Distance Student’s Question for Song of Solomon

Greetings to my fellow students from your distance classmate—who, by the way, lives, works, and takes classes in Idaho, not Utah. That seemingly unimportant fact leads me to my question for this reading: What importance is there within a name?

Although Idaho and Utah are only hours apart (Boise is about a six-hour drive from Salt Lake City) they are very different states. When you say someone is from Idaho, if people don’t confuse it with Iowa or Ohio, they usually think of potatoes. If they know that Idaho is located in the Northwest, they might associate us with the endangered salmon, or the hydroelectric dams. They usually know that Ezra Pound was born in Idaho and that Ernest Hemingway is buried here.

If, on the other hand, you say that someone is from Utah, the associations that might come to mind would be the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, Donny and Marie Osmond, great skiing, the Sundance Film Festival, and right now, the 2002 Winter Olympics.

A name is a simple thing, but after only a few moments of reflecting on what associations a name brings to mind, we can all see their importance. In Song of Solomon, all you have to do is read the inscription, "The fathers may soar and the children may know their names," and you know that names are important. They form an integral part of a person’s identity.

In Song of Solomon, what does Toni Morrison want for her audience with regard to names? What associations is she trying to draw from her readers? Does she simply want readers to look backward to the time of slavery with their associations? Or is she attempting to get the reader to view the consequences of naming in the past as well as the present, and even to the future?

Hello Becky,

After reading Morrison's book, one realizes that a name is not just a simple thing but is something of great importance, even if it is just to the person it belongs to. Because Morrison is known for her play on words and names, I think she wants her readers to pick up on her biblical references-Ruth, Corinthians, Pilate, Hagar, Reba (the list goes on and on...) as well as names that describe a person's behavior, hobbies, interests, vocation--Guitar, Milkman, the Tommy's, etc. I believe that because many slaves or even free blacks could not read, they had their own way of naming and "labeling" things such as streets or places, for example, Not Doctor Street. Only they knew these names and it was sort of a way to keep their secret names and/or codes from the whites. Nicknaming is still important in many African-American families today. For example, in my family, many people have the name they are born with and also have a nickname from either something that they did, a food they liked, or maybe a character on TV they resembled (my nephew's nickname is Sweet Pea from Popeye). So, basically I agree that Morrison wants her readers to look back to the time of slavery as well as view the consequences of naming in the past, present, and future. But I think she also likes to play with names, words, and sounds just for the heck of it.

P.S. I think that you have helped me with a topic for either my midterm or my final paper!

Michelle Stephenson

To Michelle S.: Both you and Philonis bring up nicknames and give examples from your own experience—Sugar Bowl and Sweet Pea. Both these examples show how a person is connected by their name to the past. They also show a connection between the person and their community—those who know their story.

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Becky,

What a timely question for me as I just a few days prior to this I discussed the topic of names as identity with Dr. White as a potential focus for my research project!

There is much sociological and psychological research on the power of names to create identity. Morrision's application includes the use of names that allow for the deconstruction and reconstruction of identity. For Milkman, who hates both his first and last name, finding his true name means finding his true identity. Living in the family of Dead truly robbed him of life.

Finding and naming his ancestry allows Milkman to resurrect his family's history, a history that was wiped out when his grandfather accepted the name Macon Dead from a white man. Additionally Morrison uses the names as descriptors of each character but also as clues to Milkman's search. Is Milkman a nickname that tells the story of a young man nursed too long (literally, as a child and symbolically, as a young man) or the description of a man whose life is repetitious and unfulfilling? Is Pilate a betrayer or the "pilot" whose story leads Milkman to his identity and his ultimate flight? Is Not Doctor Street the street name adopted by the local people in an effort to establish their identity and rebel against the white establishment or is it indicative of the struggle Macon Dead has with his inadequacies of not being Dr. Foster? I say "both" on all accounts. In this way I believe Morrison cleverly uses names that not only construct character and identity but offer clues to the course each character will take, each struggle or triumph each character encounters.

Sincerely,

Andrea Dunn

Acdjdd@aol.com

To Andrea D.: Thanks for your comment about Pilate. I had not thought about the play on words Pilate/pilot. Your point about Not Doctor Street perhaps meaning Not Doctor Foster was illuminating as well. You have put a lot of thought into this topic, and I, like Rachel B., look forward to reading your paper on-line.

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Hi Becky and classmates,

I, too, am interested in the issue of "naming", as Andrea pointed out to me during the break in class last week, that the issue of "naming" is immediately a central theme in Song of Solomon. In fact her final project will be about "naming". I am very anxious to read it on-line:)

Toni Morrison often reveals a compact, (like a line from a poem), gem of meaning in her opening quotes or phrases located on the first pages of her books. It is as if she is giving the reader a key, to the entire book and it unfolds as one long, beautifully haunting, multi-dimensional journey through past, present, and future -all simultaneously (Morrison has a gift for melding together these different spacial modes of "time"). That is one of my favorite technical aspects of her writing---this unique ability to turn "time", as we conventionally think about it, on its head and in Song of Solomon 'time', coupled with 'naming'invokes the power to reclaim one's name from the bonds of history as an integral part of identity-making, within her unique writing style within unconventional progressions of time---the push into the future reclaiming, while feeling the pull by the haunting ghosts of the past...

