ames are one of the first identifiers a person is given, and yet as infants they are given no choice in this identifier that will be with them for the rest of their lives. In Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon the use of the biblical names Hagar and Pilate serve as a means to show the importance of defining the path of one’s life for one's self, as supposed to letting one's name define it for them. Through juxtaposition and parallels, Morrison teaches a universal lesson of the importance of self definition. One of the first things said about Pilate after she is born is a comment by the midwife, who said on the topic of her name “Christ-killing Pilate. You can’t get much worse than that for a name.”(19). The association of Pilate Dead with Pontius …show more content…
Pilate would forever be a part of her life, yet Pilate Dead and Pontius Pilate are complete opposites. Pontius Pilate was the Roman governor of Judea and is known for his involvement in condemning Jesus to death on a cross. Though Pontius Pilate declares several times that he does not believe that Jesus is guilty, in the end he condemns Jesus to death to appease his people. Ignoring his conscious in an attempt to gain the favor of others, Pontius Pilate ended up killing the son of God. In contrast, Pilate Dead has a strong conscious which she always follows and believed in the equality of all lives. Pilate Dead keeps a sack of bones in her house, with her reason for this being her false notion that they are that of a man that she killed. Pilate tells of her reason for keeping them, saying “Life is life. Precious. And the dead you kill is yours…so it's a better thing to have the bones right there with you wherever you go” (208). She believes in the equality of all loves and also has a conscious so strong that she would keep a bag of bones having front and center in her house out of guilt. In this, Pilate Dead makes herself the complete opposite of Pontius Pilate. Unlike Pilate Dead and her biblical counterpart, Hagar Dead’s life mirrors the narrative of biblical Hagar quite closely.
Hagar was the Egyptian slave of Sarai(Sarah), who was given to Sarai’s husband Abram(Abraham) in order for him to have children. Once Hagar had served her purpose she and her son were cast out of the community and left to fend for themselves in the desert with only a little food and water provided by Abram so he would not feel bad about banishing them. Hagar Dead was used in a similar fashion by Milkman, and then promptly thrown out once Milkman grew tired of her. Also, similar to Abram’s gift of food and water before casting them out, Milkman gave Hagar Dead the gift of a thank you note, “Thank you for all you have meant to me” (99) it said, so Milkman wouldn't feel bad about ending their relationship. The rest of biblical Hagar’s narrative mirrors that of Hagar Dead’s as well. Stranded in the desert, the biblical Hagar and her son began to die of hunger and thirst, but when God heard their cries he opened up their eyes to a well they hadn't noticed before and they both were saved. After Milkman left Hagar Dead, she began to starve. Not in a literal sense, but in the sense that she needed love. Hagar Dead’s sustenance is love, which she shows the reader in the beginning of the novel by saying“some of my days were hungry ones”(48) which Pilate clarifies with “...She don't mean food”(49). Without Milkman’s love to sustain her, of course she began to …show more content…
starve. The main difference in the two narratives is the ending. Whereas biblical Hagar is saved from death by dehydration by God, Hagar Dead has no such luck. In what appears to be a direct reference to the story of biblical Hagar, the illness that kills is a fever that“dried her eyes up as well as her mouth”(314), quite similar to the dehydration of the two desert wanderers. At this point the well was revealed to Hagar, but there was no God to protect Hagar Dead. She died soon after the fever began, thus ending her story. One might wonder what the purpose was in naming two character with biblical names, but only having one follow the path of their namesake.
