seem that
Maggie's race is really the key thing here. The main element
is Maggie's helplessness, and her disability. Now, why does anyone want to beat up a disabled
person? This is just human cruelty, right? And maybe
Toni Morrison is drawing our attention to the fact that, while we may deal with our
own prejudice when it concerns race and class, we can't forget that we are still capable
of cruelty, perhaps to disabled folks, perhaps to some other group,
but it's that potential for cruelty, and the tendency to dehumanize another person, that
is the real problem. So here we have Maggie being the
other, the person we're going to blame and- and we're going to hate. And that's a problem,
when inside our selves, inside those eight-year-old girls, inside all of us, there is that potential
to dehumanize someone else and be cruel to them. Then we have a societal problem, we
have a spiritual problem. When these women realize that they had a moral lapse that day
-- they should have helped, they know they should have -- it's
important to admit that while they weren't having an issue with race right then, they
were still having a moral lapse of a different kind: They were
cruel to someone else, who's humanity they could diminish. Okay, so one more aspect of
this story. We talked about the race issue. We've talked about Maggie. Now I want to mention
the orchard. Twyla says she dreams about the orchard. She
describes the trees in the orchard. When she arrives, she says that they're crooked begger
women, that the trunks are crooked and the trees are
rather ugly. By the time Roberta leaves, the trees are in full bloom, there's blossoms.
She remembers the smell very fondly. And this orchard is something that fills her mind and
fills her memory. So, what do orchards mean? Well, I'm
thinking that it relates to a prestine environment that's quite beautiful, that implies innocence
and also the young woman that she wants to become,
that Twyla wants to grow into. We see the teenagers using it as a place to dance and
play the radio. They're kind of more free out there in the orchard. But the orchard
is also the place where Maggie "fell," or actually was brutalized.
So rather like Eden, we have this idyllic picture of the orchard with the flowers and
so on, and the freedom of these young women, but we also have a
problem where someone fell, and in the whole mythology of the Eden story, we have the fall
of humankind, where there's a moral lapse, and disobedience to moral laws. And the brutalization
of Maggie, the beating up of this disabled woman,
is certainly a moral lapse, and is certainly the moment when Twyla loses her innocence,
because for the first time she knows what it is to want to
be cruel, and that is her fall, in a sense. It is her moral misstep that she feels guilty
about. And Roberta feels the same way. So the story ends with this sadness about Maggie,
about how they lost, in that orchard, their compassion. They
lost their humanity. They lost themselves. This is the crux of the story, here, is this
question: How is it that we can be compassionate, that we
can be humane with one another, when we do have these deep human threads of darker behavior
and cruelty? We need to face that in ourselves, in order to make this world a better place.
Well, those are some of my ideas about this story, and
I know you have some. Feel free to put them in the comments, and join me for another video
sometime.