Milkman goes to Guitar's apartment to wait for Hagar, who has stalked him for the last six months, ever since he sent her the Christmas note breaking off their relationship, and has threatened to kill him. Having survived her bungled attempts on his life thus far, Milkman has resigned himself to death.

As he lounges in Guitar's bed, he recalls a conversation he had with his mother a week earlier, after he followed her on one of her secretive trips to Fairfield Cemetery to visit her father's grave.

Milkman hears Hagar breaking into Guitar's apartment and awakens from his daydreams, but he doesn't move from the bed, not even when she makes a half-hearted attempt to kill him with a butcher knife.

Finally, realizing that she is unable to follow through with her plan to kill him, he rises from the bed, condescendingly pats Hagar on the cheek, and walks away in disgust, only slightly wounded. Ruth, who only a week earlier had learned from Freddie about Hagar's repeated attempts to murder Milkman, resolves to stop Hagar. She goes to Pilate's house and confronts her niece. Pilate intervenes and, determined to distract Ruth from Hagar's attempts to kill Milkman, tells Ruth stories about her birth Pilate's and childhood, her father's death, and her physical and emotional split with Macon.

She also describes her wandering lifestyle and her decision — following her granddaughter's birth — to leave Virginia and move her family to Michigan. Pilate hoped to reconcile with her brother, but Macon was cold and angry, ashamed of her, Reba, and Hagar. Chapter 5 presents a series of contrasts and mirror images that reflect the tenuous relationships between various characters and provide conflicting perspectives on love, sex, and survival.

Milkman's pondering his impending death at the hands of Hagar, his distraught ex-lover, at the beginning of the chapter evokes many similar references to the presence of death throughout the novel.

For example, note that Milkman's picturing his own death as a "spurt of wine-red blood" foreshadows Hagar's funeral scene at the end of Chapter 13, when a "sympathetic" wino drops his liquor bottle, "spurting emerald glass and jungle-red wine everywhere. The scene in which Milkman criticizes Guitar's efforts to make tea, followed by his joke about being a "soft-fried egg," recalls the friends' visit to Pilate's house in Chapter 2, when she introduced them to the ritual of making a perfect soft-boiled egg.

Consequently, even as Milkman feels like a "garbage pail for the actions and hatreds of other people," we realize that within him lies a seed of spiritual awareness planted by Pilate that has the potential to counter his destructive self-image and overpower his morbid death-wish. Milkman's following his mother to Fairfield Cemetery mirrors Hagar's stalking Milkman through the streets of Southside.

This similarity also establishes a contrast between the white community of Fairfield, distinguished by its sheltered suburbs, and the black community of Southside, noted for its bars and barbershops.

Additionally, Ruth's visit to the graveyard, ironically another type of "graveyard" love, highlights the racist practice of establishing separate cemeteries for blacks and whites. By confronting his mother at the cemetery and demanding to know why she breast-fed him for so long, Milkman hopes to confirm his father's assessment of Ruth as a "silly, selfish, queer, faintly stock market crash of 1929 lesson plan woman.

Ironically, whereas in Chapter 3 Milkman emotionally matured enough to view Ruth as an individual rather than only as a mother, for Ruth, Milkman has never been a person; he's always been a "passion," a "beautiful toy," westfield warrawong australia day trading hours a "plain on which, like cowboys and Indians in the movies, woodstock insurance broker and her husband fought.

Stock Market Crash of - Facts & Summary - obupexeh.web.fc2.com

Ruth's not defending her behavior also forces Milkman to contemplate the connections between love, sex, and violence. Note that Ruth's question to Milkman, "What harm did I do you on my knees? Morrison's juxtaposing Milkman's apathy toward life and his contempt for Hagar — "Die, Hagar.

Morrison notes that although Pilate and Ruth are two different women in terms of skin color, dress, and education, their similarities are "profound": Both are "vitally interested" in Milkman, and both have "posthumous communication with their fathers.

