What Makes Toni Morrison's Acceptance Speech
Toni Morrison is a renowned American Novelist. Her works are famous for their impactful elements of visual descriptions of characters and scenes paired with a variety of themes. One of her most famous works was her acceptance speech of her Nobel Prize in literature. Her style of language is that of a continuous story with vivid metaphors that discuss the life and death of “language”. Arguing that language of the future is in the hands of the next generation and how it is used can create catastrophic results or bring about “paradise.” What makes her argument convincing is by structuring it into a story as she plays the storyteller.
The story Mrs. Morrison tells is the story of an old wise, blind woman who is visited by “some young people” that seem to disprove her credibility and reveal her as the “fraud” they believe her to be. So they ask her a question that uses her “profound disability.” Her blindness. They state how they have a “bird” in their hand and ask if it is “living or dead.” Her response was that whether ir is dead or alive, “It is in your hands.” From their Toni …show more content…
translates her own perspective of what the bird may represent which is language.
What makes Morrison's speech unique is it’s persuasive aspect of being an actual story throughout the speech.
It creates a pathos/ethos experience with it’s classic “Once upon a time” line that automatically syncs to a story with meaning. Along with the role of a storyteller of third person, she shifts to first and second that semi-reveal her personal standpoint but remains in third to allow the audience to have their own views. Her opinion isn’t forced but obvious. And she doesn’t clarify some meanings compared to the beginning where she explains what the bird may represent and what is meant when she states “It is in your hands.” No, in fact at the end she immediately ends her story without much clarification and leaves it with the old woman congratulating the young people of finally understanding her motives and that she trusts them with the bird for they have “truly caught
it.”
Another impactful technique that is used is her use of characterization. How when she describes the woman she simply states that she is old, blind, and wise. Allowing listeners to associate the old woman with frailty and cleverness. Although when the young people enter the story, the tone shifts into them being troublemakers on how their motives is to “disprove her clairvoyance” and prove her fraudery. Than later she changes her wording to change them from troublemakers to actual questionnaires. Shifting perspectives from outsiders towards the wise woman to those with actual questions about the meaning of language and the world. Together they form her overall allegory of the meaning of the “bird.”
As the role of a storyteller, her moral to her global audience is to understand that with the new form language takes with the next generation, it will have it’s own personal “life” or may become “dead.” For when the story shifts perspective to the young person's own views of what should one of their visit, the old woman is congratulatory that she is now able to trust them with the “bird that is not in your hands because you have truly caught it.” Meaning that even though language may grow, it will stay with it’s origins forever. That it won’t perish. For even if “we die,” language will come “the measure of our lives.”
Despite Morrison's persuasive appeals, her idea of language can be translated into meanings based on who listens to her. Meaning that the role of a storyteller doesn’t give her a firm stance on how her words will be translated onto others clearly. Her choice of “evidence” purely relies on the audience's emotions and ideals. But perhaps that is in fact why she is the story teller. For it allows the next generation to form their own views and not need a “story” to tell them. Interesting enough she still clarifies the warnings behind language and how it can “lock creative people into cages of inferiority and hopelessness.”
With her repetition of lines and alliterations such as language s “grand or slender, burrowing, blasting or refusing to sanctify” it expresses how it is language that is almighty. That the young person's representation of the next gen needs to have it’s own ideas to truly “capture” the “bird” but may learn from not needing the onions or “pronouncements” of the past to understand language or the world.
The story Mrs. Morrison tells is the story of an old wise, blind woman who is visited by “some young people” that seem to disprove her credibility and reveal her as the “fraud” they believe her to be. So they ask her a question that uses her “profound disability.” Her blindness. They state how they have a “bird” in their hand and ask if it is “living or dead.” Her response was that whether ir is dead or alive, “It is in your hands.” From their Toni …show more content…
translates her own perspective of what the bird may represent which is language.
What makes Morrison's speech unique is it’s persuasive aspect of being an actual story throughout the speech.
It creates a pathos/ethos experience with it’s classic “Once upon a time” line that automatically syncs to a story with meaning. Along with the role of a storyteller of third person, she shifts to first and second that semi-reveal her personal standpoint but remains in third to allow the audience to have their own views. Her opinion isn’t forced but obvious. And she doesn’t clarify some meanings compared to the beginning where she explains what the bird may represent and what is meant when she states “It is in your hands.” No, in fact at the end she immediately ends her story without much clarification and leaves it with the old woman congratulating the young people of finally understanding her motives and that she trusts them with the bird for they have “truly caught
it.”
Another impactful technique that is used is her use of characterization. How when she describes the woman she simply states that she is old, blind, and wise. Allowing listeners to associate the old woman with frailty and cleverness. Although when the young people enter the story, the tone shifts into them being troublemakers on how their motives is to “disprove her clairvoyance” and prove her fraudery. Than later she changes her wording to change them from troublemakers to actual questionnaires. Shifting perspectives from outsiders towards the wise woman to those with actual questions about the meaning of language and the world. Together they form her overall allegory of the meaning of the “bird.”
As the role of a storyteller, her moral to her global audience is to understand that with the new form language takes with the next generation, it will have it’s own personal “life” or may become “dead.” For when the story shifts perspective to the young person's own views of what should one of their visit, the old woman is congratulatory that she is now able to trust them with the “bird that is not in your hands because you have truly caught it.” Meaning that even though language may grow, it will stay with it’s origins forever. That it won’t perish. For even if “we die,” language will come “the measure of our lives.”
Despite Morrison's persuasive appeals, her idea of language can be translated into meanings based on who listens to her. Meaning that the role of a storyteller doesn’t give her a firm stance on how her words will be translated onto others clearly. Her choice of “evidence” purely relies on the audience's emotions and ideals. But perhaps that is in fact why she is the story teller. For it allows the next generation to form their own views and not need a “story” to tell them. Interesting enough she still clarifies the warnings behind language and how it can “lock creative people into cages of inferiority and hopelessness.”
With her repetition of lines and alliterations such as language s “grand or slender, burrowing, blasting or refusing to sanctify” it expresses how it is language that is almighty. That the young person's representation of the next gen needs to have it’s own ideas to truly “capture” the “bird” but may learn from not needing the onions or “pronouncements” of the past to understand language or the world.