47 pages • 1 hour read
Toni MorrisonRecitatif
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1983A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Literary Devices
Recitative
A recitative is not a literary device but rather a musical device developed in Italy in 1600, during the transition from Renaissance music to the Baroque. Around 1600, recitatives were developed, which allowed stories to be sung, not just spoken. Music, not speech, was used to move the action forward. Recitatives, the first operas, allowed dramas to be entirely sung. With the recitative, the expressive power of the individual voice was emphasized.
Morrison takes this early opera form and adapts it to tell the story of Twyla and Roberta. In particular, the expressive power of Twyla's voice is given full range. This is ironic given that Twyla strongly identifies with Maggie, a mute. And yet, the structure of the story, with it being divided into five sections, allows for sizable time jumps that quickly move through the lives of these two women, from childhood to adulthood, just like a recitative allows an opera to cover a lot of ground as it allows a story to be moved along quickly, through music.
Juxtaposition
Morrison sets up not only the parallels in Twyla and Roberta's lives but also the powerful juxtapositions that eventually lead to divisions between the girls. They are both in the orphanage because of their respective mothers' inability to care for them. However, while Roberta's mother has some illness that prevents her from caring for Roberta, Twyla's mother is described as "dancing all night." It’s possible it means that Twyla’s mother prefers partying to the responsibilities of taking care of her daughter. When Mary, Twyla’s mother, shows up at the orphanage, she wears inappropriate clothes and fails to bring any food, in contrast to Roberta's mother, who is modestly dressed, wearing a cross, and brings plenty of food.
The reader next sees the girls as teenagers. Interestingly, it is now Roberta who is dressed in tight clothes, as Twyla's mother was in Part 1. Twyla is the modestly dressed one in her Howard Johnson's uniform: "Without looking I could see the blue and white triangle on my head, my hair shapeless in a net, my ankles thick in white oxfords. Nothing could have been less sheer than my stockings" (250).
As an adult, Roberta wears expensive clothing and is carefully made up in hair and makeup. Although Twyla's outfits are not described, it's clear she doesn't have the money for similar outfits, which explains why Roberta's outfits make such an impression on her.
Other examples of class are juxtaposed. At the grocery store, Roberta has a limousine waiting on her every need. Twyla has no such luxury. She is anxious about the money she spent at the new gourmet grocery, worrying about the melting Klondike bars that she bought.
Metaphoric Language
Twyla says:
Strife came to us that fall. At least that's what the paper called it. Strife. Racial strife. A big shrieking bird out of 1,000,000,000 BC. Flapping its wings and cawing. Its eye with no lid always bearing down on you. All day it screeched and at night it slept on the rooftops. It woke you in the morning and from the Today show to the eleven o'clock news it kept you an awful company. I couldn't figure it out from one day to the next. I knew I was supposed to feel something strong, but I didn't know what, and James wasn't any help. Joseph was on the list of kids to be transferred from the junior high school to another one at some far-out-of-the-way place and I thought it was a good thing until I heard it was a bad thing. I mean I didn't know. (255-256)
In this extended metaphor, racial strife is compared to a prehistoric, shrieking bird. It is a sudden, massive presence. It is also in stark contrast to the quiet way that Twyla lives her life, no matter her circumstances. She knows she is supposed to feel something powerful about the bussing issue, based on the television reports. The shrieking bird suggests that the town has become so divided that no one is able to listen to each other anymore; only wordless shrieking can be heard. The bird's eye is ever open, as it refuses to look away. The issue is on every news show and on everyone's mind. But she has no context for this controversy that has descended on her town. Neither does her husband. She has no guidance for these matters that seem beyond her scope of experience.
This extended metaphor is a surprising break in the text, considering that most of the story has been narrated in more straightforward, ordinary speech and stripped of metaphoric language. Twyla's voice is plain and reticent; she does not spend a lot of time explaining situations. In fact, she likes when people don't demand a lot of explanations. She is embarrassed by her mother's inability to care for her, simply saying "she just likes to dance all night," and leaves it at that. She says that "people want to put their arms around you when you tell them you were in a shelter, but it really wasn't bad" (243). She does not want anyone's pity, and so her tale will not be embellished.
Because Twyla narrates in a simple, ordinary style, when she does use metaphors or similes, they stand out more. For example, Maggie, who is bow-legged, is described as having "legs like parentheses" (245). This comparison is powerful because it describes not only the shape of Maggie's legs but also cleverly comments on Maggie's muteness, since her voice may very well be seen as being trapped inside the shelter of a parentheses.
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