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I tell you somethin else. He's the only one. But he cared whether and he cared how I lived, and there was, and is, no one else in the world who ever did. By linking Hagar's "focused meanness" and Empire State's empty, mute "graveyard love" with Ruth's and Pilate's nurturing love for Milkman and their fathers, Morrison explores the concept of love as a double-edged sword with the power to create or destroy life.

She suggests that loneliness and despair are not necessarily linked to external events but often stem from our inability to recognize and accept the pain and pleasure of love as an integral part of life.

Milkman's confrontation with Ruth parallels Ruth's confrontation with Hagar: Ruth tells Milkman the stories of his birth and song about the stock market crash of 1929 summary her father's death to distract him from his obsessive interest in her nursing ritual; Pilate tells her life story to Ruth to distract her from Hagar's murderous mission. However, unlike Ruth's story, which trading automatique option binaire told mainly in flashback and dialogue, Pilate's song about the stock market crash of 1929 summary gradually merges with the main narrative of the text.

Essentially, Pilate's voice supplants the narrator's voice and establishes her story of birth, awareness, and self-creation as central to the novel's themes of flight and mercy. Similarly, Hagar's mission to gun stocks for marlin 60 Milkman sharply contrasts with Pilate's mission "to decide how she wanted to live and what was valuable to her. And while Milkman's rejection of Hagar destroys Hagar's fragile sense of self and compels her to resort to a murderous rage that rivals the "focused meanness of a flood or an avalanche of snow" and the "calculated violence of a shark," Pilate's rejection by the men who are terrified of her because she does not have a navel, her "defect," empowers her and enables her to channel her rage into a more creative, constructive outlet — namely, living.

Ultimately, Hagar is devastated by Milkman's rejection of her and reduced to a "ghost," but Pilate survives because she has learned to love and value herself, regardless of others' opinions. Congo an African country that gained independence from France in Milkman avoids Guitar's eyes because he knows he will see a venomous, agitated look in them.

Si Quaeris Peninsulam Amoenam Circumspice the Michigan state motto; Latin, meaning "If you seek a pleasant peninsula, look around you.

Morrison characterizes Hagar's feelings for Milkman as an "anaconda love" because Hagar's love is all-consuming. Society of Friends the Quakers, a religious denomination.

Quakers were instrumental in helping runaway slaves reach freedom in the North. Removing book from your Reading List will also remove any bookmarked pages associated with this title.

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Chapter 5

CliffsNotes study guides are written by real teachers and professors, so no matter what you're studying, CliffsNotes can ease your homework headaches and help you score high on exams. My Preferences My Reading List Sign Out. Literature Notes Test Prep Study Guides Student Life. Song of Solomon Toni Morrison.

Home Literature Notes Song of Solomon Chapter 5. Table of Contents All Subjects Book Summary About Song of Solomon Character List Summary and Analysis Epigraph Part 1: Chapter 1 Part 1: Chapter 2 Part 1: Chapter 3 Part 1: Chapter 4 Part 1: Chapter 5 Part 1: Chapter 6 Part 1: Chapter 7 Part 1: Chapter 8 Part 1: Chapter 9 Part 2: Chapter 10 Part 2: Chapter 11 Part 2: Chapter 12 Part 2: Chapter 13 Part 2: Chapter 14 Part 2: Chapter 15 Character Analysis Macon Milkman" Dead" Pilate Dead Guitar Bains Macon Dead, Jr.

Ruth Foster Dead Toni Morrison Biography Critical Essays Levels of Language and Meaning in Song of Solomon Song of Songs and Flying Africans Plot and Setting in Song of Solomon Study Help Quiz Full Glossary for Song of Solomon Essay Questions Cite this Literature Note.

Summary and Analysis Part 1: How does Milkman react to Hagar's threats to kill him? When our teacher was introducing the next reading assignment, he said we'll be using the unexpurgated version. What did he mean? Book Summary About Song of Solomon Character List Summary and Analysis Epigraph Part 1: Adam Bede has been added to your Reading List! About CliffsNotes Advertise with Us Contact Us Follow us: Literature Notes Test Prep Study Guides Student Life Sign In Sign Up.