Jennie Graham INTL 3111 Mr.

Arnold 5/23/2011 Microtheme 1 In Toni Morrisons Nobel speech she tells a story of an old blind black woman and three children. The three children are trying to prove that the woman is a fraud and not a prophet as she claims. When the children ask the woman if the bird they have is dead or alive the woman does not directly answer their question. Instead she tells them that the bird is in their hands, she uses these exact words as wordplay. The words she chose to say can be interpreted in several ways, which is the beauty of language. To me Tonis speech is about the use of language and how important it is to everyone no matter what race they may be or disability they are faced with. Without language everyone would be blind in a way. An example of this is with words and language a blind woman can see, she can use describing words to paint a picture in her head and has no need to see what the object actually looks like. The blind woman in the story used her choice of words to have the children think about what they are doing. Toni makes it clear in her speech that she thinks language is very important to everyone, even if the language is unused. It seems as if she thinks language is the reason the world goes round, and without it and the different interpretations people have of the same words the world would be incomplete.