Symbolism – College Essay Example

body as a compass, one foot pointing "backwards" to the west, and one pointing "forward", to the east, and her body being the center.

The fact that Pilate is peeling an orange on the steps is also significant since oranges are fruit, created of the natural world. Palate's voice is also important. Her voice, the voice that will tell Milkman about his grandfather for the first time, makes Milkman think of pebbles. Pilate is also described as having fingernails "like ivory', "berry-black lips", and "looked like a tall black tree", all these descriptions comparing her physical body to natural things.

Palate's house is also described with lots of natural imagery, pushing the reader to envision the house as a "slice" of the natural outside world, made private by the construction of walls. There s the "moss-green sack" hanging from the ceiling and the smell of the house, which is described as "the odor of pine and fermenting fruit". The infusion of Nature within this scene prepares Milkman for Palate's significant narrative that follows.

Morrison writes "the pebbly voice, the sun, and the narcotic wine smell weakened both the boys, and they sat in a pleasant semi-stupor, listening to her go on and on... ". From this sentence we can see Nature and the natural as being like a drug to Milkman which puts him in a state of mind that allows him to soak in the historical information about his grandfather. The following passage is significant in Milkman's development because it comes at a time when he is feeling fairly hopeless about his future and is beginning to form a habit of concentrating on thins

behind him.

After Palate's story Milkman is introduced to his cousins, Rebate and Hager, and observes their loving interactions which seem so foreign to h'. This is also when Milkman hears the women sing the "Sugarcane" song which becomes very important by the end of the novel. This is when we really learn the importance of this visit for Milkman: "Milkman was five feet seven then but it was the first time in is life that he remembered being completely happy... He was surrounded by women who seemed to enjoy him and who laughed out loud. And he was in love.

No wonder his father was afraid of From this passage we see the beginning of Milkman's realizations about his father, which cause him to emotionally break away from his family and search for the truth about his past on his own. One of the most interesting things about Pilate is, of course, the fact that she has no navel. This seems ironic because in the midst of all the natural descriptions of Pilate, we have the very unnatural detail of her which makes her sort of a natural phenomenon. This effectively adds to the mysterious aura surrounding Pilate throughout the novel and is a big reason of why she is ostracizes from her community.

Before we officially meet Pilate in her encounter with Milkman, we learn that "it was the absence of a navel that convinced people that she had not come in this world through normal channels; had never laid, floated, or grown in some warm and liquid place connected by a tissue-thin tube to a reliable source of human nourishment". This is,

of course, not true; Pilate was born the same way as everyone else, making her arrival into the world through her mother's legs, and her rather Macon was even there to prove it.

However, in a community people tend to make their Judgments without searching for facts other than what they can see for themselves. This alienation from society influences Pilate profoundly from the first time she realizes that the absence of a "corkscrew' in her stomach is something unnatural. She realizes this when she is a young girl working with migrant workers. The group forces her to leave when they see her stomach, mostly out of fear: "They thought she might hurt them in some way if she got angry, and they also felt pity along with their error of having been in the company of something God never made".

This fear that people associate with Pilate makes up their belief that she must hold some special power as well. Since Pilate is not natural she is seen as evil and crazy, a creation of the Devil. Macon even calls her a snake at one point, the symbolism of which has roots in the creation of the earth itself, according to the Bible. This connection involving Pilate, evil, Satan, and the beginning of creation follows with the theme of Nature that eventually brings Milkman to the end of his quest.

Palate's unnatural aspect, her lack of a navel that makes her seem evil, is also what allows us to see Pilate as the embodiment of Nature at the beginning of time. It allows us to associate her, in an analytical way, with the creation

of Man himself and the sense of community that results from humans living alongside other humans. Essentially, it is Milkman's discovery of the unity of Nature and Man that precedes his understanding of community within Shalom and the ultimate conclusion to his quest. This discovery, Milkman's epiphany, occurs during his hunting trip in the woods with the older men of Danville.

The knowledge that allows him to understand community among other humans comes to him, ironically, when he is completely by himself. It is at this point, "under the moon, on the ground, alone, with not even the sound of baying dogs to remind him that he was with other people" when "his self (the cocoon that was 'personality) gave way'. For the first time Milkman realizes that all his material possessions, his superficial securities, are really of no help to him at all and actually are what keeps him down.

When he strips himself of all these things he considers his true self, the raw human animal he is in relation to the raw, trial earth he inhabits. Acutely aware of his five God-given senses, he discovers a new "sense" he has been lacking all along: "an ability to separate out, of all the things there were to sense, the one that life itself might depend on". He ponders the way the men he was hunting with were able to communicate with their dogs and to use the bark on trees as helpful tools in their hunt.

Milkman is able to relate these hunting skills to his conception of the past, when the world was new and in the process of evolving into the

present state, or order, of things: "No, it was not engage; it was what there was before language. Before things were written down. Language in the time when men and animals did talk to one another, when a man could sit down with an ape and converse... ". By making these realizations Milkman makes his ultimate realization of the oneness of all things, both of creatures and Nature.

Directly following this epiphany, Milkman is nearly killed by Guitar, symbolizing the death of his old, ignorant self. Walking back to the car with the rest of the men Milkman relishes the feeling of his new self, one that is in direct connection with the earth he walks on: He found himself exhilarated by simply walking the earth. Walking it like he belonged on it; like his legs were stalks, tree trunks, a part of his body that extended down down down into the rock and soil, and were comfortable there--on the earth and on the place where he walked.

Not long after this, Milkman travels to Shalom where the end of his quest unfolds. When Milkman arrives in Shalom he instantly feels connected to the people he encounters. This in itself is a new feeling for Milkman, who has spent his life up to this point feeling extremely isolated from everyone, including his own family. He elates this feeling of connectivity in Shalom to the way he felt when he first visited Palate's house with Guitar. This is significant because it was his meeting with Pilate that initially fueled his desire to find out where he came from.

It was also Pilate and her girls who

first exposed Milkman to the "Sugarcane" song that is so similar to the children's song he hears in Shalom. This song becomes the answer to his questions about his family and ultimately shows him who he is, which has been his goal all along. The structure of the children's game that employs this "song of Solomon" is interesting in itself. Milkman describes the game as an "endless round game" and a "rhythmic, rhyming action game", where a boy spins around with his eyes closed in the middle of the circle made of children.

Symbolically speaking, the seemingly endless rhythm of the circle going round and round is significant. It represents the endless cycle of Nature and the earth, with generations of people living and dying and new generations taking their place and evolving from where their ancestors left off. The boy in the middle can be seen as the "old" Milkman, blinded by the dysfunctions of his family life, trapped in the endless cycle of his own existence. By the end of the novel when Milkman and Pilate visit the cave, Milkman has been transformed.

He is fresh with the knowledge of his family and where he came from, and has becoming a living "Dead", aware of his connection with the world around him. The final realization comes once Pilate has been shot and Milkman sees why he has loved her: because "without ever leaving the ground, she could fly'. He realizes the incredible strength Pilate possessed, which he now possesses as well. And so, filled with the excitement and satisfaction of his new sense of self begins what will perhaps be a new Journey

and leaps Off rock and rides the air.