have reported that Maggie fell.^8 Morrison’s use of the present tense at the time
of reporting only magnifies the implausibility: “I think it was the day before
Maggie fell down . . .” (246). Twyla the narrator should either give her per-
spective at the time of the telling or her perspective at the time of the action—
or indicate how her perspective has altered over time. Here she purports to
be giving her perspective at the time of the telling (“I think”), but it turns out
that she is actually giving a perspective she adopted at some unspecified point
between the time of the action (when she witnessed what happened) and the
time of the telling (when she accepts what she witnessed). Why are actual
readers likely not to notice this implausibility, and why does Morrison need it?
Readers are not likely to notice the glitch primarily because Morrison
relies on the Rule of Temporal Decoding along with the Meta-Rules of Domi-
nant Focus and of Value Added. More specifically, when Morrison’s audience
comes upon Twyla’s initial report that Maggie fell, they do not know that
Twyla is distorting what she knows. Moreover, when Twyla silently shifts to
the new account, Morrison has directed her audience’s focus to the content of
Twyla’s epiphany about the relation between her mother and Maggie. In other
words, Morrison has directed her audience’s attention away from one aspect
of source-tracking (does the source tell a consistent story?) to some crucial
content of that story.
As for the Value Added Meta-Rule, Morrison needs the implausibility
because it is crucial to the way she constructs the progression. Both the textual
and readerly dynamics derive much of their power from the way Morrison
constructs Twyla’s epiphany as the story’s first (and limited) climax. If Mor-
rison let Twyla’s narration be guided by a strict temporal and mimetic logic,
she would have had Twyla report something like the following: “I think it was
the day before Maggie got pushed down and kicked by the older girls, while
Roberta and I watched, wanting to join in because we each saw our mothers in
Maggie—I think it was that day that we found out our mothers were coming
to visit.” Such a passage would show Morrison sacrificing effective storytell-
ing on the altar of mimetic logic, because it would spoil not only the climactic
nature of the epiphany but also the readerly suspense surrounding Twyla’s and
Roberta’s contested claims about what happened to Maggie in the orchard. No
reader would want Morrison to make that trade, and therefore no rhetorical
theorist would either.
After Roberta’s confession, Twyla reaches out to her and Roberta responds
once more:
- She also ought not to have reported that fear of the gar girls kept her and Roberta from
helping, since fear is only part of the story. For the sake of clarity, however, I will focus just on
her report of the event itself.
TONI MORRISON’S DETERMINATE AMBIgUITY • 165