Pilate
Pilate Dead got her unusual name because her illiterate father opened the Bible at random and pointed to this passage.
What is Pontus Pilate?
Macon Dead I got his name from this.
Who is a drunken Yankee soldier from the Freedman’s Bureau?
How did the nickname Milkman come to be?
The discovery that Ruth breastfed Macon Dead III/ Milkman until he was 4.
Guitar’s name is linked to this specific object, a number of them in a jar, him having to guess this number to win a prize. What was in the jar?
Jellybeans
What place is home to both Solomon and Ryna, serving as a place of revelation where Milkman sheds his materialism and learns more about his ancestry?
Shalimar, Virginia
Pilate carries her name literally on her body. Morrison tells us she keeps it in this object, worn around her neck
What is a brass snuffbox (earring)?
What does Jake being Macon Dead I say about Names in the book?
It says that names are not permanent and are unstable, and how recovering the correct name is a way of reconstructing erased identity.
What does the transition from Milkman to an understanding of the name Macon Dead III illustrate about Milkman’s journey?
His search for identity.
Guitar attempts to kill Milkman with an object deeply connected to his name, showing how his entire ideology and personality has sunk into killing and retribution. What is this object?
A wire/string.
What is the name of Macon Dead II and Pilate’s hometown, a name shared with the last capital of the Confederacy.
Danville
Pilate's father could not read when he named her, making her name a product of this act of selecting without comprehension.
What is random (or blind) selection?
From which scene in the book is this quote from, and how does it symbolize the difference between Macon and Pilate with regard to Names?:
“Macon slapped her and the little brass box dangled on her ear. She cupped it in her hands for a moment and then leaped on her brother like an antelope.”
After Macon killed the white man in the cave. Pilate, the name is traditionally associated with the absence of morality in exchange for money and power. Here, the roles are reversed and Macon is the one literally attacking his sister for money and power, while Pilate has a lot of morality.
What is the significance of Milkman embracing the history of the names of his ancestors?
He learns that ancestral knowledge/family history and identity is more important than materialistic desires.
Guitar says he accepts this particular name as a reality of the oppression of his ancestors. “Slave names don’t bother me, but slave status does.”
His last name, Bains.
What is the name of Jake’s farm, which is also the location of his death.
Lincoln’s Heaven
The name Pilate carries the weight of the man who sentenced Christ to death, yet Pilate herself is associated with this spiritual role in the novel.
What is a healer, guide, or life-giver?
How does Morrison use Macon Dead I and Macon Dead II to develop different meanings of the surname “Dead”?
The name “Dead” is externally imposed on Jake, and it does not erase his connections to land, family, and ancestry. He remains alive. On the contrary, Macon Dead II embodies the name “Dead” as he is emotionally distant, materialistic, and disconnected from his family and community.
What is significant about Milkman’s unfamiliarity and discomfort with his nickname at the start?
It reflects his early isolation and insecurity from his name and lack of control over his own identity. The fact that it stems from an embarrassing childhood moment that others put onto him, it reflects how going into adulthood people defined his identity before he could define himself.
Upon Milkman complaining of his name, Guitar defends the Black naming ideology, saying that Black people get their names,”_______”
What purpose does the nicknames of locations, such as Not Doctor’s Street and No Mercy Hospital, serve?
The names reflect actual human experiences. “Not Doctor’s Street” is named in resistance to officials telling the town’s residents that they could not call it “Doctor’s Street” after the first Black physician who lived there. Similarly, the name “No Mercy Hospital” highlights the medical facility’s refusal to admit Black patients.
Morrison uses the irony of Pilate's name to suggest that names derived from this can be arbitrary and meaningless when separated from cultural context.
What is The Bible?
When the people of Shalimar unknowingly preserve the Dead family history through children’s songs and stories, what is Morrison suggesting about the relationship between names and cultural survival?
Names survive not because they are formally recorded, but because people continue to give them meaning. The survival of names, things very fragile, incomplete, and vulnerable, becomes a symbol for cultural endurance after historical rupture.
How does Milkman’s naming origins reflect Morrison's overall argument about names in Song of Solomon?
Morrison suggests that names are often imposed but gain meaning through memory, ancestry, and experience. For Milkman, his name is imposed upon him but he learns to live with it and own it towards the end of the book.
Morrison highlights that Black characters’ names are taken from a few specific themes of yearnings, gestures, flaws, events, mistakes, and weaknesses.
Which one of these does Guitar’s name come from?
Yearnings. Guitar was named after his grandfather's desire for a guitar. Names preserve emotional histories, desires, and absences as much as identities.
How do the location names “Solomon’s Leap” and “Ryna’s Gulch” reflect the gendered cost of freedom in the novel?
By using two different elevations, Morrison highlights how male freedom often comes at the cost of female confinement. Solomon’s flight is celebrated with Solomon’s Leap, a high, elevated piece of land that symbolizes triumph and agency. On the other hand, Ryna’s Gulch is a low ravine, symbolizing the depths of despair.