Blog Post Report #3
In Toni Morrison’s Recitatif, you are forced to challenge the idea of race being a major part of one’s identity, and how that identity can construct an individual’s entire life. For our purposes, I am writing with the self-arrived notion that Twyla is white, and Roberta the other main character is black. This is derived from my own preconceptions of social understanding and racial identity. Its quite ugly and no one likes to go there, but If I must discuss it in this blog than I must face my own assumptions of race on a personal level as well, it’s only fair. There are many examples of racial disparity that I will go through in this blog, and try to flush out my understanding on what was occurring and why.
My first example of race being examined was when Twyla first met Roberta. The passage has Twyla stating, “It was one thing to be taken out of your own bed in the morning- it was something else to be stuck in a strange place with a girl from a whole other race” (Pg. 1 para. 2). I feel Twyla is white from her initial reaction here, being exposed to an African American child quite possibly for the first time in a very personal and close living situation. It makes sense to me because my understanding of the mid 1900’s was that people of different races were being put together in similar situations, and while they viewed each other as quite different, Twyla had a preconception of Roberta’s race from her mother already. So, from an early age she is taught that different is strange, and strange is often characterized by disliked for that very difference.
On another occasion Twyla is lamenting the unfairness of someone from another race having more than them because of their color of skin simply. She ponders that, “Things are not right. The wrong food is always with the wrong people. Maybe that’s why I got into waitress work later-to matchup the right people with the right food” (Pg. 5 para.5). I took this to mean, that Twyla felt that, because she came from less, the other race which she deemed as lesser or different shouldn’t have more than her. This ties back into race because while Roberta’s mom brought her a nice meal, her mom, who warned her of the difference of someone like Roberta, comes back again to remind Twyla that her and Roberta are not equals in a sense. This occurs when Twyla first meets Roberta from my earlier example, refer to paragraph two’s quote for the dialogue. I feel Twyla struggles with this idea a lot here because she feels entitled to more perhaps by being white.
If Twyla and Roberta’s roles were reversed would Roberta have thought the same? I don’t think so, I think that this notion of what we will call racial privilege in this scenario heavily leads Twyla to feel a sense of entitlement in this way without regard for social status. This sense of entitlement for our purpose in this paper refers to an inherent expectation of station or standing in life perceived from the outlook of an individuals race. For instance, Twyla is inferring that Roberta has more material wealth and higher class than her because she is of a specific racial skin tone. This leads me to the conclusion that Twyla associates this racial privilege as something that is more inherently there than obtained in my opinion.
Twyla runs into Roberta again after having been married, they see each other at a gourmet food store. Twyla sees Roberta and thinks that, “Shoes, dress, everything lovely and summery and rich. I was dying to know what happened to her, how she got from Jimi Hendrix to Annandale, a neighborhood full of doctors and IBM executives. Easy, I thought. Everything is so easy for them. They think they own the world” (Pg.8 para.2). Again, we have another example of not only race being used as something that is either holding Twyla back in some socioeconomic way or as a way of saying Roberta has it easier because the color of her skin. The idea of what race the main characters are could very much go both ways. Her I still feel Twyla as a poorer, white girl who laments the coming up of a childhood friend who is black. She goes out of her way again to associate race with the ongoing changes to society at the time, stating that the blacks feel they own the world now, they have it so much easier. It’s very interesting because I feel it relates to one race of a majority standing having to give way to another socially, and economically, and Twyla isn’t very happy with that.
In summary, race is often discussed in this story, sometimes in a subtle sense and other times in a very outspoken way. The race of the two characters are defined by the reader, in this case me, but could very well be argued to be quite the opposite. I think it depends on the race of everyone who reads this story. We see and interpret what we know based on our own conceptions of race, what it means to be different. The women in this story are defined by the race the reader sees them as, and are I believe a larger reflection of ones own racial identity that we unconsciously forge for ourselves which changes the story greatly depending on that. It’s very hard to try and categorize race as a larger part of our existence, some take it for granted, while others let that difference define them, like Twyla who is caught in the line of reasoning that someone always has it better because of the color of their skin, and vice versa.
