The whirlwind relationship of Twyla & Roberta.
Friendships tend to change over time, for better or worse. This is illustrated in Toni Morrison’s short story Recititaf. The relationships of Twyla and Roberta are a rollercoaster from the moment they meet at the orphanage, to their confrontational meeting at the Howard Johnsons, to the picketing during segregation, until the end when they try and sort things out. One of the ways to show the rocky relationship of the two is through their dialog when they discuss their mothers.
The best place to start is at the beginning, at the start of the story, when the two girls are first put into the shelter. Twyla really seems to have no interest in being Roberta’s friend. She’s caught up on the racist remarks of her mother, Mary. Mary tells her that “They don’t wash their hair, and smell funny,” (Jones) Twyla even says they didn’t like each other much at first. This seems to change after the events with Maggie. Twyla talks about their similarities, being the only ones without beautiful dead parents, being dumped there, getting horrible grades and having fun switching beds every night. Eventually it comes time for the mothers to meet. They come to go to church with the girls. Twyla thinks it might be a good thing for her dancing mother to meet Roberta’s sick mother, in hope that the friendship the girls have can extend to their mothers. The meeting doesn’t go so well. When her mother Mary goes to offer her hand, Roberta’s mother turns around and walks off. The last scene in this part is when the girls’ part ways. Roberta’s mother, once again described as a large woman with a huge bible in her hand and a big cro...
... middle of paper ...
... Maggie. Twyla says that her mother never did stop dancing, to which Roberta once again replies that hers never got well, and cries trying to figure out what happened to Maggie. The story ends here. Here the mothers and the abrupt end of the story represent the uncertainty of their relationship afterwards, the dancing ups and downs of their friendship, combined with the sickness from the meeting at Howard Johnson.
Recititaf is a rollercoaster from beginning to end, from the initial meeting to their final. The relationship begins on a high note and rolls into an uncertain spiral of insults thrown back and forth and finally into a point where one of the characters is brought to tears. This story is a perfect example of how the greatest friendship can be injured by just a few actions of unkindness, and how a few lines of dialogue can represent the entire relationship.
Once again, Roberta and Twyla meet at and uppity grocery store; Roberta has climbed up the social ladder and tries to play nice. However, when Twyla brings up Maggie, Roberta tells a different story than what Twyla remembers and then tries to defend her past behavior towards Twyla by saying “‘You know how everything was (141).’” Roberta’s defense mechanism by blaming the times shows the reader just how prevalent instilled racism is between the two. Likewise, the plot reaches a climax when the women meet a third time at their children’s schools during integration. The two begin a full-on picket war with one another because Twyla catches Roberta protesting the integration of schools and when confronted, believes she is doing nothing wrong. Tensions rise when the two mirror the phrase “’I wonder what made me think you were different (143).’” This admission to social and racial differences expresses the theme of the story and opens one another’s eyes to what has really happened between the
In the novel Beloved, Toni Morrison focuses on the concept of loss and renewal in Paul D’s experience in Alfred Georgia. Paul D goes through a painful transition into the reality of slavery. In Sweet Home, Master Garner treated him like a real man. However, while in captivity in Georgia he was no longer a man, but a slave. Toni Morrison makes Paul D experience many losses such as, losing his pride and humanity. However, she does not let him suffer for long. She renews him with his survival. Morrison suggest that one goes through obstacles to get through them, not to bring them down. Morrison uses the elements of irony, symbolism, and imagery to deal with the concept of loss and renewal.
The essay "A New Perspective" by Janice E. Fein and the short story "All the Years of Her Life" by Morley Callaghan have some similarities and differences with mother and child relationships. Both authors show a shift of attitude in the end of the written pieces.
