LITR 5731: Seminar in American Minority Literature
University of Houston-Clear Lake, Fall 2004
Sample Student Midterm

Danny Corrigan

October 7, 2004

And The Children Shall Know Their Names:

The Significance of Names in Classic Slave

Narratives, Song of Solomon, and Push

          Several world religions and mythologies contain parables illustrating the inherent power contained in names as well as the actual authority derived from naming something. In the Book of Genesis, Adam is given the important task of naming all the animals in creation. Similarly, in the Hebrew Kabbalah, it is written that Yahweh creates the universe by using language to name it and identify it, thus, willing it into existence by giving it definition. Norse creation myths tell how Odin revealed  the secret of runes to humans, thus giving people language and the power  to name things. All of these mythologies demonstrate a deep truth about human nature: we value the ability to choose our own names, for we recognize the power of individualistic creation that ultimately underpins our freedom. This general human truth is rendered immeasurably more significant and poignant for those whose ancestors are nameless slaves. Because African Americans have traditionally been denied their own names, such resistance to unchosen names is no small matter. The deliberate refusal of the black community in “The Classic Slave Narratives,” “Song of Solomon,” and “Push” to accept arbitrarily imposed names constitutes an act of defiance toward an oppressive white power structure and, essentially, becomes an act of collective self-expression. Throughout these three texts, a constant theme of censorship and intrusion on black life from the dominant society is demonstrated  not by specific events so much as by a consistent pattern of misnaming. As a result of this misnaming, an entire group of people have been denied the right to create a recognizable public self, as individuals or as community. It is only by claiming their own names that they are able to discover their true identities. 

          “The Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, The African” poses an interesting question: if you do not recognize or accept the name which an individual or society attempts to impose on you, does that name have any power over you? In the course of his narrative, Equiano goes through at least three name changes. His native name, given to him by his parents and most probably based on family tradition and the customs of his society, is abruptly changed to Jacob while at the Virginia plantation soon after his capture. Then, on board the African Snow he is called Michael. The author implies that the names, many which were selected from the Bible, were randomly chosen more for convenience than any actual religious significance, and the names were probably given as much consideration as one would name an animal, since that was how the slaves were perceived anyway. Later, after the captain of the Industrious Bee buys Equiano he changes his name to Gustavus Vassa. Equiano refuses to acknowledge his new name, but is eventually forced into submission. Although this European name is forced upon him (as powerfully evidenced by the way he signs his name, “Gustavus Vassa, The Oppressed Ethiopian” in a letter to the Queen of England) Equiano still manages to maintain a certain degree of personal identity. By identifying himself both as Olaudah Equiano and Gustavus Vassa on the cover of his narrative, Equiano is able to achieve a bi-cultural perspective of his own identity: one, the African name given to him by his old culture, and the European name forced upon him by his new culture. Thus, he is able to create a single self by acknowledging that behind the public persona of Gustavus Vassa, the person created by Western slave traders,  there lives the empowered voice of Olaudah Equiano, a chosen voice representing the legacy of Africa.

          The vital importance of naming in African American culture is clearly illustrated throughout “Song of Solomon”. One of the main themes of the novel is that a name has the power to define and to possess that which it identifies. Several compelling examples of the significance that black tradition attaches to the process of naming can be found in the first pages of the book. Milkman is born at Mercy Hospital, called No Mercy by the African Americans who were previously denied admittance to its birthing wards, in a neighborhood referred to by residents as the Blood Bank "because blood flowed so freely there" (Morrison 32). After Doctor Foster, the first black doctor in the city, established his office on Mains Avenue the street was popularly renamed Doctor Street until the city declared the invalidity of that name as a mailing address. Following this official pronouncement, residents promptly changed the name to Not Doctor Street.

          The extreme attention displayed by the “Song of Solomon” community to the appropriateness of particular names implies a deep cultural requirement that names must have meaning. Descriptive nicknames are prevalent in Milkman's society, as his own name shows, and are often bestowed by the community in recognition of some personal attribute. Railroad Tommy and Hospital Tommy are named after their respective careers, Guitar Bains is named after his love of musical instruments, while Empire State acquires his amusing nickname because "he just stood around and swayed" (Morrison 330). A name for each new member of the Dead family is randomly chosen from the Bible: Pilate, Hagar, First Corinthians, and Magdalena are a few of unusual names that result from this technique. 

