Broken wings of freedom: bird imagery in Toni Morrison 's novels

Revista de Estudios Norteamericanos, n ° 7 (2000 ), pp. 75 -84 BROKEN WINGS OF FREEDOM: BIRD IMAGERY IN TONI MORRISON' S NOVELS SUSANA VEGA ÜO NZÁLEZ Uni versidad de Oviedo Lingering spirit of the dead, rise up a nd posse ss your bird of passage! Haile Gerima, Sankof a Among the severa! li terary concepts that could be applied to To ni Morrison's novels are those of metaphor and symbol. In her book Specify in g: Black Women Writing the American Experience, Susan Willis characterizes Morrison 's writing as «the most metaphorical of today's black women authors» (Willis 19 87: 8). Thus critics have pa id attention to her use of elements like water, fire, and earth, for instance, as well as her employment of nature, whose narrative life turns it into one more character. But little critica! attention has been paid to bird imagery in this writer, in spite of the fact that it is an impo1tant aspect in her narrative that effectively contributes to her portrayal of the most negative side of African Ameri ca n social reality in the United States. When d ea ling with metaphors in African Ameri ca n women writers, Jacqueline de Weever argues that «[t)he images that build the metaphors are culled from nature, from creatures of the earth in most cases, with crea tu res of the air -the bird for exampleused occasionally» (De Weever 1991 : 62). Ho wev er , in the case of Toni Morrison, it is frequently rath er than occasionally that she uses birds -and their flightas metaphor. It is the purpose of this essay to ascertain whether the image of the bird is utilized with its usual traditional symbolism of freedom or if that a<>sociation is revised. If this is the case. we will also analyze the new meaning ascribed to birds in M orr ison 's novels and how tha t meaning is rendered. 76 Susa11a Vega Gnn zá /ez Those little creatures ca lled birds have always a ttracted the a ttention of humans who have tried to imitate th eir flight not only in mythology, like Daedalus and Icarus, but also in real life. From ancient times and across different cultures, bird s have always inspired a whole range of beliefs, myths, and metaphors. Because of th eir ab il ity to fly and soar up in the air towards the sky they have ge nerally been associated with th e link between Heaven and Earth; they were al so considered messeng er s from Hea ven or possessors of occult sccrets (Walker 1988: 396, C he va lier 1994: 86-87). In severa! myths, birds are associated with thc sun, like the Eg yptian phoenix, the hummingbird or the eagl e, for in.stance. The Lat in word «av es » meant both «bi rd s» and «ancestral spirit s» and these creatures we re also symbo ls of rebirth and of th e flying souls which ascend to Hcaven after dea th (Walker 1983: 101 ). Birds were al so assumed to utter warnings an d prophecies, «a power derived not only from th eir access to ornniscient gods but from thei r association w ith the dead, who were supposed to ha ve the privilege of foresee in g the future» (Lutwack 19 94: 11 8). As we can see, the list of bi rd symbols is long, although they are usually related to flight , because of their wings, and therefore to Hcaven, because of their ability to fly in an upward direction. Morrison 's powerful use of birds in all her novels is often disrup ti ve a nd unconventional. In sanity, hatred, terror, slavery, se lfishness, and evil are ali conveyed through images ofbirds like the hawk. the dove, the ca rdinal, the peacock, the roo ste r, the hummingbird, and the robin. Birds are always present in her novels and even in her Nobel Prize lecture she us ed, once again, the image of the bird. In her speech , Mo nison tells us about an old black woman who is blind but wise and some young people, one of whom poses the following question to her: «Old woman, I hold in my hand a bird. Tell me whether it is living or d ea d» (Morrison 1994: 6). Later on Morrison discloses th e symbolism behind this story: th e bir d, she says, stands for language and the old woman re presents the writer. In her first novel , The Bluest Eye, Morrison weaves an apparently simple sto1y about a black girl who hankers after blue eyes. But the play on words the very title endoses hints at th e humiliation, worthlessness, and failure that