Toni Morrison Rhetorical Questions

As a Noble Prize Winner in Literature in 1993, Toni Morrison delivered her speech with great expertise and exemplified her writing style by sending out a powerful message through her sharp rhetoric. In her speech, Morrison tells a story about an old, blind woman with a rumored “clairvoyance” and her interaction with a few young men. Within the exchange between the old woman and the men, Morrison integrates various racial, cultural and linguistic themes. Through a heavy usage of rhetorical questions, the story told by Morrison illustrates the powers and dangers of language while at the same time associates the language with culture. In Morrison’s view, one of the most important aspects of language is its ability to keep cultures and races bounded.

Language is exemplified through cultural distinctness and the death of a language symbolizes the death of cultures. Language extends beyond the linguistic ability of humans but rather covers cultural and racial identifications as well; in the context of this story, Morrison addresses the death of black culture and the lack of African-American identity.
Morrison’s speech is structured as a narrative evidenced by her use of stories, such as the story of the old lady and her encounter with the young visitors. The speech starts off as a narrative and then moves on to a debate where Morrison, through the old lady, questions the intended meaning of the young visitors’ first question. It carries on with the visitors treating the woman with little respect. The woman finally tells them that “(The bird) is in (their) hands”, which could potentially be telling them about how significant their responsibility over the bird’s fate actually is.
Morrison then contemplates the possible significance of the bird, eventually settling on the language, while assigning the woman’s significance to be a writer.

She then goes on to expound on what being responsible for the death (or life) of a language could imply along with what those abstractions in itself could

mean.
Morrison’s narrative of her ideas of the old woman’s thoughts are interrupted by the young visitors asking her a question and reciting a narrative of their own.

They ask questions such as “Is there nothing in our hands something you could not bear to contemplate, to even guess?”, challenging her reply and increasing the tension in the narrative, following by making claiming her incompetent in a way, since she could no longer “…remember being young when language was magic without meaning?”. They finally put her down for her “answer is artful, but it’s artfulness embarrasses (them) and ought to embarrass (her).”
This shift in organization is characteristic for a narrative like this. Like most narratives, the structure in the second half of Morrison’s speech relies on the the visitors’ rhetorical questions and their ability to engage readers more closely. The slight ambiguity of the questions also makes the fable broad enough where a diverse audience can be reached. Overall, the second half of Morrison’s speech is characteristic of a narrative not only because it subtly delivers moral beliefs, but it also engages the audience through captivating rhetorical

questions.
This shift in organization is accompanied by a distinct change in tone. In the beginning of the speech, the tone is much warmer and relaxed. When the organization becomes truer to what a narrative is, the tone becomes more serious and reprimanding of the oppressors of language. This is necessary because of the heavy contemplation about the meaning of being responsible for a language Morrison wants the audience to engage in. The shift in organization and tone is also more ideal for what the persona is and who the target audience is. As Morrison continues to
reprimand the oppressors of language, tone quickly becomes much more tense by using phrases such as “It is the language that drinks blood, laps vulnerabilities, tucks its fascist boots under crinolines of respectability and patriotism as it moves relentlessly toward the bottom line and the bottomed-out mind.” The powerful diction and vivid metaphors employed by the blind woman exemplify the sharp turn her tone has taken throughout the story. This gradual reprimanding tone ties into the distinct persona of the old, blind woman who uses colorful rhetoric strategies to describe the story and give out wisdom.
While a younger demographic is explicitly targeted as the audience, the morals behind the story can also be addressed to various demographics and the society as a whole. At the start of the story, the blind woman is approached by several young men who seem keen on belittling the woman by tricking her. They approached the blind woman stating, “Old woman, I hold in my hand a bird. Tell me whether it is living or dead”. Unflinchingly, she responds by saying, “it is in your hands”, illustrating the insignificance of whether the bird is dead or alive and instead placing the importance on the responsibility which the young people have in deciding the bird’s fate. Similar to how an author understands language, the old woman understands that the bird’s fate can easily go in either direction. This understanding symbolizes how the old woman is similar to an author and the how the bird is a clear representation of our language. The struggles of the bird can be correlated to the trials and tribulations of human history.
There are various language strategies being used in the text to further engage the audience. When Morrison talks about the death of a language, she describes the violence it creates as “children (having) bitten their tongues off and (using) bullets instead to iterate the voice of speechlessness”. Here, a paradox is described in “voice of speechlessness”, which immediately implies that the solution of “bullets” or the violent actions of youths trying to
express meaning is ineffective and pointless. Furthermore, there were various metaphors employed, such as the woman comparing formal language to “a knight in polished armor”, implying that formal language can sometimes be used in destructive, “dumb, predatory” ways despite the fact that it sounds good. This metaphor is effective because it employs attractive language to convey a deeper meaning.
Another metaphor employed by the old woman in her lecture talks about how “the systematic looting of language can be recognized by the tendency of its users to forgo its nuanced, complex, mid-wifery properties for menace and subjugation”. This specific language portrays language as a dangerous agent, able to be perverted into a weapon that’s used antagonistically for power or personal gain. The final and perhaps most effective example of metaphorical language used by Morrison comes when the old woman mentions how “it is the language that drinks blood, laps vulnerabilities, tucks its fascist boots under crinolines of respectability and patriotism as it moves relentlessly toward the bottom line and the bottomed-out mind”. This metaphor is employed to demonstrate the pernicious ability of language to harm those who are already faltering by portraying the mentioned language as a parasite and as having mindless, animalistic greed for targeting people’s weaknesses.
Taken together, the contrasts in organization, tone, and language do well to support the overarching themes of the speech. The way language is exemplified through metaphor is supported in the reprimanding and engaging persona utilized in the second half of the speech. Furthermore, the significance of language and its potential can be seen in the vivid metaphors used by the old woman. In Morrison’s perspective, language has the ability to racially and socially divide, and it is the young people’s ignorance that represents society’s lack of appreciation of the responsibility they hold is how language is used.