3rd Quarter Blogs: Blog #3

In Toni Morrison's acceptance speech for her Nobel Prize in Literature (1993), she expresses the profound impact language has had on her, and shares the power of language in the form of a fable. She uses a narrative to describe the different intricacies of language, employs connections to her own life, and asks rhetorical questions in order to convey the true effect of language to her audience. Her tone is very awe-inspired and enthralled by the opportunities that language has given her as a writer, and she hopes to pass this on. Her audience is formally, the Swedish Academy, but it really extends to far beyond that because she is really appealing to anyone because language affects us all.


1. Morrison is very grateful to language and the fact that it has given her such an outlet to express herself. She starts her speech with the very commonly used, "Once upon a time," to show the universality of language. It can bend to anyone's will, but the power is in your hand, similar to the message that the old woman tries to stress. She is also captivated by the complexities of language and the different paths one can take to use it. Overall, she is extremely inspired by what language has to offer and how it has helped her and molded her in to the writer she is today.

2. The old woman wants the children to know that the power of action lies in their hands. It's entirely their responsibility. At first they want to humiliate her, but she rises above this. The children aren't prepared to hear such an answer, in which there is vagueness and ambiguity. But this is what the woman is trying to say. Life is full of what you do with it. Your actions are what clarifies things. They want her to clear everything up for them. They think that language is the ultimate say so, but it is really their actions, and that's what the old woman wants them to realize at the end of the tale.

3. I think she is trying to convey the fact that language is crafted according to the way you create it. Language is what unites us, but also distinguishes us because we each respond to language in a different way. Word-work is the way in which we express ourselves and it sets the path for how we live. That is what Morrison is trying to convey throughout the entire speech. Language has extraordinary power and carries a great gift. It is our actions that determine what we take from it.