dominate Pecol a's life. E ven after achiev in g what she most wante d, or precisely because of i t, she is «the blues! eye,» that is , the saddest I: «E lbows bent, hands on shoulders, she flailed her anns like a bird in eternal, grotesquely futile effort to fly . Beating the air, a winged but grounded bird, intent on the blue void it could not reach -could not even seebut which filled the valleys of the mind» (Morrison 1970: 162). Pecola is Urn s described as a winged but grounded bird whose broken self, after ince st uous rape, prevents h er flight into wholeness. This paradoxical metaphor is characteristic of Morrison 's narrative, which is ful! of apparently contradictory terms. The Bluest Eye shows a wor ld where disruption is always prescnt, where «the fall brings death, not harvest» (Otten 1989: 1 O), wbere the seeds die instead of growing (Morrisou 1970: 10), where Cholly plants his destmctive secd in her daught er's womb in spring, the fertility season, rendering this season into «a fertility rite inverted» (Christian 1980: 71). Pecol a, the winged but gro unded bird, undergoes both a spiritual death and a psychic death, as she ends up in the abyss of madness. This type of death can be summarized in the words of Mar ti n Foss who, appropriating the famo us Macbethian sentence Bmke11 Wi11gs of Fr ee dom : Rird fnuige1y i11 To11i Morrison 's Nove Is 77 states: «Here Iife is a 'tale told by an idiot ,' perverted and absurd. This isolation and perversion can be called a 'symbolic death '- not death experienced as isolation, but an isolation which can be metaphorically called a kind of death» (Foss 1966: 36). A plague of robins flying and dying announces the return of Sula, the witchfigure, in Monison 's second novel: Accompanied by a plague of robins, Sula carne back to Medallion. The little yam-breasted shuddering birds were everywhere, exciting very sma ll children away from their usual welcome into a vicious stoning. Nobody knew why or from where they had come. What they did know was that you couldn't go anywhere without stepping into their pearly shit, and it was hard to hang up clothes, pull weeds or just sit on the front porch when robins were flying and dying around you. (Morrison l 987b: 89) Also. four dead robins in front of Eva 's hou se announcc thc arr iv al of the prodiga! daughter in Medallion after ten years, thus acting as an ornen, as Eva herself admits: «I might have knowed them birds meant something» (Morrison l 987b: 89). Hcre again wc are witnesses to an aborted flight; like the dying and dead robins, Sula tries to find freedom in her metaphorical !light from the strictures of her community but finally retums to die in it. She is not willing to be just a mother and a wife. Her pride and her determination to be only her self, and nobody else's. is curtailed by the black community for whom she is but an evil that must be averted. This is the main example of bird imagery we can find in Sula. According to Barbara Walker, Robin Redbreast. or «Cock Robin,» was a bird form of Robín Goodfellow. one of the cornrnon narnes of th e so-called god of the witches. The red-breasted bird of spring was Cock Robin' s soul. The robin' s red breast is also related to the blood of Christ sincc. according to another legend, a robin tried to pluck away the thoms from Christ's crown piercing its own breast. which thereafter became red (Walker 1983: 858). Therefore th e robín symbolizes Sula because shc is con si der ed as a witch who plays havoc with the mernbers of the community. stealing hu sbands and breaking rules. Once again. Morrison utilizes a bird image to represent not freedom but lack of freedorn, not life, but death. The rnotif of flight is crucial in the next novel Morrison writes, Song of Solomon. At the end of his trajectory, Milkman Dead surrenders to the air and rides it in a metaphorical flig ht of spiritual freedom. But lhe image of flight is airead y present in the novel from the beginning, where Milkman's birth takes place in the same hospital from which Mr Smith, an insurance agent,decides to jump. One <lay after this unfortunate event Milkman Dead is born; when he is four he discovcrs «the same thing Mr Srnith had learned earlier -that only birds and airplanes could fly» thus losing «all interest in him se l f» (Morrison