Chapter 4
TAKE NOTE AND SELECT APPROPRIATELY
Hagar: Jan-April Birthdays
Pilate: May-August birthdays
Ruth: Sept. - Dec. Birthdays
For your assigned character in this section (Hagar, Pilate, Ruth), please
answer the following question. Take note of AT LEAST one significant
quotation (more is better). You may refer to evidence in
ch. 4 that relates to this question, if you wish.
What issues and themes does Morrison want to explore through
the women of Song of Solomon? What
recurring motifs and images (concerning women) do you see? How are they significant? Do the stories/significant events of chapter
5 make you sympathize with your assigned character? Why or why not?Be complete and thorough in your response
Morrison expresses the issue of domestic violence and mistreatment through Pilate. In chapter four she " waited until the man felt the knife point before she jabbed it skillfully, about a quarter of an inch through his shirt into his skin." She went to defend Reba from being beaten and pushed around by her boyfriend. Her actions also reveal Pilate's strong and confident character. Her character reflects off of Hagar, which explains why she attacked Milkman the way she did(with a knife). She witnessed her "mother figure" handle a situation when a man was being disrespectful, and did the same when she was heartbroken.
ReplyDeleteWhat recurring motifs and images (concerning women) do you see? How are they significant? Do the stories/significant events of chapter 5 make you sympathize with your assigned character?
DeleteMorrison uses Ruth to express gender roles, and is also a character foil to Pilate. Ruth is a quite, upperclass woman, who never truly develops into her full potential. Ruth is caged in a sexist gender role, being a stay at home mother, and 'caged' physically in her father's house. She is not appreciated and often misunderstood by Milkman and her husband. However she in her own way, Ruth is a strong-being.
ReplyDeleteWhat recurring motifs and images (concerning women) do you see? How are they significant? Do the stories/significant events of chapter 5 make you sympathize with your assigned character?
DeleteManuel Carrera
ReplyDelete"If you so much bend a hair on his head, so help me Jesus, I will tear your throat out." - Ruth Foster
Themes in Song of Solomon that are explored is love, and the home. Love is constantly mentioned and developed within the book. It is what is missing in the Dead family. The home is also another important them because it involves the Dead family. The women in S.O.S go hand in hand with these themes because they don't get enough or are sick of their homes. Ruth did not get enough or are sick of their homes. Ruth did not get enough love from her husband and is tired of going through the same cycle.
Ruth's recurring motif is that she is always seen as a distasteful and pessimistic person. She is seen this way throughout the book because she is depressed and does nothing to change it. These are significant because it is what pushes the main protagonist to seek out an escape. She causes a problem in the family that someone will have to fix.
I do not sympathize with Ruth in chapter 5 because she is the result of someone who does not want to change and lives in the past. She is in denial and its her fault for getting there. She has the choice to move on but doesn't choose to.
Juan Palomino-
ReplyDeletePilate has no navel, Ruth may or may not have slept with her father, and Hagar tries to murder her "true love" every month. Morrison emphasizes again and again Hagar's wildness and passion. She compares her to a witch, a shark and even a thundercloud. Morrison writes that Hagar's, "maturity and blood kinship converted her passion to fever, so it was more affliction than affection". Hagar is driven crazy by her need, "fever" for Milkman. She feels like she was "born for him" and wants to kill him, not so much because of jealousy, but because his copper-headed girlfriend is taking Milkman away from her. When Ruth confronts Hagar about trying to kill her son, "Hagar looked surprised. She loved nothing in the world except this woman's son, but hadn't the least bit of control over the predator that lived inside her. Totally taken over by her anaconda love, she had no self left, no fears, no wants, no intelligence that was her own" . Hagar is consumed, restricted by her "anaconda love," and has lost her sense of self.
“Her passions were narrow but deep. Long deprived of sex, long dependent on self-manipulation, she saw her son’s imminent death as the annihilation of the last occasion she had been made love to.”
ReplyDeleteA main theme and issue Morrison wanted to explore through the women of Song of Solomon was love. Normally, when we think of love it is more than just a word but also a noun, to identify one another, and a verb, being in that state, action and occurrence. The love presented in SOS is used as excuse, it forges the identity of their world, it allows them to hide behind the word but there’s no true meaning of it. Since, these women, and the rest of the characters don’t experience or give what love truly is there’s a constant pattern of them using and labeling the word for the incorrect things. Ruth, for example, assures Milkman and promises herself that everything she did to conceive and keep him was because of love. Even, after Milkman’s birth, nursing him until he was old and getting on her knees every night to pray for him was because of love. What she labeled as love was self-centered and even a bit of pitying towards herself because of Macon’s lack of affection and her father’s death. She was deprived of love so there was no way she would be able to reproduce that. Plain and simple, Milkman’s importance and sole existence to his mother, Ruth, was that she finally, after ten years, was able to have sex and control her superior husband by preventing the abortion. Ruth found pride in being able to get away with something Macon strongly was against. She was so consumed on her feelings such as being afraid of not having sex again and placed love on sex, something physical, instead of other things. I personally have sympathy for her, it is a misfortune to be so desperate and starved for affection and love and not be able to gain an ounce of it unless it so happens visiting a grave in the middle of the night.
“Her steady beam of love was unsettling, and she had never dropped those expressions of affection that had been so loveable in her childhood.”
There was an unnaturalness placed on Ruth towards Dr. Foster, her father, and how their actions towards each other weren’t meant for father and daughter. Although she admits he was not a good man and rather foolish and arrogant she stated he cared about her. She placed the value of love on only one person and completely shut it out from everybody else, “I kept reigniting that care-for feeling that I got from him”. Touch is part of a love language, it calls for someone’s full attention, creating emotional closeness therefore it was so important for her to be in presence and touch the things he has touched.
Through Hagar, Morrison is trying to portray that men only use women for their own pleasure. She expresses the idea that men to this day still feel they are superior to women and can tool with them at their disposal. Through out the story we see women are dependent on men and put themselves at their dispossession. Even though Hagar was 36 she still tried to be with Milkman ignoring the fact that he was younger and that he treated her like she was an object. Milkman never really cared for her and just wanted her for his pleasure and she was madly in love with him and thought less of herself because he didn't want her. Hagar did everything for Milkman and gave him all she could give however, he didn't appreciate her and played with her. "She placed duty squarely in the middle of their relationship; he tried to think of a way out".
ReplyDelete