English 275
13 September 2016
The Similarities and Differences in “Recitatif” and “Cathedral”
The two short stories “Recitatif” by Toni Morrison, and “Cathedral” by Raymond Carter appear at first to be very different. The former is about a middle-aged man whose wife’s blind friend comes to visit for the evening. The latter is about a young girl who spends her childhood in an orphanage with a girl of a different race, as well as the struggles and victories throughout the young girl’s life regarding race and her experience in the orphanage.
Using six aspects of a story to first contrast and then compare “Recitatif” and “Cathedral,” there are three differences and three similarities. The differences include: the complexity of plot, setting, and fundamentally different characters. Despite these differences, “Recitatif” and “Cathedral” also share similarities: specifically, their theme of enlightenment to discrimination, the importance of point of view, and using symbols that at first appear to be inconsequential, but are vital to the story.
The plots in “Recitatif” and “Cathedral” differ greatly. The plot in “Recitatif” happens over a span of twenty years, following the major character Twyla from childhood to adulthood (Morrison 140). Consequently, the plot is rich with characters and events. On the contrary, “Cathedral’s” plot happens over a span of one evening, and therefore is not complex. The story recounts a man, his wife, and her blind friend who all enjoy an evening of conversing, drinking, and smoking.
In addition to one plot being complex and the other simple, setting in both “Recitatif” and “Cathedral” also differ. While both stories are presumably set around the same time period, “Recitatif” is set in many places, including an orphanage, a restaurant, the streets, a grocery store, and a bar. “Cathedral,” on the other hand, is set mostly in one place: a home somewhere on the East Coast.
While the two major characters in “Recitatif” and “Cathedral” are both round and dynamic, they are fundamentally different. In “Recitatif,” the narrator Twyla is a naïve girl who sees the world matter-of-factly. She plainly reports what happens to her, mostly from an inexperienced worldview. For example, when Twyla is confronted with racism, she says, “I didn’t know… Busloads of blacks and whites came into Howard Johnson’s together” (Morrison 141). Conversely, the narrator in “Cathedral” is a middle-aged, cynical man with a pessimistic worldview. He tells inappropriate jokes (Carver 36), has no friends (Carver 36), and offers a bleak mindset in response to life: “A blind man in my house was not something I looked forward to” (Carver 34). The major characters in both stories differ significantly in life experience, personality, and worldviews.
Both “Recitatif” and “Cathedral” share a theme of enlightenment to personal or communal discrimination. In “Recitatif,” this theme enlightens the reader to race and stereotypes. The major character, Twyla, is enlightened to racial discrimination when, after referencing a scene in Howard Johnson’s in which her childhood friend Roberta was rude to and dismissive of Twyla, Roberta responds “…you know how it was in those days: black—white. You know everything was” (Morrison 141). Twyla is surprised at this statement, because this type of racial segregation is not how she views the world. Through this, Twyla is forced to be enlightened to the reality of racism.
In “Recitatif,” Morrison does not reveal the races of Twyla or Roberta. Twyla states that together at the orphanage her and Roberta “looked like salt and pepper” (Morrison 132), implying that one is Caucasian and the other is African-American. However, the characters’ exact racial identities never become apparent to the reader. Because of this, the reader uses stereotypes to assume the races of the characters. Morrison holds back information in the story to enlighten the reader to these stereotypes, and show the harm they can inflict.
Similarly, “Cathedral” has a theme of being enlightened to personal discrimination against another peoples. The narrator is uncomfortable with blindness. For example, when his wife tells him a blind man—Robert—is visiting, the narrator, not knowing what else to say, jokes about taking the blind man bowling (Carver 36). When Robert arrives, the narrator is uncomfortable with the fact that Robert is not wearing dark glasses to conceal his shifty eyes. The narrator’s uncomfortableness with Robert could also be defined as disgust, because he goes so far as to say Robert’s twitching eyes are, “Creepy” (Carver 39).
The story begins with the narrator’s uncomfortableness and disgust with blindness. He does not know how to react to it, and he does not want to know either. When he and his wife are listening to a tape of Robert giving his opinion of the narrator, they are interrupted and never finish listening. The narrator reacts by saying, “Maybe it was just as well. I’d heard all I wanted to” (Carver 36). The narrator does not care about Robert’s opinion of him, because he does not care about the opinions of blind people.