l 987a: 9). The Dead are a family dominated by material possession and accumulation detached from lower class blacks. The selfish materialism embodicd by Malcolm Dead is sy mbolized in the last narne «D ead» which alludes to spiritual death based on alienation. The ritual Sunday rides on the Packard try to show off the whole family and ils success: 78 Susana Vega González These ridcs that the family took on Sunday aftemoons had become rituals and much too importan! for Macan to enjoy. For him it was a way to satisfy himself that he was indeed a suc ce ssful man. It was a Iess ambitious ritual for Ruth, but a way, nevertheless, for her to display h er family. (Morrison 1987 a: 31) Interestingly, the only thing Milkman can see from his seat is the «si l ver winged woman poised at the tip of the Packard» his father drives (Morrison l 987a: 32). The irony of this episode is clear: this image is but a direct allusion to ílight. However, the metallic composition of the small stat ue and its rigidity and lack of movement symbolize an aborted flight. The impossibility to fly affects the Dead family. Moreover, the Packard Macon drives so slowly is identified by many as «Macan Dead's hearse» (Morrison 1987a: 33). Pilate, Milkman's aunt, is the hero's guide/pilot in bis quest for identity. His physical journey to the South in search of a bag of gold is tumed in to a spiritual joumey in search of selfhood and cultural identity. After a long and complicated process he finds who he really is and where he comes from, as we ll as the importan! value of his ancestors. « He joumeys from spiritual death to rebirth, a direction symbolized by his discovery of the secret power of flight» (Lee 1985: 353). Pilate's death at the end of the novel is related to another image of birds; after chis death, we are told that one bird «dived into the new grave and scooped something shiny in its beak befa re it flew away» (Morrison l 987a: 336), that i s, Pilate's earring where she kept her name in a small box . Thi s symbolic scene repre se nts Pilate's rebirth; after her physical death, Pilate's soul is carried to Heaven by a psychopomp or spirit-guide -t he bird.1 lt is then that Milkrnan realizes that «I w jithout ever leaving the ground, she could fly» (Morrison l 987a: 336). She is not dead because now she belongs to the world of the ancestors who are not physically present but are spiritually alive. We can say that Song of Solomon is the novel where birds are used in a most positi ve way in that th ey symbolize rebirth and freedom with the exception of the winged but grounded woman on the Packard. All in all, the lingering image we will have when we finish reading the book is Milkman's flight, which represents the freedom of his soul from materialism and his spiritual rebirth (Julien 1996: 39). In order to tly Milkman has to give up his material possessions and his greed that weighed him down like a peacock hindered by its tail (Morrison l 987a: 179). The peacock, which is related to Osun, the Yoruba orisa of Love, Art, and Sensuality, as a symbol of her beauty, is also a remind er of the risks of overindulging possessions and wealth (Neimark 1993: 143). Like his aunt Pilate, and like bis ancestor, the tly in g African Solomon, Milkman can finally fly: l. This i magc of thc bird as soul-canicr brings lo mind Haile Gerima's film Sankofa. which also includcs thc myth of th e flight back to A frica. Whcn Nunu,one of !he slavcs on the plantation, is kill ed hy her son, pcople say thcy saw a big buzzard coming down and taking her bac.:k to Africa. And at the end of the film wc can hcar Shola telling us how shc flies back to Africa takcn by a big bu7.zard too. Broke11 Wings of fre edom: Rird Imagery in Toni Morrison 's NfJl'e/s 79 Without wiping away the tears, taking a deep breath, or even bending his knees -he leaped. As tleet and bright as a lodestar he wheeled toward Guitar and it did not matter which one of them would give up his ghost in the killing arms of his brother. For n ow he knew what Shalimar knew: If you surrendered to the air, you could ride i t. (Mo nison l 987a: 337) Thus the novel ends with the hero's spiri tual re birth granted by his acknowledgemcnt of his Jegendary past.2 At the end of Tar Baby, Jadine's flight back to París on the man-made bird, the plan e, is