Jefferson's Revolutionary Prose: A Rhetorical Analysis

Recitatif

Toni Morrison's short story Recitatif is about race relations and how they impact two girls as they grow up during the racially volatile mid-20th century (Mays, 2014). The title is reminiscent of recitation, which is reading aloud in public or playing a piece of music for an audience. By comparison, an aperitif is an alcoholic drink consumed before a meal to whet the appetite. Recitatif would therefore represent a public reading to whet the appetite of the audience. When applied to the theme of Morrison's short story, recitatif represents a whetting of the appetite for understanding what it is like to be Black in America. This is accomplished for the reader by placing them in the head of the White girl as she is treated as inferior by the African-American girl. This forces American readers out of their comfort zone and into an alternate reality where class and race in America are defined and controlled by African-Americans.

A Pair of Tickets

Amy Tan transitions from traveling by train through Shenzhen, from Hong Kong to Guangzhou, and upon arrival she spends a night in a glamorous hotel. The next day there is a goodbye scene at the airport, before traveling by air to the airport in Shanghai to meet her two half-sisters. All these settings are used as a contrast between what is happening in real time, with thoughts and feelings of dread, joy, grief, anticipation, and relief, and a back story about her mother's travails during World War II and how she lost her two young daughters and husband as the Japanese invaded. Tan opens this short story, however, with questions about her own identity, from feeling incredulous that her mother would suggest that she was even remotely Chinese after having grown up in San Francisco, to a final realization that being Chinese is about family and the way in which genetics has maintained strong ties even over very long distances and stretches of time.

A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings: A Tale for Children

The theme of Marquez's short story is about an average person's reaction when confronted by something mystical or supernatural; people tend to behave badly when their day-to-day grind is disturbed. In this story a decrepit angel is found mired in the mud outside a sea-side shack, but a persistent cloud of uncertainty hangs over whether the angel is truly an angel and this uncertainty becomes fuel for bad behavior. The story opens with a description about the deplorable conditions suffered by a small family living in the shack, especially after days of non-stop rain. Crushed crabs, mud, stink, sickness, and parasites enter the reader's mind, at the same time the angel appears. Religious imagery, in this case a decrepit old man with a very large set of wings in deplorable condition, is contrasted with the abject poverty, both spiritual and financial, of the people the angel encounters. Despite being shoved into a chicken coop and treated as a zoo animal the angel remains apart from, even indifferent to, human concerns and suffering. With time the angel heals and flies off over the sea, much to the relief of the small family's matriarch. None of the people, not even the local priest, seem to express a sense of awe and respect in the presence of the angel, not even as the angel recovers and flies away. A return to the day-to-day grind is welcomed.