Pick a character who is not Pilate and set forth your
understanding of three different roles that character plays in the novel, and
the importance of these roles for themselves and others. Your paper should be more than one page
long but less than two pages long.
You should quote the book at least 6 times. Below is part of an article
by Joseph Skerrett in which he delineates the various roles of Pilate: as
conjuror; as blueswoman; as teacher. Skerrett is particularly interested
in how she plays these roles in her storytelling, but you can of course
consider your character's actions as well.
(You’ll work on this in class today and Wednesday; the paper
will be due Friday, by which day you
should also have found a work of American fiction written since 1955 to read.)
Pilate
is Morrison's most complex and concentrated image of an Afro-American in touch
with the spiritual resources of Afro-American folk traditions. She is a
conjuror, having supplied Ruth with "some greenish-gray grassy-looking
stuff" (125) to put into Macon's food to revive his sexual interest in
her. She is a voodoo priestess who puts an end to Macon's efforts to
abort the resulting pregnancy by placing "a small doll on Macon's chair in
his office." (132) A celibate and a teetotaler, Pilate supplies the
community with homemade intoxicants.
Pilate
also embodies the image of the black blueswoman. We first meet her
singing, "Sugarman done fly away/ Sugarman done gone" (6). Her
song is not the spiritual of an old woman, but the sad, ever-relevant blues of
the lost man, flown away, departed, leaving the beloved behind in suffering and
pain. Most importantly, I think, Pilate is a teller of tales. If
the communicative act of storytelling is central to the action of Song of
Solomon, then the form, content, and
context of Pilate's storytelling is a key element.
Pilate's
interactions with Milkman--and with others--are informed by processes of narration
that have little to do with the patterns of self-protetion and
self-justification that we have seen in Macon and Ruth. When Milkman and
Guitar visit her in the winehouse, she immediately strikes toward them the pose
that is central to her self-concept--that of the teacher, preceptor,
exemplar. Macon tells his son, "'Pilate can't teach you a thing you
can use in this world'" (55), but he is absolutely wrong. Pilate has
begun by teaching the boys how to talk properly. When they say,
"hi," Pilate asks, "What they telling you in them schools?"
(37)
She
then proceeds to teach Milkman and Guitar her formula for the perfect
soft-boiled egg. When she has her attention--"they sat in a pleasant
semi-stupor, listening to her go on and on" (40)--Pilate begins her
story. Unlike Macon's story, it is not a defense of how she has
lived. Rather, it begins as a defense of Macon, without whose brotherly
love and protection she would have died in the Pennsylvania woods after their
father was murdered. Her story has a complex structure, punctuated by
questions from Guitar, moving from personal familial history, including the
appearance of the ghost of Pilate's and Macon's father, to later experience
back to the ghost until Macon and Guitar are entranced, "afraid to say
anything lest they ruin the next part of her story and afraid to remain silent
lest she not go on"
(43). But the storytelling session is ended. Pilate's performance
of her life story is not intended to amuse Milkman and PIlate but to educate
them.
In
her story, she gives the boys a "perfect egg"--the symbol of the
beginnings of things. More than merely giving them an egg, she teaches
them how to make eggs. Her lesson is both practical and
spiritual... Though it will be more than twenty years before Milkman
comes to understand Pilate and her values, in her storytelling she is teaching
him how to be a single, separate Afro-American person--independent and
idiosyncratic--while also connected to a family, a community, and a culture.