I have a tangent---I hope you don't mind if I expound for a moment of the concept of 'naming' because I did quite a bit of thinking about it, as a concept, recently---What I would like to add to the discussion on the naming-identity issue is a question/concern that I tried to explore over the summer through an independent study about Houston area street signs and asking how things get "named" and what do "names" mean, particularly in Houston-area suburban planning. I looked at suburban neighborhood designs, signs and advertisements and commented on them. My thesis was that there are many names that include words that invoke different meanings to different minority/majority groups. Words such as "plantation" "old south" "settler's way" invoke, perhaps, nostalgia and pride in majority-minded people, -a kind of denial, or a "Gone with the Wind" kind of romanticism and/or idealism. I asked (rhetorically), what kinds of histories are invoked through these names? I wanted to argue that these names are exclusionary by description and also attract and deflect identities to settle in these neighborhoods. (Now, I am NOT saying that people who live in specifically themed neighborhoods are categorically racist). I tried to argue that by utilizing names/naming in conjunction with "themed" subdivisions are by design, creating "private" spaces where privilege and status are constructed and maintained. It is the always/already construction of class identity/ class desires--through the ubiquitous paradigm of "whiteness". I felt there were some failures and successes in the project as a whole, as I am still working through these concepts.----So, I will stop rambling on now... I wonder if this helpful or relevant to the discussion of "naming" (?). Looking forward to further discussion re: "naming" and identity.

All for now,

Rachel Boyle

To Rachel B.: Your "tangent" was fascinating. I’m sure everyone benefited from reading about your work regarding suburban designs, signs, and ads. Your comment prompted me to think about how names affect people differently—depending on their background and experience. Your finding that names help to create and maintain spaces is really quite thought provoking.

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I believe that she wants us to understand that a construct of a name can be entirely different from the reconstruction made by individuals through ignorance. I think she wants us to learn that meanings of names can mean everything to the individual the name represents. Even how the name was chosen means something.

Regarding the issue of slavery, I think she wants to emphasize the illiteracy that was so common during that time. Also, the importance of religion in that they would blindly choose a name from the bible.

Melissa Morris

To Melissa M.: I like your phrase about reconstructing names in ignorance. It made me think of the power we have over something when we name it.

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I completely agree with all the replies written about the question. I can easily imagine that while writing "Song of Solomon" Toni Morrison really wanted to emphasis on names and wanted to give messages to her readers to help get deeper into the characters.

I want to make an analysis on the subject with the feelings that I got from the book. If you asked me, before reading the book, what ideas come to my mind when I think about the word "milkman," I would surely say that it reminds me of "milk," which I hated and tried to avoid as a child; that I like it now; and that if I become a father in the future that I would try to make my children drink it since it is healthy, which they surely wouldn’t like and try to avoid then.

Well these might sound meaningless with the subject, but I will try to make sense of it. During my reading Song of Solomon, I disliked the character "Milkman" because of his foolish behavior. Towards the end, on the other hand, my thoughts changed positively with the improvements in his character; just like milk. Let’s take "guitar"; the music instrument can give us sweet melodies as well as hard and noisy sounds; the character "Guitar" can be once your best friend and then your potential murderer.

Well, there are surely many different viewpoints in the book to analyze the characters but this is the one concerning names. I believe that names are very important to complete identities. I want to give an example of my name, which is a foreign, meaningless name for you all, but almost the same counts for Turkish people. It is one of the rarest names in Turkey (I never met somebody called Sancar), and although it is grammatically carrying all the characteristics of being a proper Turkish word, many people have difficulty at pronouncing it at first. I always had this urge to find out the meaning of my name and any time I found different dictionaries I looked it up, without success, for years. Next to my curiosity, to find out the meaning of my name was important for me because I felt my identity would be complete then. Finally last year I found it in an "Old Turkish Dictionary." It had two meanings: 1-virtuos, 2- short dagger.

To Sancar S.: Thank you for your comments on your search for the meaning of your own name. Understanding our names is an important part of understanding who we are.

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This is my second reading of Song of Solomon. The first time I read it I didn't pay too much attention to the names because in black culture nicknames are the norm. Usually, a person's nickname has just as much or perhaps more significance than his or her real name because it usually represents an act or something that that person does. However, as that person grows he settles into his given name and only the people that love him or her (family members) can still call them that. For example, a very good friend of mine is called Sugar Bowl because she would climb up on the kitchen table (when she was little of course) and eat the sugar out of the sugar dish. Her family, (and me of course) still call her that but we're the only ones. She has grown, as does Milkman in Morrison's story. Most American Blacks name their children after beloved family members, someone in the Bible, or names such as those so prevelant in the seventies, in an effort to re-connect with the mother land. So Morrison really is using the stuff she knows to be true. Allowing Milkman to resurrect the dead so to speak, is very important to the central line of the story. The Deads, like ex-slaves lost their name and land. Theirs is a family who lose their name again,acquire the American Dream, the dream becomes a nightmare, and the family is separated, again. But Milkman puts things right by searching out his past, his legacy.

To Philonis S.: You write that names are important as a "legacy." Names do remind us of our past, and in connecting us with the past, they let us know who we are in the present, and they shape who we will become in the future.