Commentaire du texte "Recitatif" by Toni Morrison (1983)

Résumé du document

Il s'agit d'un commentaire du texte Recitatif by Toni Morrison (1983) en 2 pages et rédigé en anglais.

Extraits

[...] That allows the story to make a powerful statement about race. Yet, even further, Twyla and Roberta end up existing only in opposition to each other. Indeed, Twyla's account is exclusively concerned with encounters with her friend. The ellipses in the story make it clear: she does not exist when Roberta is not there - just as Roberta does not exist when she is not there. There is remarkably little talk of how they ended up where they are each time they meet; they reminisce but rarely ever catch up. [...]

[...] That doubt troubles her more than the accusation: she is sure she was never capable of such cruelty, but she feels guilty for having wanted to harm Maggie. The conflict - and the story - resolves when Roberta and Twyla independently reach the same memory and interpretation of the event: the two girls witnessed Maggie's mistreatment at the hands of the older girls and both wished to take part in it, which to them is just the same as actually doing it. In this shared secret guilt, despite the miscommunications and erroneous memories, as well as their surface yet shaping oppositions, they are one and the same. [...]

[...] As such, race is not statistically significant enough to constitute classes, but orphan status is. Thus, in this microcosm, society organizes itself around just another arbitrary categorization. That Twyla and Roberta are ostracized together by others, and not one by the other, shows implicitly the constructed-ness of race by substituting for something equally absurd. After all, "even the New York City Puerto Ricans and the upstate Indians ignored [them]." Later in life, the divide between the two women takes on another dimension: that of class. [...]

[...] That is true as early as the childhood refrain: "we were dumped". The appears quite early in the story, especially given Twyla's initial disgust, but she understands it is temporary, a sort of strategic alliance: "so for the moment it didn't matter that we looked like salt and pepper standing there" (my emphasis). When they meet as adults, they are "like sisters" - yet the thought of their last encounter, when Roberta was dismissive of and even rude to Twyla, still troubles the latter. [...]

[...] Everything is secondary - even subservient - to their encounters, even if, ironically, it determines their tenor. These oppositions that appear so fundamental are actually contingent, as I attempted to show earlier. And they end up crumbling on themselves: opposition is so extreme that it culminates in identity. Indeed, when tension between the two women reaches its climax at the protest, they end up shouting the same thing at each other: wonder what made me think you were different." The sentence is repeated twice, without any trace of their tone or emphasis shifting: it is virtually the same. [...]