quite different from Milkman 's metaphorical flight, as it takes h er away from thc possibility of closeness to her ancestors and her cultur e. In stead of staying in the Caribbean and keeping a connection with thc roots that would empower her present and her future, she flies to Paris to join her well-off partoer and continue her life of grandeur, destroying «a ny relationship to community in herself» (Christian 1985: 243). This is another case of spiritual death brought about by cultural alienation, similar to the one we could see in Milkman before his double journey. If there is a novel where Morrison makes a vast and extraordinarily powerful use of bird imagery, that novel is Beloved. Morrison utilizes different types of bird in this story, namely the rooster, the cardinal, tbe dove, the hawk, and th e hummingbird. Their representation in the narrative is such that they are closely associated with the horrors of slavery and the ensuing alteration of human nature. The first bird that appears in Beloved is the rooster. Among its numerous mcanings and associations we can mentían its classification as a solar symbol because its crowing heralds the dawn and announces the end of darkness (Chevalier 1994: 209, 211). Sudanese people of Mali relate its foot to the symbolism of the cross-roads because of its shape. This bird is also one of the many symbols associated with Christ, in the New Testament story told in Matthew 26, and Mark 14. As Christ had predicted, Peter thrice denies his discipleship before cockcrow, hence its as sociation to the death and resurrection of the Saviour (Walker 1988: 397). It al so symbolizes pr ide (Alonso 1995: 183) and masculinity as shown in its phallic representations in Roman sculptures (Walker 1988: 397). When Pa ul D digs into the past and describes his humiliating imprisonment, he does not consider the pain and degradation caused by the iron bit he was forced to wear in his mouth. What he found most humiliating was the stare and apparent smile of Míster, the rooster whom he had helpcd to hatch: «He 2. Jacquelinc de Weever points out an intcrcsting inversion of the myth of the !lying Daedalus: «unlike Daedal us , who flies because of hubris, thc hcro Milkman llics because of !ove» (De Wc ever 19 91: 4 ), lo ve for Pila te and for his ancestors. In a similar manncr, Dcborah Guth makes a <listinction bctween Solo mon's original ílight hack to Africa to escape slavcry and Milkman's flight at the end of the novel: «In this onc moment he [Mi!kman] final!y repossesscs his mythic heritage. More than that, he gives it new meaning. For Solomon 's original !light defin cd frccdom asan escape from the present: but as Milkman leaps into the air and into the arms of the 'b rother'poised to kili him.hc embraces the present as well as the legendary past and defines frcedom as a comp lex connectedness» (Guth l 993: 584). This is an examplc of Monison's simultancous use and rcvision of myth. 80 Susa na Ve.¡¡a Gom:. ále z sat right thcre on the tub looking at me. l swear he smiled ... Mister, he looked so . .. free. Better than me. Stronger, tougher. Son of a bitch couldn 't even get out the sheJI by hisself but he was still king and l was ... » (Morrison 1988: 72). The image of the rooster staring at Paul D is fraught with irony in tbat the man is not only di spossesse d of his manhood but also of his humanity through slaver y. His condilion is such that he even somehow wishes to be in th e position of Mí ster, not as much because it is king and míster/master but because its nature has not been degraded: Mister was allowed to be and stay what he was. But I wasn't allowed to be and stay what I wa s. Even if you cooked him you'd be cooking a rooster named Míster. Bul wasn 't no way I' d e ver be Paul D again, living or dead. Schooltea - cher changed me. 1 was something else and that something was less than a chicken sitting in the sun on a tub. (Morrison 1988: 72) Jnstead of announcing daylight, the rooster heralds comple te darkness for Paul D. He wonders: «How could a rooster know about Alfred, Georgia'1» (Mlmison 1988: 229); the foreknowledge attributed to this bird is inverted here as it is not light hut pain and darkness that it foretells. The next bird Monison introduces with hi ghly symholic connotations is the cardinal. «Beloved