Toni Morrison and Charlotte Perkins Gilman :: comparison compare contrast essays

Toni Morrison and Charlotte Perkins Gilman In this age of electric cars, flying machines, and Chinese take-out, it is easy to let certain every-day flaws slip past us. Take for example linguistic process. What percentage of Americans check out I dont got any m adepty when in reality they dont have any money? Sure its just a minor flaw, a minute taint that could easily pass unnoticed. But, what about the next person who says, I aint got no money. Is there a limit? Is there a limit to how badly language can be mutilated, destroyed, or is death the ultimate confinement? Nobel Prize winner, Toni Morrison, expresses her disgust and fear of such a death in her 1993 Nobel Prize Lecture. She tells the drool of an elderly blind muliebrity whom is known and respected in her community for her wisdom and knowledge. Morrison explains that Among her people the old woman is both the law and its transgression (Morrison 1993). On one occasion, the woman is approached by some young people who are intent on taking advantage of her blindness. They say, Old woman, I hold in my sight a bird. Tell me whether it is living or wild. After some time the woman replies, I dont know. I dont know whether the bird you are holding is dead or alive, but what I do know is that it is in your hands. It is in your hands. (Morrison 1993) Morrison interprets the bird to be language and the woman to be a practiced writer. Morrison states that The woman is maladjusted about how the language she dreams in, given to her at birth, is handled, put into service, even withheld from her for certain nefarious purposes. ...She believes that if the bird in the hands of her visitors is dead, the custodians are responsible for the corpse (Morrison 1993). The woman is aware that language, her very way of communicating with the world, her sole instrument of expression in modern society, is dying. As language continues to die, the woman and her medium for expression plough increasi ngly confined, with death as the final outcome. She is shackled and detained by her inability to halt the holocaust, the complete and utter desecration of the language she loves so much.