Week 16 Literary Blog Post

Literary Analysis 

Week 16

Close reading

This week for my literary analysis I wanted to focus on "Recitatif" a narrative written by author Toni Morrison. This narrative attracted my attention because of the topic of race discussed or in other words exposed by this whole piece of text. The section I wanted to focus on was on pg. 1174 at the very bottom of the page were they discuss how Roberta and our narrator become friends and the reason they were teases constantly at their orphanage. This section was also very eye opening because it highlights the aspect of bullying from an author that is older than the young generations and how bullying in the past is still so similar to now. Both in the narrator and Roberta were teased for multiple things that in reality weren't an issue but to a child could be devastating. Morrison explains "We didn't like each other all that much at first, but nobody else wanted to play with us because we weren't real orphans with beautiful dead parents in the sky. We were dumped.(pg.1174)". In this quote you can see how they were teased just because their parents didn't die and they became orphans but just because they were given up they were rejected by their peers. This is a common story when children are different they are excluded and teased for their differences but on a good note the narrator and Roberta stayed together. "we looked like salt and pepper standing there and thats what the other kids called us sometimes.(pg.1174)". Since they were rejected for the same things they became friends and this made them create something positive from the negativity they were presented with and that fact was interesting in the first place. Although it was a small section I believe it was important because it was the start of a relationship and helped both girls through tough times.