Morrison, Toni. “Recitatif.” In Confirmation: An Anthology of African American Women, edited by Imamu Amiri Baraka and Amina Baraka, New York: William Morrow, 1983.
- Josh N. [Revised 12/14/2017] Sorry for the lateness Joe!
For this final blog post report, I have decided to use the story “Recitatif” by Toni Morrison. The story is based on these two girls named Twyla (African American) and Roberta (White) who both end up in the orphanage due to their mothers being unfit to take care of them. Their lives are tied together because throughout the years they meet up with each other unexpectedly and as they each have families of their own they slowly start to drift away from one another. One topic that’s always on these women’s minds are what happen to Maggie, a woman who worked at the orphanage and what the girls did or didn’t do to her. The connection of Maggie to Twyla and Roberta seems symbolize and define what the girls were as they grew into women and later mothers.
To Twyla as a young girl and later as a woman, Maggie was just a woman that was abused and laughed at by the older girls in the orphanage because she was so weak and easy to prey on. However, as Twyla grew and interacted with Roberta throughout her life, she starts to over analyze who Maggie really was (black or white) and whether they beat her[Maggie] as the older girls did. In Twyla’s eyes Maggie symbolized what her mother and she would later be, deaf and dumb with nobody inside or anyone to hear if you cried at night; how she couldn’t scream just like Twyla and she was glad about that (Morrison 17-18). What made Twyla relate Maggie not only to her mother but also herself was because of how women and mothers had only one job in their life during the period of Twyla’s life to care for their families and maintain the foundation of a household wife. So, when questioned about the history of their childhood, Twyla starts to view it as more of a feminist idea while Roberta was focused on another aspect of Maggie.
To Roberta as she grew up to become a woman in a higher-class society from her lowly classed social status during her childhood, Maggie was symbolic toward how society treated those on a racial level. Even though Roberta was white she was not privilege as she was always in and out of the orphanage unlike Twyla. As Roberta turn into a woman she took on her new-found freedom by traveling throughout the United States and later settling down for a wealthy widow. Her new-found freedom might be found in her skin color. However, when it came to Maggie, the skin color was always the one thing that Roberta was caught up on. Yet at the end of the story and during the last interaction with Twyla, Roberta admits “‘I really did think she was black; I didn’t make that up; I really thought so…And because she couldn’t talk-well, you know, I thought she was crazy; She’d been brought up in an institution like my mother was and I thought I would be too…’” (Morrison 19). As stated, Roberta always assumed that the color of a person would determine what would happen to them. Roberta was involved in an identity crisis as she starts to think that she would also end up like her mother in an institution.
In summary, the meaning of Maggie was different for each girl but for each girl the main symbolic point of Maggie was how she related back to how their mothers were. One being deaf and a nobody and for the other being crazy and locked up. From those points, they each took on a different life from what their mothers were like; for Twyla it was having a straight lace family home as a woman was supposed to do, and for Roberta it was having the freedom to do what she liked as her race permitted her to. Nevertheless, the question of how each other’s mothers was always a question that was asked and always remained the same “How is your mother?”.
Jessica Fehrman
For this final blog post I am choosing to write mainly about Crossing Brooklyn Ferry by Walt Whitman and I will also get into how it relates to chapter 5, psychoanalysis, in our textbook, How to Interpret Literature. I thought Crossing Brooklyn Ferry was a very interesting poem, and I liked it a lot. In my literature circle, everyone perceived the story differently. I think there are several ways to perceive it, and some ways relate to Jacques Lacan, and his ideas.
How the Poem Crossing Brooklyn Ferry relates to our textbook and Jacques Lacan’s ideas is ‘the real’. There is no exact definition for it, the book describes it is “a mysterious concept that is not the same as reality.” It can’t be explained, only inferred. How this relates to the poem is that, the reader does not know what is actually going on, they are just assuming. We do not know exactly what the reader is talking about, and we just have to search for a meaning in the poem, even if there really isn’t a certain one.
