1) Pilate uses voodoo dolls.
2) Pilate is the archetypal African medicine woman.
3) This archetype makes her a vehicle, connecting the Dead family to their African origins and with their negative attitudes toward her, helps to show the families attitude toward their African heritage as well.
4) "'She gave me funny things to do. And some greenish-gray grassy-looking stuff to put in his food.'...It worked to. Macon came to me for four days. Then it was over. And two months later I was pregnant. When he found out about it, he immeadiately suspected Pilate and he told me to get rid of the baby" (Morrison 125).
5) Her knowledge, insight, and power in the realm of magical realism, illustrated by her mythic sense of supernatural forces in the arts of healing, protection, and manipulation, allows her to be completely independant of anything material, reinforcing the idea of her as an African mystic. Macon's reaction shows his fear of Pilate and metaphorically, his denial of his African heritage and his hatred motivated by his his jealousy of the freedom that Pilate possesses.
6) Pilate is the character most closely connected to magic realism and is therefore a very colorful character by nature. She is respectable because of her inate strength that is shown is such contrast to the self percieved weakness of the other characters. The most confusing thing about her is that her complete independance and freedom from all worldly qualities is the quality that is hardest for the reader to identify with because no one who reads the story is truly independant and free like Pilate. Morrison creates this character, most likely, to induce this exact frustration and confusion, pointing out how limiting the life that everyone leads, confined by ideas of what is "real".
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2 comments:
This passage illustrates her knowledge of herbs, reinforcing the idea of her medine woman qualities." passages merely reenforce your point. Do not use "this passage" rather continue drawing the connections yourself. The knowledge of herbs doesn't mean that she's a medicine women. her power resides elsewhere. Focus on the elsewhere and you have an essay.
I agree with you in that she does seem to be independent from her surroundings, but towards the end of the novel her connection with the bones that are her father, as well as her love for her offspring seems to be more dependent than independent. Her dependence that brings her to her death, ironically delivers her to her absolute freedom. To me, she is more realistic and complex than she outwardly seems.
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