Compare And Contrast Recitatif

Morrison’s Recitatif challenges readers to withdraw from a stereotyped judgment, as they unconsciously try to assign a race to the characters. Not knowing their specific race, we see how Twyla and Roberta have made expectations of each other because they are aware of their racial difference. Yet despite these differences, they are brought together because of their unfortunate experiences. Recitatif emphasizes on the idea that racial prejudice will always prohibit a genuine harmony within races, which seems to be prevalent in Twyla and Roberta’s friendship.
Twyla and Roberta meet in an orphanage because their mothers cannot look after them. Twyla is placed there because her mother “likes to dance all night” (Morrison 1174) and is incapable of taking care of her. …show more content…
They were both abandoned and were not liked by the children there because they “weren’t real orphans with beautiful dead parents” (Morrison 1174). The unfortunate reality that both of their mothers are alive, but cannot physically care for them becomes their reason to bond. Another distinction is their racial difference. At the age of eight, Twyla is very well aware that Roberta is a different race and she is “sick to [her] stomach…to be stuck in a strange place with a girl from a whole other race” (Morrison 1174). Twyla’s warped judgment causes her to categorize Roberta as one of those people who “never washed their hair and [that] they smelled funny” (Morrison 1174). On the other side, Roberta is also eight years old, and we experience the racial dislike against Twyla’s race through Roberta’s mother as she refuses to shake Twyla’s mother’s hand. Furthermore, both Twyla and Roberta struggled with obtaining academic success, but for very different reasons. Twyla could not comprehend

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Compare And Contrast Twyla And Roberta In Recitatif