Morrison’s Song of Solomon runs the highway of postmodern conditions, which include blackness, black womanhood versus black manhood, history or its absence, naming that connects the individual from his/her heredity or obliterates filial ties, storytelling and perspective, and the absense of objective truth. Pilate’s story, her life, however, seems to suggest a supernatural purity and truth that supercedes all others in the novel. Even Milkman, the central character, is without conscience throughout most of the novel in regards to the women in his life, a fact that Lena makes clear to him. Is Pilate Morrison’s version of the ideal, African American woman or is she distopian woman in her isolation? According to Macon Dead the Second, she is.
Morrison however, seems to suggest that Pilate’s greatest earthly flaw, her unseemly stomach which lacks the natural mark of life, the navel, is precisely that which makes her magically angelic to those who know and love her, but diabolical to those who cannot accept such an anomoly. Pilate is "expelled" from ‘normal’ life because she is percieved as ‘unnatural.’ She is a dichotemy, a "snake" to her brother Macon and ultimately a savior to Milkman, her immediate family, Reba and Hagar, and the severed family line that Milkman seeks to rediscover. Pilate’s an outcast to her black people, and yet she is self-sacrificial for her daughter, Reba, and, especially, her granddaughter, Hagar, and as Milkman comes to appreciate, her house was open and accepting to both Guitar (her murderer) and Milkman.
Pilate’s character exudes a dual condition of both witchery and divine spirituality in her isolated existence. Her nonexistent navel "isolated her." "Already without family, she was further isolated from her people, for, except for the relative bliss on the island, every other resource denied her: partnership in marriage, confessional friendship, and communal religion," and yet she is the most generous and accepting character in the novel. She attempts to reconnect with her people, specifically her estranged and distrusting property mongering brother, Macon Dead, she accepts, loves, and spoils his son, Milkman, and she continually goes without to give more to her ‘daughters.’ She is an impoverished, ostricized bootlegger ‘with a heart of gold’ and she is even a confidant to Ruth when she is pregnant with Milkman. Furthermore, Pilate seems to function as ‘a life preserver’ whereas her brother, is depicted as ruthless capitalist who is devoid of any connection to his people since his father’s death and who is even capable of murdering his unborn son. Pilate, regardless of her lifetime’s expulsion from black society at large, is more connected to her family and history than any of the other characters in the novel, as illustrated by her encounters with her father’s ghost.
Milkman is self-destructive, as illustrated when he allows Hagar to kill him (and doesn’t), and he is without a filial history or individual purpose until he discovers Shalimar and the ghosts of his ancestors buried under desserted family names. He is guided by the bones he steals from Pilate’s house and the story of her pilgrimage to Virginia after her father’s death and her confrontation with her brother years earlier. Her spirit is connected to her father’s ghost and simultaneously connects to Milkman’s quest for identity in his search for his heritage. She bridge between ‘the lost generations’ of her family and a spiritual informant of past and present to her brother’s son. At her death Milkman whitnesses the wonderful spirit that his aunt Pilate is. "There must be another like you…There’s got to be at least one more woman like you." Perhaps, she is the only woman of her kind; one that recognizes and accepts her alienation, but that loves life and family anyway.
Morrison seems to portray Pilate as a Christ figure, one that gives up her life to better her family’s life and connections. She is never accepted due to her ‘deformity,’ but she is the messenger that carries her family history- "sing."
Another question I have concerns the 7 Days. Does Mr. Smith’s organization mirror Pyncheon’s Tristero? Both operate on a silent, virtually invisible plane in society. How alike and different are the two? Did Morrison get her idea from Pyncheon since her novel was published after The Crying of Lot 49?
