As I read Toni Morrison’s Song of Soloman, I searched for the novel’s relationship to postmodernism and what I noticed immediately was Morrison’s selection of names for her characters. For example, when Macon Jr. is nicknamed Milkman by Freddie after he catches Ruth nursing her boy well beyond the time she should, Freddie coins the name “Milkman.” Everyone in town but Macon Sr. knows why the boy is called Milkman, though Macon has his suspicions given the significance of the name. Of course, the irony is that we know the existing meaning of being the milkman’s kid has nothing to do with why Macon Jr. becomes Milkman, and this reminded me of the postmodern idea that all signifiers circulate and recirculate existing images (and yet bear different significance depending on the observer).<\/p>\n
Pilate is another character whose name is significant but probably not for the existing image or meaning that it is taken from. Yes, she’s a fierce black woman disfigured by a missing belly button, but it’s not like she killed Christ or anything. What stands out about the naming of this character is the pride her illiterate father took when choosing her name, blindly, from the Bible. And, what could have been a one-time, arbitrary method for choosing one’s child’s name, the procedure is adapted by Macon Dead in the naming of his own children First Corinthians and Magdalene called Lena.<\/p>\n
Last thoughts on Song of Soloman and its connection to postmodernism are that the setting, characters, and the plot didn’t really ring postmodernity for me. What did stand out was the constant shifting of realities for the characters over time and the disappearance of stability and something solid to stand upon as each made a rite of passage into adulthood; however, these moments in the novel only led me to consider how life is and has been this way in times that we wouldn’t necessarily label postmodern.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As I read Toni Morrison’s Song of Soloman, I searched for the novel’s relationship to postmodernism and what I noticed immediately was Morrison’s selection of names for her characters. For example, when Macon Jr. is nicknamed Milkman by Freddie after he catches Ruth nursing her boy well beyond the time she should, Freddie coins the … Continue reading Names and Signifiers<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reflections"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}