tu rned around and left ... pausing to wa tch a ca rd inal hop from limb to branch. She fo ll owe d the blood spot shifting in the leaves until she lost it and even then she walked on, backward, still hungry for another glimpse» ( Monison 1988: l O 1). This bird of bright red plumage in the mal e an d sweet voice he re stands as a remind er of the hlood shed when Sethe cuts her baby 's throat. The «blood spot» Beloved hankers a ft er probably signi fi es her thirst for revenge mixed with !ove for her mother. Later on in the novel, the image of the cardinal is again related to blood from killing. This time Stamp Pa id sees something similar to a red cardinal feather on the bottom of the river; as he tugs at it, he realizcs that it was actually «a red ribbon knotted around a curl of wet woolly hair, clinging still to its bit of scalp» (MmTi son 1988: 180). Once again, the horrors of slavery are conjured up through images of birds. What could be a beautiful cardinal feather turns out to be the r ema ins of a lynched black person. The dove has always been one of the most ernblematic birds, representative of peace and !ove. Its white plumage has conveyed the idea of purity; even in the New Testament Jesu s refers to doves as «innocent» (Matl h ew 10: 16 ). The dove also represents the Holy Spirit who descended upon Mary to impregnate her through the ear. In Morrison 's novel the positive symbolism attached to th is bird is in ver ted and disrupted. Wc first hear of doves when Paul D is chained-up in the prison camp: The dew, more likely tban not, was mist by then. Heavy so metimes and if the dogs were quiet a nd just breathing yo u could h ea r doves. Kneeling in the mist they waited for the whim of a guard. or two , or three. Or maybe a li of them Bro ke11 Wings of Freedom: Bird /magerv in To11i Morrison 's N<ll'e/s 81 wante<l it. Wanted it from one prisoner in particular or none -o r ali. (Morri son 1988: 10 7) This is one more inversion of traditional bird ima g ery ; far from b eing a peaceful and loving si tu a ti on, it seems to be a part of the world gone awry: black men kneeling do wn wa iting for their int ake of seme n from the ir white oppressors. «Üccasio na lly a kn ee li ng man cho se gunshot in hi s head as the price, ma ybe, of taking a bit of foreskin with him to Jesu s. Paul O did not know that then. He was looking at his palsied hands, sme lling the guard, listening to his soft grunts so like the doves'» (Morrison 1988: 108). The striking and ironic comparison between the guard 's grunts and the doves' sound reminds us of the disruptive condition of slavery, which meant «[l]istening to the doves ... and having neither the right nor the p enniss ion to enjoy it because in that place mist, doves. sunlight, copper dirt. moon -everyt hing belonged to the men who had the guns» (Mor rison 1988: 162). Our next en co unter with anoth er type of bird occurs in the mo st heartrending sc ene in th e novel: Sethe's murder of h er baby daughte r to save her from slavery. Stamp Paid associates this enraged mother with a hawk: «her face beaked ... her hands wo rk ed like claws» (Morrison 1988: 157). The hawk was the totemic form of the Egyptian go d Horus and the pharaoh 's funeral ceremonies «often included the release of a live hawk to depict the d ea d king's soul flying away to its home in heaven» (Wa lker 198 8: 403). But it is its condition of bird of prcy that is used in its relation to Sethe, with a special focus 011 the b eak and claw s:1 In this ep isode there is a second equ at ion of tbe maddened mother to another bird: the hummi ngbird. When Sethe se es Schoolteacher and the other men approaching, she hea rd wings. Littlc hummingbirds stuck t heir needle beaks right through her headcloth into her hair and beat their wings .. . She just flcw. Collec.:ted every bit of life she had mad e, ali the parts of her that were precious and fine and beautiful, and carried, pushed, drngged them . .. where no one could hutt them. Over there. Outside this place, where th ey wou l<l be safe. And lhe hummingbird wings b ea t on. (Morrison 1988: 163) Th esc sma ll birds wi th long beaks < <look like well equipped warriors ... Thc beak s resemble built-in piercing weapons; sorne spccies have thin, curv in g beaks that are longer that th eir