This was done as a means to explore the theme of danger of letting names creating a path for one's life as supposed to creating it for oneself. In the differences in outcomes, one can see how creating one's own path is important. Pilate Dead did everything she possibly could to be different than Pontius Pilate, and in the end she was rewarded. The bag of bones she carried with her all through her life out of guilt ended up being those of her father, and thus Pilate Dead was able to fulfil her goal of letting her father rest. In making her own path, Pilate was able to create her own ending as well. Hagar Dead, on the other hand, followed the path of the biblical Hagar and made no effort to get off of it. In the end this led to her downfall, because whereas biblical Hagar had God to save her, Hagar dead did not. In allowing the path of her life to be determined by her name, Hagar Dead sealed her fate to follow the story of her namesake. The importance of being able to separate oneself from one's name may be of a magnitude that is not normally seen in real life, but the lesson remains. Create a path for oneself and you can make then end a good
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The life of Jesus is one that is often discussed and debated among scholars and authors since the time Jesus walked this earth. Gerd Theissen’ s work, Shadow of the Galilean, takes the unique perspective of a grain merchant who has been enlisted by Pilate to find out information on various religious sects and report back to him. After Andreas, the grain merchant’s, first report he is given the task of finding out more about this Jesus who is gaining quite a following. Pilate and the Romans want to know if he is a threat to them. This book follows Andreas as he goes on a journey to find out more about Jesus from various sources for his report to the Romans.
Throughout literature it has been common for authors to use allusions to complement recurrent motifs in their work. In Toni Morrison's Song Of Solomon, Milkman learns that his desire to fly has been passed down to him from his ancestor Solomon. As Milkman is figuring out the puzzle of his ancestry, he realizes that when Solomon tried to take his youngest son, Jake, flying with him, he dropped him and Jake never arrived with his father to their destination.
McKay, Nellie, editor, Critical Essays on Toni Morrison, G.K. Hall, 1988. Morrison, Toni. Song of Solomon. New York: Penguin Books, 1987. Rigney, Barbara.
... it is Pilate who represents not only embodied history but the praxis that comes with recognizing history's effects, the willingness to theorize about possibilities in the face of history, and the ability to make concrete alternatives to personal and public inequities. Remaining on the ground of history, then, is a labor of love.
Toni Morrision's novel "Song of Solomon" contrasts the image of a self-made individual with that of an individual who is the product of his or her society. Since society changes, the man who simply reflects his social environment changes accordingly. But “the true individual's self-discovery depends on achieving consciousness of one's own nature and identity”(Middleton 81). This is what differentiates Pilate and Milkman from Macon and Guitar. There are direct similarities between Milkman's and Pilate's self-discovery. They both achieve their individualistic spirit through travel, literal and symbolic. Not so for Guitar and Macon Dead jr. “Where Pilate's and Milkman's self-discovery is a journey of individuals, Guitar and Macon Dead Jr.are defined and determined by the kind of society they belong to”(Davis 225).
In Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison, men discover themselves through flight. While the motif of flight is liberating for men, it has negative consequences for women. Commonly, the women of Song of Solomon are abandoned by men, both physically and emotionally. Many times they suffer as a result as an abandonment, but there are exceptions in which women can pick themselves up or are undisturbed. Morrison explores in Song of Solomon the abandonment of women by men.
In Morrison's novel we were constantly shown the theme of love with Pilate given to show us the strongest and healthiest example of it. Pilate who lurked in the back of the reader's mind, who was most loved of all of the characters. She is considered a mystery to those inside and outside of the story, because of her perceptive ability and her lack of agenda. Pilate was the strongest of the characters, no passive woman as well. She truly is an unusual piece of work, someone the reader wishes they saw more often in the world around them. Pilate is a personal favorite as well, and it isn't hard to see why. Pilate is the embodiment of what love is supposed to be and that is why she is so important and so dearly loved among readers. In the words of Milman, “There must be another one like you,” (336).
In Song of Solomon, through many different types of love, Ruth's incestuous love, Milkman and Hagar's romantic love, and Guitar's love for his race, Toni Morrison demonstrates not only the readiness with which love will turn into a devastating and destructive force, but also the immediacy with which it will do so. Morrison tackles the amorphous and resilient human emotion of love not to glorify the joyous feelings it can effect but to warn readers of love's volatile nature. Simultaneously, however, she gives the reader a clear sense of what love is not. Morrison explicitly states that true love is not destructive. In essence, she illustrates that if "love" is destructive, it is most likely, a mutation of love, something impure, because love is all that is pure and true.
