Recitatif Theme Essay

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Recitatif is a short story based on two youngsters who are friends from early childhood, one an African American and one Caucasian. The main key of the story is that Morrison never provides the race of the two characters and her reasoning behind doing so is to show exactly how individuals have a habit of sorting individuals out instantly on the spot. By joining together completely different versions of the character's shared history, the author shows what can happen when two individual’s discordant memories of the exact event clash against one another. Once Roberta and Twyla come to realize that they have extremely different memories of a major occasion in their early childhood, Twyla asks, "I wouldn't forget a thing like that. Would I?" Her uncertainties represent part of the story’s theme, insecurity and unstable memory…show more content…
Reminiscing on what happened to Maggie created a feeling of guilt inside of Twyla and Roberta as they increased in age. Between the two main characters, Maggie represents silence and absence. Even if Twyla’s and Roberta’s roles are permitted to change; Maggie is captured in a crippling discourse (Stanley). The narrator makes the reader uncertain of Maggie's race because of the fact that the views of Maggie from the two ladies, changes over and over again. On the other side, this can be seen as an anticipated outcome of the narrator’s motive to mislead the audience/reader concerning racial recognition of Twyla and Roberta. Despite the fact that the author leaves us, the readers to figure out which young lady is Caucasian and which one is African American, we still will never be exactly

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