"Shit, shit, shit."

It's easy to believe that, because of her ethnicity, Toni Morrison wrote her only short story "Recitatif" from the view of an African American.  Conveniently, her entire story does just the opposite: it blurs the lines between the races of our two main characters, sending readers on a journey through a large chunk of each other's lives, never quite able to grasp what ethno-centered world each character is living in.

Ironically, I found myself actually using specific references to discriminate each one.  Their names, food, family and even picket signs were all dissected as I read.  This, I believe, is what Morrison wanted her readers to do.  She expertly included unique, individual tokens for each girl that threw the notion of race straight out the window.  And, in the end, isn't that what we really want for our world?  Published in '83, the intense part of racial equality seemed over.  However, 30 years later, we are still arguing over equal rights.

There are also interesting points that "Recitatif" brings up about the offspring of Roberta and Twyla.  I have three cousins in my family who are of mixed race - their father is African American, their mother a mixture of whatever white background exists on her side.  Even as young adults, the two eldest do not associate with only one race.  Gradually, as time goes forward in America, this is becoming more common.  In Morrison's story, their children, while affected in large ways by the closing of schools and obvious racial tensions where they live, are fundamentally all affected the same way.  They all lose out on a learning environment that could wholly enrich their lives - it is the parents who are arguing over the mixed environment.  Race is taught.  If my cousins were living in the time period that Morrison writes about, they would be acknowledged as African American, even if they felt otherwise.  They would lose out on a learning environment too.  I, as their white cousin, would have to make a choice based on what I was taught by those around me, or hope that I was bred with enough common sense to know right from wrong.

The ending, in which Roberta cries, perfectly embodies each part of the confusing feelings speckled throughout the story.  Regardless of who they were, they are each different now.  Her apology, and their mutual understanding that they were only children and young, too, feels like a good enough excuse to end on.  When you are young, you sometimes just don't understand as much as you could.  And her lamenting over Maggie, "Oh shit Twyla.  Shit, shit, shit.  What the hell happened to Maggie?" is a true conveyance of what was wrong with their childhood together at St. Bonny's.  They didn't know.  They simply just didn't know.

Full of romantic error.

The Judas tree, with it's array of pink flowers and clusters that flow over one another like a river, is said to be the type of tree that the disciple Judas Iscariot hung himself on after betraying his lord.  In Christian mythology his death has been said to happen in many different, conclusive ways - but one thing that is certain is that, as a man, his kiss to Jesus was an impious act forever branded as treacherous and deceiving.
It only seems fitting, then, that Katherine Anne Porter's "Flowering Judas" has intense themes connected to that very Christian story.  The Mexican revolution she portrays has no room for religion, and Laura, having been raised Catholic, sneaks off to church like a cat in the night.  Ironically, Braggioni is like Jesus, in that he leads his men with a glowing tenderness formed from the pure belief of himself as a savior; they, in turn, believe his character to be that of "real nobility, a love of humanity raised above mere personal affections".  But he is also cruel, sullied by war and yet his cruelness, as the story progresses, becomes more apparent that is an act shaped from a young age to be who he is now.  (If Jesus had lived - had not died on that cross - would he, too, have become like Braggioni?)
Laura, on the other hand, seems to have no reasoning behind her part in the revolution.  She seems to just exist, to be helpful, and yet she aches and yearns to run away.  Like a disciple, she does the bidding she is asked of and like all human beings, questions the very notion of it.  (Her un-attachment to anything in peculiar is fascinating, as at twenty two I could not imagine myself with my passions at all all time high, not attaching to a belief, a boy, etc.)
Porter's end, with Braggioni coming home to his weeping wife who washes his feet and asks for forgiveness, is exactly the kind of correlation to the infamous bible story you see throughout the earlier parts.  Like the unnamed woman who washed the feet of Jesus in oil and tears, the representation marks an important thing: leader of men or not, even the exalted ones are only men, and a moment of weakness spills when Braggioni bursts into tears.
Laura's dream, also, of Eugenio and the flowers being his flesh and blood, goes back into the 'Last Supper', with Jesus breaking bread and symbolizing it as part of himself.  Eugenio, even in her nightmare, will always be with her in some way because of the guilt she felt with being the supplier of the pills he overdosed on.
Fancy that the biblical themes presented by Porter are like some horrific style of each story.

"Let me into the darkness again."

Unfortunately, for our discussion posts, I didn't read the rules well enough to realize we only needed 200 words, and instead rambled off with well over 500.  Part of that may have been my excitement for this specific era - quite frankly, poetry and prose in the late 19th century is devastatingly romantic.  Take for instance "The Storm" by Kate Chopin; her lines are sensuous and dreamy, far too risqué for the time period.  They dance around with character, from the way Calixta, Bobinot and Bibi talk to their mannerisms in each situation.

It seems fitting, then, that Stephen Crane's "The Black Riders and Other Lines" comes across in the same way, regardless of tone.  Even in his darker, bleaker lines, Crane exuberates a carefully constructed, emotional appeal that plays out with pure imagination.  Even so, what it conveys seems simple, even if it really carries a multiple meaning.

Let me explain in a better way: I know this isn't part of our reading, but the first 19th century book I ever read was a copy of Thomas Hardy's "Wessex Tales".  It was a maroon colored book I found in an attic of a thrift shop, somewhere in Bellvue, Washington.  I was 14, and collected it simply because it's publishing date was somewhere in the early 20th century and was still managing to stay together.  ("Wessex Tales", a first edition, would have been first published in 1896.)  The stories dealt with a series of issues, from prohibition to disabled persons, and did so with such interesting clarity and sensibility that it became a forever intriguing monument in my mind.  In essence what I am trying to say is that there is a story entitled "The Withered Arm" that, as you can guess, breaches a very personal topic.  Hardy still manages to write in a style that is sentimental.  Even it's pessimistic ending feels lush.

I suppose what concludes this module is the realization that I am not only awed by what I read, but a bit jealous too.  All of my love letters couldn't possible hold a candle to the unique beauty found in these particular stories.  Too many keyboard strokes, not enough pen and paper, I say.

PS - Maybe it will prove to be wrong, but my memory of the next grouping is a slew of writing that seems tough and managed without a flow; a raw, gritty story group.  I think of the war, and of tobacco, and new age cowboys.  (I suppose, though, that Fitzgerald is in this time period and he held on to that 'romanticized' form of writing with a tight grip.)