
Basic Character – an imaginary personage in a
literary work who acts, appears, or is referred to in a
literary work.
› Example?

Characterization – the techniques by which an
author of a work represents the moral, intellectual
and emotional nature of the characters; the art and
technique of representing fictional personages which
depends upon action or plot as well as narration and
point of view.
› Example?

Major or main characters – those that receive most
attention, minor characters receive the least.
› Example?

Flat characters – are relatively simple, have
a few dominant traits, and tend to be
predictable.
› Example?

Round characters – are complex and
multifaceted and act in a way that readers
might not expect but accept as possible.
› Example?

Static characters – do not change.
› Example?

Dynamic characters – do change.
› Example?

Stock characters – represent familiar types
that recur frequently in literary works,
especially of a particular genre (e.g., the
"mad scientist" of horror fiction and film or
the fool in Renaissance, especially
Shakespearean, drama).
› Specific example?

Protagonist – the main character in a work
of drama, fiction or narrative poetry
› Example?

Antagonist – a character or a nonhuman
force that opposes or is in conflict with the
protagonist.
› Example?

Foil – a character who contrasts with the protagonist in
ways that bring out specific moral, emotional or
intellectual qualities in the protagonist (or another
character)
› Example?

Antihero – a protagonist who is in one way or another the
very opposite of a traditional hero. Instead of being
courageous and determined, for instance, an antihero
might be timid, hypersensitive, and indecisive to the point
of paralysis. Antiheroes are especially common in modern
literary works.
› Example?

Archetype – a character, ritual, symbol, or plot pattern
that recurs in the myth and literature of many cultures;
examples include the scapegoat or trickster (character
type), the rite of passage (ritual), and the quest or descent
into the underworld (plot pattern).
› Example?

Born in 1931 in Lorain, Ohio, a steel town on the
shores of Lake Erie, Chloe Anthony Wofford was
the first member of her family to go to college,
graduating from Howard University in 1953 and
earning an M.A. from Cornell. She taught at both
Texas Southern University and at Howard before
becoming an editor at Random House, where she
worked for nearly twenty years. In such novels as
The Bluest Eye (1969), Sula (1973), Song of Solomon
(1977), Beloved (1987), and Paradise (1998),
Morrison traces the problems and possibilities
faced by black Americans struggling with slavery
and its aftermath in the United States. More recent
work includes her eighth novel, Love (2003); two
picture books for children co-authored with her
son, Slade—The Bog Box (1999) and Book of Mean
People (2002); a book for young adults,
Remember: The Journey to School Integration
Toni Morrison on
(2004); and What Moves at the Margin: Selected
her motivation for
Nonfiction (2008). In 1993 she became the first
African American author to win the Nobel Prize for
writing
literature.

The word “recitatif” will likely be unfamiliar
to you. It is derived from the word
“recitative,” which has a number of
definitions, all of which hold possible
significance for Toni Morrison’s story. The
word may refer to a style of expression
between song and ordinary speech used
by performers during the narrative or
dialogue parts of an opera. It also has a
now obsolete definition: “the tone or
rhythm peculiar to any language.”
Recitative may also refer to anything that
has the nature of a recital or repetition.

Near the end of “Recitatif” the two main characters,
Twyla and Roberta, encounter each other while
picketing on different sides of a protest related to
school busing and school integration. Public schools
in the United States were technically desegregated in
1954 with the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v.
Board of Education. But, by the 1970s, many
American school districts were still segregated in
practice because of housing inequalities and
because of the ongoing segregation of
neighborhoods. In its 1971 ruling on Swann v.
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, the
Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of
required busing to end school segregation.

Under federal court supervision, school districts across
the nation in the 1970s and 1980s began assigning
students to particular schools based on calculations
designed to produce racial balance in those schools,
rather than based on the students’ geographic
proximity to them. Many families protested and
resisted what became known as “forced busing,”
claiming that it was burdensome and
counterproductive to transport children away from
their immediate neighborhoods to attend school.
Some children transferred to private schools to avoid
compliance with integration reforms. Today, most
school districts have ended mandatory busing
schemes and de facto segregation continues to exist.

(Photo: School Busing protest in the early 1970s)

In “Recitatif,” there are five different
sections, or “acts,” in which there is an
encounter between the narrator, Twyla,
and Roberta. In some cases , years
separate the encounters. The two
characters’ conversations reveal their
changing concerns and perspectives, as
well as the very different experiences the
women have had since the days of their
close friendship.

For your assigned “act,” please discuss
and identify the following:
› When does this act take place? Or what is
›
›
›
›
the approximate ages of the girls/women?
What details does the author provide about
the race and background of each of the
girls?
How is each girl characterized in this act?
What details are we given? How does that
affect our response to each girl/woman?
In what way is Maggie a part of this act?
Please support your ideas with specific
examples from the text!





1. Twyla and Roberta both have mothers who abandon
them emotionally but not necessarily physically. How
might that affect a young girl’s notion of self-worth? On
whom or what would she depend for validation?
2. To what extent, if at all, does Maggie’s race make a
difference?
3. Why doesn’t Roberta seem overly bothered by the
attack on Maggie and whether she and Twyla only
watched or actually participated in the attack?
4. Why do you think Twyla is so deeply affected by
Roberta’s stand about busing her children to another
school? What does she mean by her placard, “Mothers
have rights too!” What does Twyla’s placard, “—And so do
children****” mean?
5. When the two women meet in the last episode, Roberta
says, “Oh, shit, Twyla. Shit, shit, shit. Well what the hell
happened to Maggie?” What does the use of profanity
and the sentiment expressed reveal about Roberta’s
character?