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 language.   What percentage of American's say "I don't got any money" when in reality they don't have any money?   Sure it's just a minor flaw, a minute blemish that could easily pass unnoticed.   But, what about the next person who says, "I ain't 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 story of an elderly blind woman 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 hand a bird.   Tell me whether it is living or dead."   After some time the woman replies, "I don't know.   I don't 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.  Ã‚   Morrison states that "[The woman] is worried 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 become increasingly 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.