Intergenerational conflicts are an undeniable facet of life. With every generation of society comes new experiences, new ideas, and many times new morals. It is the parent’s job go work around these differences to reach their children and ensure they receive the necessary lessons for life. Flannery O’Connor makes generous use of this idea in several of her works. Within each of the three short stories, we see a very strained relationship between a mother figure and their child. We quickly find that O’Conner sets up the first to be receive the brunt of our attention and to some extent loathing, but as we grow nearer to the work’s characteristic sudden and violent ending, we grow to see the finer details and what really makes these relations
Despite the connection between the girls, Twyla still feels alienated by the others in the shelter. “Nobody else wanted to play with us because we weren’t real orphans with beautiful dead parents in the sky” (10). The status of “real” versus “non-real” orphan becomes surrogate racism in the shelter. The value of this new classification of the girls is elucidated by the lack of distinct race between Twyla and Roberta, as they become united in the condition of living parents. Their race falls second to whatever else is used to alienate
It all began in and around the year 1919. Sula Peace, the daughter of Rekus who died when she was 3years old and Hannah, was a young and lonely girl of wild dreams. Sula was born in the same year as Nel, 1910. Sula was a heavy brown color and had large eyes with a birthmark that resembled a stemmed rose to some and many varied things to others. Nel Wright, the daughter of Helene and Wiley, was and unimaginative girl living in a very strict and manipulated life. Nel was lighter in color than Sula and could have passed for white if she had been a few shades lighter she. A trip to visit her dying great-grandmother in the south had a profound effect on Nel’s life. In many ways the trip made her realize her selfness and look at things around her in a different light, eventually sowing the seeds that initiated the friendship between herself and Sula. The two girls met each other at Garfield Primary School after knowing each other at a distance for over five years. Nel’s mother had told her that she could not interact with Sula because of Sula’s mother sooty ways. The intense and sudden friendship between them which was to last many years was originally cultivated my Nel. The period in history and the mentality of the people in their immediate surroundings played an impressive part in the formulation of the friendship between Sula and Nel. When they first met at school, it was as if they were always destined to be friends.
There are many commonalties between the protagonists in the stories by Flannery O’Connor. First physically, they are all elderly women. All three are mothers of boys. Another likeness is the women and their sheer physical presence. “In Everything Rises Must Converge” Julian’s mother walks on the bus and immediately begins to control the conversation. People seem to feed off her commentaries. These commentaries are usually on the basis of racism. As she states when she notices that there are no black people on the bus, “I see we have the bus to ourselves.”(p.344) Mrs. Turpin is almost the exact same way as Julian’s mother. The only difference between the two is that Mrs. Turpin was waiting in a doctor’s office. She too seems like she is the one who is in command of the conversation. The same holds true for the grandmother in A Good Man is Hard to Find. She continues a conversation with a man that is has murdered her family and threatening t...
No matter what actions or words a mother chooses, to a child his or her mother is on the highest pedestal. A mother is very important to a child because of the nourishing and love the child receives from his or her mother but not every child experiences the mother’s love or even having a mother. Bragg’s mother was something out of the ordinary because of all that she did for her children growing up, but no one is perfect in this world. Bragg’s mother’s flaw was always taking back her drunken husband and thinking that he could have changed since the last time he...
At the beginning of the short story Maggie's family is introduced, from her scrappy little brother Jimmie, to her short lived brother Tommie, her alcoholic mentally-abusive mother Mary, and her brutish father. Jimmie's friend Pete is introduced and becomes a mirror image of Jimmie later on in the book. They both are portrayed as Don Juans, the seducers of young women who treat women as objects rather than people. Maggie's father is as short-lived as her brother Tommie. However, he becomes a negative social factor in Maggie's life. Maggie’s mother was an essential symbol of hypocrisy and pessimism throughout the book, from her drinking to her last comment in the book “I'll Forgive Her” (Crane).
...e on her part. Throughout the story, the Mother is portrayed as the dominant figure, which resembled the amount of say that the father and children had on matters. Together, the Father, James, and David strived to maintain equality by helping with the chickens and taking care of Scott; however, despite the effort that they had put in, the Mother refused to be persuaded that Scott was of any value and therefore she felt that selling him would be most beneficial. The Mother’s persona is unsympathetic as she lacks respect and a heart towards her family members. Since the Mother never showed equality, her character had unraveled into the creation of a negative atmosphere in which her family is now cemented in. For the Father, David and James, it is only now the memories of Scott that will hold their bond together.