However, in the story the narrator’s discrimination towards blind people is questioned, and the narrator learns to see the world as blind people do. After drawing the picture of the cathedral, Robert tells the narrator to open his eyes. Instead, he keeps his eyes closed (Carver 46) because he has realized that simply seeing the world does not equate with experiencing it. He is enlightened to his own discrimination, and now experiences a new empathy and different worldview than before.
Point of view is important in both “Recitatif” and “Cathedral,” because if either story was told in a different point of view, the impact on the reader would not be as poignant. For example, in “Recitatif,” Twyla is in some ways an unreliable narrator; Roberta stated that the orphanage’s kitchen maid Maggie is African-American, and that as kids, Twyla and Roberta pushed Maggie down. However, Twyla remembers Maggie to be a different race, and to have fallen down naturally. The actual events of their childhood are questioned, and the reader is ultimately left without knowing the truth about Maggie. Morrison uses this limited first-person point of view to conceal the truth about Maggie from the reader in the same way it is concealed from Twyla. Because of this, the reader feels the same instability that Twyla does about her childhood identity.
Likewise, “Cathedral” is written in first-person limited; much of the narration happens in the narrator’s head. The reader has access to the narrator’s discriminatory stereotypes, inappropriate jokes, and overall discomfort with Robert’s blindness. It is important that “Cathedral” be told from this character’s point of view, because the reader needs to know all of his discriminative thoughts in order for the ending of enlightenment to be impactful. The narrator is a dynamic character, and first-person limited showcases his change to the reader.
Both “Recitatif” and “Cathedral” use symbols in similar ways. In the beginning of “Recitatif,” Maggie does not appear to the reader as a vital character. When reflecting on an orchard that Maggie frequently walked through, Twyla says, “Nothing really happened there. Nothing all that important, I mean” (Morrison 133). Maggie is not brought up again until eight pages later, and in the meantime the reader has virtually forgotten about Maggie. Because of this, Maggie seems to be insignificant.
However, in the end, the reader finds out that Maggie is vital to the story. The last line of the story, said by Roberta, is: “‘Oh shit, Twyla. Shit, shit, shit. What the hell happened to Maggie?’” (Morrison 147). The actual events of what the girls did or did not do to Maggie are unknown. This seems to haunt the characters, and may also haunt the reader. Twyla’s memory of Maggie shapes her memory of St. Bonaventure orphanage, and therefore her entire childhood and identity. Maggie is a symbol of a theme of loss of innocence in “Recitatif.” While it is possible Twyla did not harm Maggie, she remembers clearly that she wanted to harm Maggie, and this memory paired with one that might include her actually doing harm, is uprooting to Twyla. Her innocence, identity, and morality is questioned within this memory, or lack thereof.
Similarly, “Cathedral” has a significant symbol—the cathedral—that at first seems inconsequential to the story, despite it being the title. However, the cathedral in the story does not make an appearance until the very end. Even then, the narrator states, “‘The truth is, cathedrals don’t mean anything special to me. Nothing. Cathedrals. They’re something to look at on late-night TV. That’s all they are’” (Carver 45). The cathedral is seemingly unimportant to the reader until it becomes a symbol of the theme of being enlightened to new lifestyles, and the meaning is clear. The cathedral becomes important to the narrator, because it is what connects him to the blind man, and opens his eyes to what he is personally blind to—the lifestyle and worldview of someone different from him. Through the cathedral, he is able to expand his mind, and destroy discriminatory stereotypes.
Both “Recitatif” and “Cathedral” share differences and similarities. Specifically, they differ in complexity of plot, simplicity in setting, and fundamentally different characters. “Recitatif” is complex, with naïve characters who deal with racism and identity. “Cathedral,” on the other hand, is simple in plot and setting, and instead focuses on the major character who is pessimistic and rude before being enlightened by Robert. However, both stories share a theme of enlightenment to discrimination, in the ways Twyla is forced to deal with racism, and the narrator in “Cathedral” is shown by Robert that blind people have a unique and valid perspective of the world. The stories also share similar points of view, and symbols that support themes in subtle ways. In both “Recitatif” and “Cathedral,” readers will be enlightened to new perspectives, and offered the chance to evaluate personal opinions and stereotypes in order to test them against a higher standard.
Works Cited
Carver, Raymond. “Cathedral.” Mays, pp. 34-46.
Mays, Kelly J., editor. The Norton Introduction to Literature. Norton, 2014. Morrison, Toni. “Recitatif.” Mays, pp. 131-147.
0 comments:
Post a Comment