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UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DA PARABA

CENTRO DE CINCIAS HUMANAS, LETRAS E ARTES

DEPARTAMENTO DE LETRAS ESTRANGEIRAS MODERNAS

DISCIPLINA: Ingls Bsico III

PROFESSOR: Rubens Lucena

ALUNO: Caio Antnio de Medeiros Nbrega 11116669

Review: Recitatif

When one looks up the word recitatif in a dictionary, one will probably findthat it means a style of musical declamation that has its place between song andordinary speech, and it is used for interludes during operas, for example. The title fitsvery well this short story, once it is divided in some episodes, being each of theseepisodes representativesof a moment in our two main characters lives.

Toni Morrison is the author of Recitatif, and you must have heard about heralready, for she has won not only a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, but also a Nobel Prize inLiterature. She was born in Lorain, Ohio, and as for her most famous work, we have theromance Beloved . A true critical success, it was later adapted into a movie starringOprah Winfrey and Danny Glover.

Being a black author herself,a great part of Morrisons works is dedicated to portrait black womens lives, and some issues related, such as racism, racial

segregation, and so on. No exceptionto that is Recitatif, wich is, by the way, her only published short story. We are presented to Twyla and Roberta, who were eight years oldand were going to a state home because their mothers could not take care of them in thatmoment.

Twyla is the narrator of the story, and out of her thoughts we discover thatRoberta is not from the same race as she is. We are not told, however, in any moment ofthe short story, which one is the black girl and which one is the white girl. We are led to

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think that Roberta is the black girl in some passage of the text, but we find ourselvesthinking otherwise in some different moment. About this literary option, thisuncertainty, Morrison, in the preface of Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the

Literary Imagination , explains that she wanted to do "an experiment in the removal ofall racial codes from a narrative about two characters of different races for whom racialidentity is crucial".

This uncertainty will definitely not drive the readers away from this brilliantshort story, once it only makes us more curious to read it until the end. Who is the blackone and who is thewhite one doesnt really matter. The real beauty of the story is how itwas built. There is a subtlety in its writing that must be highlighted. When Twyla and

Roberta meet each other in the state home, we discover that Robertas mother is sickand cant take care of her. As for Twylas mother, in her own words, she just likes to

dance all night. This dancing can be viewed as many different thing s, and, in respectfor Twyla, I wont reveal my thoughts about the subject. Its only a proof of the high

quality of the text, however, if my interpretation differs from yours.

Another quality of Morrisons writing is the fact that, in each encounter between Roberta and Twyla, whether it is in the childhood or in the adulthood, we are

led to immerse ourselves in the thoughts of the narrator. The Twyla-child is verydifferent from the Twyla-teenager, that is very different from the Twyla-adult. We seenot only the development of the plot, but we also see the physical and psychologicaldevelopment of the characters as time goes.

We could say that the story is about a friendship that kept strong and relevantfor both Twyla and Roberta throughout her lives. One was there for the other in a veryspecial moment in their childhoods. This cannot be diminished. Even though theirencounter, some years later, when they were teenagers, made Twyla think she had nospace in Roberta s life, when they met again twenty years later, adults, married, itseemed nothing had changed.

Some mismatched memories about their period at the state home when theywere kids, however, were responsible for souring their friendship. That and someideological issues (related to race) made their distance grow even larger. At a Christmas

night, some years later, they face each other in a coffee house. They somehow manageto get along, but there is still some bittersweet taste in the end.

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Friends when children, strangers when teenagers, a lot of mixed feelings whenadults. Robertas and Twylas lives are connected. Recitatif is, in essence, a storyabout time and the importance of memories. Its also a story about racial segregation

and, here, we can use Maggie (the old lady who was mute and worked at the statehome) as a metaphor to the racial prejudice described in the text, for we have Robertaswords about her: I just remember her as old, so old. And because she couldnt talk well, I thought she was crazy. And shouldnt we all see the prejud ice as a crazy thing?

It seems that, as a compensation for the existence of prejudice, we are giveneventually wonderful stories using the theme. This is one of them. It is a must-readwithout any doubt.