Symbolism In Toni Morrison's Song Of Solomon

Toni Morrison, in her novel Song of Solomon, skillfully utilizes symbolism to provide crucial insight into the story and to help add detail and depth to themes and character developments. Fabricating a 1960’s African American society, Morrison employs these symbols to add unspoken insight into the community that one would feel if he or she were actually living there, as well as to help the reader identify and sympathize with the characters and their struggles. By manifesting these abstract concepts into tangible objects such as gold or roses, the author is able to add a certain significance to important ideas that remains and develops further throughout the story, adding meaning to the work as a whole. Pilate’s brass box earring, containing

In the African American community, names held a certain importance, and both people and places were given more descriptive nicknames that created a more accurate identity for them that their original names lacked. However, Pilate was already born with a name that encompassed her identity: Pilate, a homonym for “pilot” because she is a guiding figure, especially for Milkman. Keeping her name close to her in her earring, she is always in touch with her identity and lets it define her. Milkman, recognizing this and the impermanence of identity, comments how “names...had meaning. No wonder Pilate put hers in her ear. When you know your name, you should hang on to it, for unless it is noted down and remembered, it will die when you do” (329). Despite this, Pilate’s name and influence will live on after her death, symbolized by her earring being snatched up by a bird that flies away with it: although her body remains on the ground, her name remains and moves

Burying her father’s bones on Solomon’s Leap, Pilate rips her earring out of her ear and lays it atop the fresh grave as a headstone, signaling that she has done all she needs to do in life and allowing “the single word that Jake ever wrote” (335) to rest with his body. Having made the earring following her father’s death, Pilate now removes it when her father is properly laid to rest, fulfilling his final wish of a proper burial after his ghost told her years ago that “you just can’t leave a body” (147); this indicates that she has fulfilled her purpose and freed her soul, and shows her strong connection to her father and ultimately to family. At this point, Pilate becomes ready to die, since she voiced her opinions on death to Ruth when she explained how “some folks want to live forever. Some don’t. I believe they decide on it anyway. People die when they want to and if they want to” (140); having buried her father and removed her earring, thus separating from her identity, she has prepared herself for death. When she is shot by Guitar almost immediately, she dies peacefully and freely. Morrison symbolizes this liberating death by having a bird fly away with Pilate’s earring in its mouth, reminding the reader of the theme that flight is liberating, and that her soul is free and is “flying away” to heaven. Similarly, it symbolizes to Pilate’s devotion to her heritage,