          Early in the novel Macon Dead III, later called Milkman, is brought home to Not Doctor Street. He begins his life in the house of Dead. For all intents and purposes, this dysfunctional family may as well be dead, for none of them have a life. A total lack of communication has effectively closed all the doors in the home, as each member seems to live within their own, small room. The real world is securely locked outside. No future, no past. To communicate would be to acknowledge the present. To acknowledge the present would mean accepting the past. Their names mirror their pathetic lives, even as they tell the story. Milkman receives his nickname because he was suckled long after an appropriate age and subsequently, never seems to grow up, thereby avoiding all responsibility in his extended adolescence. His father, Macon Dead, bitter after the murder of his father, has cut off the life of his entire family in his pursuit of material success.

          The origin of the family’s many problems derive from the accidental re-naming of Macon's father Jake by a drunk, white Yankee. After misunderstanding him, he writes down Jake’s name as Macon Dead, and since Jake was illiterate, he could not read that his name was written incorrectly. His wife, Sing, accepts the name and the situation as a symbol of a new beginning and the acquisition of a new identity, free from the confines of slavery. As Macon Jr. states in the conversation with his son Milkman: "'Mama liked it. Liked the name. Said it was new and would wipe out the past. Wipe it all out.'" (54).

          Macons’s sister Pilate also receives her name as a result of illiteracy. Even though illiterate,  Macon Dead insists on taking his daughter's name from the Bible. He does this by pointing his finger to a word that to him seems powerful. Ignoring the abstract meaning of the letters, he registers a certain power in their graphic shape. To his oral mode of thinking, the resemblance of the sign "Pilate" to a group of trees is obvious. He invokes the protective power of the word in the naming ritual in order to convey it to his daughter.  Macon Dead Jr. much later recalls the story: “How his father, confused and melancholy over his wife's death in childbirth, had thumbed through the bible, and since he could not read a word, chose a group of letters that seemed to him strong and handsome; saw in them a large figure that looked like a tree hanging in some princely but protective way over a row of smaller trees. How he had copied the group of letters out on a piece of brown paper; copied, as illiterate people do, every curlicue, arch, and bend in the letters, and presented it to the midwife”. (18)

          Chosen primarily for its pictorial qualities, the baby's name acquires a different meaning in the dialogue of Macon and the midwife. While the midwife insists that naming a child "Pilate" is blasphemy, Macon Sr. interprets his "blind" choice as a meaningful sign. Giving his daughter the name of "the man that killed Jesus" (19) to Macon Sr. seems a justified compensation for the loss of his wife: "I asked Jesus to save me my wife." (19). Macon Sr., in this passage, calls the authority of the Bible into question, and, according to his own understanding, assigns a new meaning to the text. Doing so, he doesn't entirely reject the significance of the written text. The meaning of the daughter's name, however, is the result of a negotiation between oral and written culture. Once copied from the Bible onto a small piece of paper, the daughter's name is preserved between the pages of the book. When Pilate turns twelve, she puts it into a brass box which she has fixed to her earlobe and carries there from that moment on.

          From a sociological and psychological perspective power may be defined as the ability to name, and to define reality and perception, and no character exemplifies this belief more than Pilate. Because her mother dies while giving birth to her, the infant Pilate fights her way out of the birth canal without assistance. As a result, the self-made Pilate has no navel. This bizarre feature, compounded by her "Christ-killing" name (Morrison 19), sets Pilate permanently outside of society, forcing her to name and love herself. Taking the scrap of paper upon which her illiterate father copied his baby's notorious epithet, Pilate places her name inside a metal snuffbox-earring and wires the box through her earlobe. Pilate finds within herself the courage to take her Biblical name, which would have one meaning for the dominant culture, subvert it, and make it relevant to her own sense of identity. With this acceptance of her own name, its sinister implications notwithstanding, Pilate links her past and present together with the unshakeable love needed to create the possibility of a real future. Pilate has no identity crisis. She knows who she is and accepts herself. After all, her identity hangs in a snuffbox, on her ear.