The lack of support and affection protagonists, Sula Peace and Nel Wright, causes them to construct their lives on their own without a motherly figure. Toni Morrison’s novel, Sula, displays the development of Sula and Nel through childhood into adulthood. Before Sula and Nel enter the story, Morrison describes the history of the Peace and Wright family. The Peace family live abnormally to their town of Medallion, Ohio. Whereas the Wrights have a conventional life style, living up to society’s expectations.The importance of a healthy mother-daughter relationship is shown through the interactions of Eva and Hannah Peace, Hannah and Sula, and between Helene Wright and Nel. When Sula and Nel become friends they realize the improper parenting they
The story begins with both girls being dropped off when they were both eight years old in the orphanage, St. Bonny’s. Having the similarity of not being real orphans with beautiful dead parents in the sky the girls instead were dumped because their mothers didn’t want them. Twyla’s mother was not fully capable to take care of Twyla or as she states in the story her mother “danced all night.” As for Roberta’s mom, she was always sick. In the orphanage the girls become roommates and grow a bond because no one else wanted to play with them, the girls did not lack of having adventures together. For example, Twyla and Roberta enjoyed spying on the “big girls”, on the 2nd floor who pushed them around, who wore lipstick and penciled their eyebrows and liked to smoke and danced. Besides the girls spying on the “big girls”, they would also get a good laugh at laughing at Maggie, a deaf woman who would clean and cook in the orphanage, who couldn’t defend herself. While in St. Bonny’s, Twyla and Roberta witness Maggie get tripped and kicked by the older girls on the 2ND floor. Although ...
The narrator, Twyla, begins by recalling the time she spent with her friend, Roberta, at the St. Bonaventure orphanage. From the beginning of the story, the only fact that is confirmed by the author is that Twyla and Roberta are of a different race, saying, “they looked like salt and pepper” (Morrison, 2254). They were eight-years old. In the beginning of the story, Twyla says, “My mother danced all night and Roberta’s was sick.” This line sets the tone of the story from the start. This quote begins to separate the two girls i...
So often, the old adage, "History always repeats itself," rings true due to a failure to truly confront the past, especially when the memory of a period of time sparks profoundly negative emotions ranging from anguish to anger. However, danger lies in failing to recognize history or in the inability to reconcile the mistakes of the past. In her novel, Beloved, Toni Morrison explores the relationship between the past, present and future. Because the horrors of slavery cause so much pain for slaves who endured physical abuse as well as psychological and emotional hardships, former slaves may try to block out the pain, failing to reconcile with their past. However, when Sethe, one of the novel's central characters fails to confront her personal history she still appears plagued by guilt and pain, thus demonstrating its unavoidability. Only when she begins to make steps toward recovery, facing the horrors of her past and reconciling them does she attain any piece of mind. Morrison divides her novel into three parts in order to track and distinguish the three stages of Sethe approach with dealing with her personal history. Through the character development of Sethe, Morrison suggests that in order to live in the present and enjoy the future, it is essential to reconcile the traumas of the past.
To survive, one must depend on the acceptance and integration of what is past and what is present. In her novel Beloved, Toni Morrison carefully constructs events that parallel the way the human mind functions; this serves as a means by which the reader can understand the activity of memory. "Rememory" enables Sethe, the novel's protagonist, to reconstruct her past realities. The vividness that Sethe brings to every moment through recurring images characterizes her understanding of herself. Through rememory, Morrison is able to carry Sethe on a journey from being a woman who identifies herself only with motherhood, to a woman who begins to identify herself as a human being. Morrison glorifies the potential of language, and her faith in the power and construction of words instills trust in her readers that Sethe has claimed ownership of her freed self. The structure of Morrison's novel, which is arranged in trimesters, carries the reader on a mother's journey beginning with the recognition of a haunting "new" presence, then gradually coming to terms with one's fears and reservations, and finally giving birth to a new identity while reclaiming one's own.