Freedom is heavily sought after and symbolized by flight with prominent themes of materialism, classism, and racism throughout Toni Morrison’s novel Song of Solomon. The characters Milkman and Macon Dead represent these themes as Macon raises Milkman based on his own belief that ownership of people and wealth will give an individual freedom. Milkman grows up taking this idea as a way to personally obtain freedom while also coming to difficult terms with the racism and privilege that comes with these ideas and how they affect family and African Americans, and a way to use it as a search for an individual 's true self. Through the novel, Morrison shows that both set themselves in a state of mental imprisonment to these materials
Once upon a time, castles watched the seas and pigs could fly. Often, when we are young fairy tales are read to us to offer happy endings in a world of darkness. They give us one specific ending and put our minds at rest knowing that Belle found her Beast. In Song of Solomon, by Toni Morrison, Milkman Dead is not afforded the luxury of his journey having one specific pathway of going through life. Milkman’s story can be seen as a fairy tale with elements of good and bad. His world is trapped in a bubble, and it is not until the fairy tales of other people and books end that he becomes his own fairytale. He finds himself through the twists and turns of his own story. Because of the magical elements within Milkman’s life,
In Song of Solomon Toni Morrison tells a story of one black man's journey toward an understanding of his own identity and his African American roots. This black man, Macon "Milkman" Dead III, transforms throughout the novel from a naïve, egocentric, young man to a self-assured adult with an understanding of the importance of morals and family values. Milkman is born into the burdens of the materialistic values of his father and the weight of a racist society. Over the course of his journey into his family's past he discovers his family's values and ancestry, rids himself of the weight of his father's expectations and society's limitations, and literally learns to fly.
In these sections some authors were fair in their conclusions and other authors were a little more harsh and biased toward a certain character or two. Through reading these commentaries I’ve learned that each person has their own view on Hagar, and more importantly, the way the text is written depicts how the character will be portrayed. The way a woman is portrayed in the bible is dependent upon the author and their bias. Hagar may be the selfish one in this situation, but she could also be the victim of Abraham and Sarah’s impatience with God. It just depends on how you read
When one is confronted with a problem, we find a solution easily, but when a society is confronted with a problem, the solution tends to prolong itself. One major issue that is often discussed in today’s society that has been here for as long as we’ve known it, is racism. Racism is also a very repetitive theme in Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon. Almost every character has experienced racism whether it be towards them or they are the ones giving the racism in this novel. Racism is a very controversial topic as many have different perspectives of it. In Toni’s novel, three characters that have very distinct perspectives on racism are Macon Dead, Guitar, and Dr. Foster. These characters play vital roles throughout the novel.
The function of the mock-death is powerful because it forces Pericles and Alonso not only to acknowledge their actions, but also to cope with the loss their child, which is a punishment in itself. Pericles’ claim that “death remembered should be like a mirror” (Per. 1.1.46), which, essentially, indicates that an individual, who mourns the death of a loved one, should mirror death in their own actions, is of immense significance because it foreshadows the responses of Pericles and Alonso to the death of Marina and Ferdinand, respectively. While Pericles tries to remove the ‘taint’ of Antiochus’ sin with penitential-like acts of charity, bringing “corn to make [Cleon’s] needy bread / And give them life” (1.4.95-96) in Tarsus, he is unable to remove the forbidden knowledge of incest from his mind. Consequently, Pericles’ discovery of Marina’s death is significant because it is knowledge that makes him undergo a symbolical transformation: he mirrors his daughter’s fate in his own appearance and behaviour. As Pericles’ “main grief springs from the loss / of a belovèd daughter and a wife” (5.1.27-28), it transforms him into a personification of death itself because he “swears / Never to wash his face nor cut his hairs / [he] puts on a sackcloth” (4.4.27-29) and has “not spoken / To anyone, nor taken sustenance” (5.1.22-23) in
In the book Song of Solomon, by Toni Morrison, a character's name says a lot about the character themselves. Pilate is one of the more interesting name choices throughout this book because her name does not represent her in any literal sense. The most famous reference to this name is Pontius Pilate from the bible, the man who condemned jesus to death. If approached from this direction this significance has no connection to what she is actually like in the book. The real significance of Pilate’s name is not in the name itself but in the way the name was chosen. Her illiterate father pointed at a grouping of letters he thought looked well together and gave the letters to her as a name. Even when her father chose her name the nurse helping with