Morrison’s use of social minds in “Recitatif ” nicely exemplifies this last
point. Much of her story traces the formation, the fragility, the breakdown,
and possible re-formation of the social mind shared by Twyla and Roberta.
But for Morrison, that tracing is one means toward her larger purposes, which
include (1) at the thematic level, heightening her audience’s awareness of the
myriad personal and cultural factors that influence the trajectory of Twyla and
Roberta’s efforts to bridge their racial divide; (2) at the mimetic level, guid-
ing her audience’s ethical judgments and affective responses so that we desire
their success and understand their failures and can take genuine satisfaction
in the story’s bittersweet ending; and (3) at the aesthetic level, constructing a
narrative that rewards attention not only to the nuances of the relationships
between the characters but also to those between herself and her audience. In
this section, then, I will draw on Palmer’s work for insights into some aspects
of Morrison’s construction of the progression, especially its beginning and
ending, but I shall also consider one aspect of the character narration that is
crucial for the progression and seems to me best understood from the per-
spective of rhetorical theory.
Morrison builds the plot dynamics around a global instability and its
complications: Twyla and Roberta’s struggle to relate across their racial differ-
ence, a struggle complicated by their relationships to their neglectful mothers
and to Maggie, the disabled cook at the orphanage where they meet, and by
broader cultural issues affecting race relations in the United States from the
1950s to the early 1980s. (Strikingly, Twyla’s and Roberta’s fathers are never
mentioned and do not function as absent presences.)
Morrison divides the story into five parts. In the first, set in the 1950s at St.
Bonaventure’s, the girls are eight years old and they bond. In the second, set
in the 1960s at the Howard Johnson’s where Twyla works, they cannot bridge
their divides. In the third, set in the early 1970s in a suburban shopping center,
they are in their late twenties;^7 at first they effortlessly reconnect, but conflict-
purposes of them, means rather than ends. Palmer doesn’t have to agree with this position, but
I do think it would be helpful if he addressed it.” I stipulated that Palmer didn’t have to agree
because I didn’t want to impose my views on Palmer. I do regard Palmer’s agreement as an
additional warrant for the project of this chapter.
- Twyla says that when they meet as married women, “twenty years” have passed since
they were at the orphanage and “twelve years” have passed since they met at Howard Johnson’s.
Since they are eight when they’re at St. Bonny’s, they would be sixteen and twenty-eight at these
subsequent meetings. But Twyla implies that she has to drive to Howard Johnson’s (“Kind of
a long ride” [249]), and Roberta is on her way from New York to “the coast” with two male
friends, and thus they seem to be closer to twenty than to sixteen. If they are twenty, then the
“twelve years” would capture the interval between their time at St. Bonny’s and their meeting at
Howard Johnson’s rather than the interval between the two later meetings. (I can’t help but note
that this is the second time I’m finding fault with Morrison’s time-tracking. For the first, see my
TONI MORRISON’S DETERMINATE AMBIgUITY • 159