4 - Language & identity

Question 1

Epigraph

Answer 1

“The fathers may soar and the children may know their names”

“The fathers may soar, they may leave, but the children know who they are; they remember, half in glory and half in accusation. That is one of the points of Song: all the men have left someone, and it is the children who remember it, sing about it, mythologize it, make it a part of their family history.”

Question 2

Toni Morrison quote
“The fathers may soar and the children may know their names”

Answer 2

Toni Morrison : “Among Blacks, we have always suffered being nameless. We didn’t have names because ours are those of the masters which were given to us with indifference and don’t present anything for us. It’s become a common practice, among the community, to give a name to someone according to their characteristics: it’s life that gives you a name, in a way”.

→ interesting because names of the children are given way after their birth = sweet etc ⇒ transform your identity the more you get familiar with them.

Question 3

“The power to name”

Answer 3

• Milkman must embrace his nickname otherwise he is literally Mr Dead.
• Guitar → because he once desired to own a guitar. Yearning becomes a signifying, a nominating, aspect of life.
• The Deads are so named by a “literal slip of the pen” of a drunken Yankee soldier, who had put down Macon (the place of birth as the first name), and Dead (the fate of the patriarch’s father) as the last. “Ever since, the family gave to each member, save eldest male, an arbitrarily selected name from the Bible” (18).
• Names were the products of “yearnings, gestures, flaws, events, mistakes, weaknesses.” These were the real names of people, subsisting beneath their recorded names. The lesson Milkman learns is that “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” (333).

Question 4

Literacy

Answer 4

*First Corinthians Dead’s high literacy contributes to her belief in her superior self-image. She is fluent in English and French but remains trapped at home and uncoveted :

• Literacy is almost an obstacle for her → it isolates her from her community : “Her education had taught her how to be an enlightened mother and wife, able to contribute to the civilization—or in her case, the civilizing—of her community. (188)
• First Corinthians is a letter written by the Apostle Paul to the small congregation of early Christians at Corinth : it resonate with African-American history: —“Slaves, be obedient to your masters.”

Question 5

Illiteracy

Answer 5

*Illiteracy forbids access to property, ownership, and material success: “Papa couldn’t read, couldn’t even sign his name”

*Illiterate Macon Dead Senior experiences obvious pleasure in the writing of the name of his daughter, Pilate

*Pilate is a name deliberately chosen. Although he cannot read, he chooses the name: a first stage towards freedom.

Question 6

Aurality

Answer 6

• Language is linked to senses. Pilate’s name also emphasizes the oral/aural quality of Morrison’s writing. We hear and feel words: “It’s a man’s name.” “Say it.” “Pilate.” “What?” “Pilate. You wrote down Pilate

*Milkman discovers a preliterate language which allows a sensual ability to connect with animals and nature as well :

• Note the acoustic effects of the scene: “‘Guitar!’ he shouted. Tar tar tar, said the hills.
  → Tar evoking as well the derogatory way of talking about a Black person.

Final contest btw them but now he knows what life means etc = ++ poetic & acoustic = chorus that nature interprets as a sort of back up of the conversation.

Question 7

Orality & memory

Answer 7

• Milkman learns the Song of Solomon for the first time and remembering it requires listening: “O Sugarman done fly away/ Sugarman done gone/ Sugarman cut across the sky/Sugarman gone home”
  → être privé de stylo l’oblige à le mémoriser comme les autres après, pas de trace écrite. “ the father may sore” : il va réussir à comprendre le secret de cette song of solomon mais il pourra pas le transmettre.
• Morrison forbids her character to write down the story. Milkman must exercise his oral memory, just as his slave and African ancestors had done. Milkman’s quest is a gradual understanding of language–“language in the time when men and animals did talk to one another, […] when men ran with wolves and not from or after them”—he whispered to the trees, whispered to the ground, touched them, as blind man caresses as page of Braille, pulling meaning through his fingers” (347).
  → language = sth that can be touched etc.