bodies» (Benson 1989: 4). They are aggressive birds. Bccausc they can fly straight up and down, forward an <l backward and they can hovcr in place, 3. The sa me imagc of beaks and claws thal Morrison cmploys in Beloved appcars in Gayl Jones's Correg idnm. Ursa ha s a dr ea m wht:re she noticcs «lhat my bclly was ~wollcn and rcstless» and also feels «the humming and heating of wings ami claws in my thighs and 1 fclt a stiff pcnis insidc me ... H is hair was likc whitc wings and we werc unit ed at hirth» (Jon es 1986: 76-77). Hcrc Corregidora. the P011ugucsc slave master who haunts thc women of her family, is cquatcd with a bird of pr cy. 82 Susana Vega González they are associated with the Sun, that seems to perform these movements too (Hunt 1977: 67-68). The hummingbirds are highly territorial and will defend their grounds «vigorously, whether or not the intruder is of their own family, and quite regardless of size» (cited in Hunt 1977: 67). In this case, the aggressiveness of the hummingbird, together with th e guarding of its te rritory seem to fit Sethe in her most unbearable experie nce. Like the bird , she defend s her ground at ali costs; and like the hummingbird, she wins as successful wa.rrior in that Schoolteacher will not have her baby. However, what she loses is her own past, as she will keep it at bay in the dim recesses of her mind. The episode of the hummingbird is repeated at the end of the novel, when Sethe takes Denver's em pl oyer, Mr Bodwin, for Schoolteacher, trying this time to kill him instead of her daughter (Morrison 1988: 262). While Paul D wants to keep the unbearable past where it belongs, «in t hat tobacco tin buricd in his chest where a red heart used to be,» Sethe keeps «beati ng back the past» (Morrison 1988: 72-73), a past too horrible to relate. These are th e unspeakable things unspoken Morrison speaks about; she rips the veil that covers the truth. With this novel, Morrison demonstrates that it is possible to come back from the rcccsses of history to «exorcise one's ghosts»; Beloved is not only Sethe's daughter but also the ghosts of those sixty million and more slaves who perished under slavery a nd through the Middle Passage. Thus Morrison inverts Beloved's fate: instead of remaining si lenced the ghost is made flesh and comes out to relate how it feels to be in darkness. Like the Egyptian phoenix, the ghost of the past resurrects itself. Morrison,like many other African American authors, reconstructs the past through the «imaginative act.» as she puts it (Zinsser 1987: 11 2) and uses that past to improve the present and the future. This un ion of past and present embodies the essence of the bird sanko fa , which in th e Akan language means «returning to your roots, recuperating what you've lost, and moving forward» (Woolford 1994: 103). So for Morrison it <loes not seem just a question of nostalgia for the past, but a necessary retrieval of it to help understand our present better. After this analysis of bird imagery in Morrison's works we can conclude that thcy constitute one more example of inversion in this writer. Through her fiction. she tums th e world upside down, in clear reflection of the irralionality of the system and environment that engulfed African Americans from the ir early experience in the Americas. Disrnption and inversion of human nature were at the heart of slavery and racism and this is what Morrison intcnds to p011ray in her novels. lf human beings are tumed into animals, then birds can be grounded with broken wings. We have seen that in many of the cases we have studied, birds are of ten fraught with negalive meaning, une of suffering, pain, humiliation, madness, and death, in keeping with the disruptive character of nature that is present in this authoi; as it happens at the beginning of Sula, for instance. Only in a few cases does Morrison abide by the traditional equation of birds/flight and freedom or rebirth. What we have left is the hope of spiri tu al regeneration and, like the bird sankofa, thc possibility of moving forward after exorcising those haunting ghosts from the past, even if that pa st is full of dying rob in s, smiling roosters, bloody cardinals. grunting doves, predatory hawks, maddening hummingbirds, and grounded birds. 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