The textbook states that we can't represent the real in any way, like how we can represent reality with signifiers. The example it used is how the real is the origin of hunger and trauma. An example of the real from the Poem Crossing Brooklyn Ferry can be life itself. The narrator is relating himself everyone and how everybody goes through things in life. He is explaining how life can be tough but also good things can happen, we control what happens in our own life. A line that describes this is in section 6 that last line, "The same old role, the role that is what we make it, as great as we like, Or as small as we like, or both great and small." While doing this we are shaping reality.
At first while reading the poem Crossing Brooklyn Ferry I thought that maybe the narrator was dead, and like a ghost looking over everybody. What made me think this was How it kept saying that he sees what the people on the Brooklyn Ferry also are seeing. In section 6 it says, “It is not upon you alone the dark patches fall, the dark threw it patches down upon me also.” Usually when people say things like that, about the dark coming, it is referring to death. There was another line in section 7 that says, “Who knows, for all the distance, but I am as good as looking at you now, for all you cannot see me?” That is like he is able to see them but they can’t see him. Which made me think that he could be a ghost.
The other way to think of the poem that we discussed in out literature circle is how the narrator is relating his life and the things he has gone through to other people, and how everyone goes through similar things throughout life. Section 3, almost every line starts the same, and it is saying everything they are doing or feeling on the Ferry, he also felt or did at one point. In the 4th section it says, “These and all else were to me the same as they are to you.” Which is another line that is relating himself to other people.
I thought this was the most interesting poem we have read in class. While reading it, and talking about it, I felt like I could relate to it. That is always what gets me interested into things. I also liked how there was a deeper meaning to it than just what was being said. Everyone can think of it in a different way and that means everyone can relate to it in a different way, but because there is no specific meaning that most people can relate to it.
-Mattisyn Woods
Typically, I am someone who loves to read stories that are predictable and provide a happy ending. These are addicting stories for me because I am in control, I feel safe and comfortable with plots like that, so I normally gravitate towards those ones. However, I want to produce this final blog report on Shirley Jackson’s, The Lottery. This is a short story we read at the start of the semester that left me feeling anything but comfortable, safe, and happy. Because of the use of irony, tension, and ambiguity; the readers of this story are left with an unsettling vibe that doesn’t get lifted.
Take a moment to reflect on the title of the story; The Lottery. This initially proposes a positive tone for the story; since after all, winning the lottery is exciting and an overall positive event. However, we are hit throughout the story with a lot of negative events and foreshadowing that leads up to a horrid stoning event that is anything but uplifting. Given the title of the story, one would never suspect such a chilling and ironic ending.
Something else about the story that is not very positive is the tension built up to the end of the story. It starts when Bobby Martin “already stuffed his pockets full of stones.” This sentence causes the readers to become guarded, as a reader I asked why Bobby would need stones? The tension along with an unsettling feeling begins here. It continues when “a sudden hush fell on the crowd” when the drawing of names begins. The whole name drawing scene continues to build tension leading up to the final moment which is when Mrs. Hutchinson gets stoned, leaving the readers haunted.
Finally, the use of ambiguity in the story adds to the haunting tone and tension that leaves readers with chills. The black box is so ambiguous, there’s so much attention given to such a little object. But that added attention and lack of detail helps show that it is a symbol of death, which in of itself is also ambiguous. The overall story was ambiguous until the final stoning, and even then our questions on why this is happening never gets answered.
Overall, the use of tension, irony, and ambiguity pushes the readers out of the mainstream comfort they are so used to receiving. It causes them to feel uncomfortable and unstable and that is what makes a story memorable to me. That is why I enjoyed Shirly Jackson’s The Lottery so much, I might need to break away from the typical happy go lucky story more often.
Anna Newman