Recitatif

    "Recitatif" starts off with the narrator Twyla saying  “My mother danced all night and Roberta’s was sick.” (130) Beginning the story by telling us about these women is one way in which Morrison keys us in on the symbolic importance of the two mothers. Recitatif's plot has a circular flow that allows Morrison to convey how racial tension is cycled from one generation to the next despite the two girls coming from similar backgrounds. Instead of explicitly showing us the connection Morrison uses symbolisms, language, and imagery in order to connect the conflict between Twyla and Roberta to the original conflict between their mothers.

     The story can be divided into five different sections, each having a similar structure and flow and each leading up to an interaction that causes tension and division between the characters. The first of these conlficts was the confrontation between the two mothers, and the last four between Twyla and Roberta. After the chapel incident the two girls appeared to disagree with the actions that their mothers had taken earlier on. Twyla went as far as to say she believed her mother "really needed to be killed."(134)  However after the incident the girls experience for the first time how they are inherently different or at least according to their mothers. Despite the fact that Morrison never explicitly states that the two girl's strained relationship later in life originally stems from this encounter at the chapel; she does intentionally shows similarities between the girls and their mothers in order to convey this message.

Toni Morrison

   I read Beloved in high school and now reading a second work of hers have realized that Morrison often uses odd language that really sticks out when she really wants you to pay attention to something. Examples of this would be phrases like “women with legs like parenthesis” (131) or “beautiful dead parents in the sky”. (132)  In Mary’s case we see her described as always dancing (in describing her supposed mental illness) and Roberta’s mother is described as being big and having the biggest cross and the biggest bible.(133) So when Twyla later says “What do you want? Me dancing in that orchard?” (139) or when Roberta is described as being "bigger than her mother’s cross" it connects the the girl encounters the the original encounter in the chapel. These connections are also in the interactions themselves, all having somewhat similar structures and other subtle imagery such as the organ music playing in the chapel and the classical music playing at the grocery store.(136)

   In their last interaction Twyla said “My mother, she never did stop dancing.” Roberta responded “Yes. You told me. And mine, she never got well.”(145) Just as her mother never stopped dancing,

the racial tension never ended either. Through the flow of the story we saw Roberta and Twyla's mothers come into play symbolically throughout their lives. From what seemed to be a small incident that happened years earlier began the racial tension that would continue for years to come.

Works Cited:


     Booth, Alison, and Kelly J. Mays. The Norton Introduction to Literature. 10thth ed. New York, London:  W. W. Norton and Company, 2011. 130-145. Print.