          “Song of Solomon” may be read as a scavenger hunt, with everyone searching for their own identity. In Milkman’s case, it may be seen as a modern hero’s quest, as he unearths clues and snatches up bits and pieces of wisdom that direct him to the treasure. In his quest for gold, Milkman uncovers the true treasure, his past. This knowledge unlocks the secret of his own identity. The ghosts of the past, his ancestors, explain the people of the present. In that instant, the secret of life becomes clear to him. Milkman begins the novel as a self-centered, spiritually dead man-child, but he attains manhood by novel’s end. In Shalimar, Virginia, his quest reaches its zenith as the present begins to meld with the past: “Solomon done fly, Solomon done gone Solomon cut across the sky, Solomon gone home. (302) Sugarman… Shalimar… Shaleemone… Solomon. Milkman discovers that the names are all  interchangeable. Solomon had his own identity search, inadvertently carried on by his great grandson. His name was the key to the beginning. The gold Milkman was searching for no longer existed and the treasure was in fact his discovery of Sing and Jake’s stories, and a baby who fell from the sky, and in old bones and children's games and the wondrous legacy of his family and his name. With his new found insight into his family’s history and personal identity, Milkman finally understands that the power in names, in thus literacy itself, largely depends on who controls it, as demonstrated by his thoughts: "Under the recorded names were other names, just as 'Macon Dead', recorded for all time in some dusty file, hiding from view the real names of people, places, and things. Names that had meaning." (329) and "When you know your name, you should hang on to it, for unless it is noted down and remembered, it will die when you do." (329).

          In the last scene of the novel, when Pilate and Milkman finally bury the bones of Pilate's father Jake, Pilate yanks the brass box from her ear to bury the piece of writing with him. Instead of a tombstone to commemorate her father, Pilate buries the slip of paper on which her name had been written, as it symbolizes the strong bond between her and her family. Her name, in fact, seems to acquire an even larger meaning in this scene. The burial completed, Pilate is shot. Milkman, the dying woman in his arms, witnesses a bird taking the shiny brass box away in its beak. Pilate's name, so we may understand, is taken away just as her soul leaves her. In one of the most stirring passages ever written in American literature, Milkman, at last relieved of his vanities and reunited with his roots, finally at peace with himself and aware of his own self identity casts off his burdens, and carrying with him the message of the past, he leaps into the air.

Rosalyn Mack, in her 2003 midterm, raises several interesting points concerning the significance of names in Sapphire’s “Push”. The most prominent theme is how the main character, Claireece Precious Jones, understands on a subconscious level the importance of names, her own and others, even if, because of her illiteracy, she does not fully comprehend the literal meanings. In the beginning of the novel, she addresses the reader with her full name, but insists that she be called Precious. As Ms. Mack astutely points out, from the onset Precious has a sense of her own identity. Unlike slaves, she has the freedom to choose her own name, and she quickly establishes the rules for how she wishes to be addressed.  But it is not until she becomes literate that she actually learns the significance of her name. The tragic consequences of Precious’ illiteracy can be seen when her daughter is born with Downs Syndrome, and she names the baby "Lil' Mongo" for mongoloid, a word which she neither knows how to pronounce or comprehend. Due to her own illiteracy, she gives her daughter a grotesque nickname that one would bestow upon a  dog, thereby unintentionally denying her daughter her humanity and basic human dignity. In contrast, by the time her son is born, she has acquired a certain level of literacy, so she is able to carefully select his name, with the knowledge of knowing the meaning behind each word, and at the same time she discovers the meaning of her own name: “Abdul Jamal Louis Jones. That is my baby’s name. Abdul mean servant of god; Jamal, I forgot; Louis for Farrakhan, of course... My name mean somethin’ valuable - Precious. Claireece, that somebody else’s name” (Sapphire 68). By the end of the novel, Precious’ increased literacy has allowed her to gain a better understanding of herself, but more importantly, she has learned about how she relates to others in the world, and by doing do has started on her path to becoming a full fledged member of society. Despite the cruelty and harshness evident in the lives of Precious and the other girls, the book's message is one of hope. Through friendship and the nurturing environment of the school, Precious is able to improve her life through literacy and come to feel that she is "precious," a unique and valuable human being.

          All three of these novels explore the theme of the importance of names in determining self-identity and self-awareness. Although they each explore the topic via different methods, ultimately all three reach the same conclusion: despite what society attempts to name you, you must always look within yourself to find your own name and personal identity. When you embark on the ancient quest for self-identity, you must explore the history of all the generations who have passed, yet also be mindful of the responsibility to the generations to come, and at the end of the journey if you discover your own name and finally understand who you are, than no one can ever take that away from. Like Equiano, Milkman and Precious Jones you will have earned the right to name yourself and choose your own path in life.