Recitatif By Anthony Morrison Character Analysis

In Recitatif, written by Tony Morrison, there are two young girls, named Twyla and Roberta. The short story discusses the girl’s interactions throughout their whole lives. While reading the story, we figure out that one of the girls is black and one of them is white, but Morrison never specifies exactly who is who so we are never entirely sure. We just know that the girls are of different class structures. The girls do not display any type of stereotypical characteristics of each race, but have characteristics that could be of each race. The two girls become best friends when they meet at the orphanage for girls. They become such good friends not only because of them being close in age, but also because both of their mothers are still alive. …show more content…
Since there was not enough evidence of the exact race, I could not get an exact race. In the text this scenario caught my attention, “Mary, simple-minded as ever, grinned and tried to yank her hand out of the pocket with the tragedy lining-to shake hands, I guess. Roberta’s mother looked down at me and then looked down at Mary too. She didn’t say anything, just grabbed Roberta wither her Bible-free hand and stepped out of line, walking quickly to the rear of it (Levine 1406). This scenario made me think that Twyla and her mother were black, because Roberta’s mother would not shake Mary’s hand for anything. But you could also look at it in the reverse role and think that Roberta’s mother was an upper class black woman and saw Twyla’s mother as a lower-class woman, who she did not want to shake hands with. Morrison does this throughout the whole story, so you never know which girl is black or white. I like how Morrison is trying to prove a point where we are all equal no matter what race we may be. By her not specifying on the race of the girls, it prevented any judging. Since this story took place during the 50s, it was normal for a white person not to touch a black