Song of Solomon Precis
Kristan Parish
Pilate's Father as a Christ Figure
Corrie Dead as Hester Prynne
In her novel Song of Solomon (1977), Toni Morrison, the only living winner of the nobel prize, implies that First Corinthians Dead transforms as Hester Prynne does in The Scarlet Letter. Corinthians hates her "hobby" of making rose petals and comes back to Porter because "he was the only thing that could protect her from a smothering death of dry roses" (199), similar to the way Hester Prynne symbolically removes her scarlet letter when meeting Arther Dimmesdale in the woods; she gives up some purity, as she had been "pure all these years" (198), in the same way Hester becomes vulnerable with Dimmesdale in the woods; she also parallels Hester in the way she wears her hair down, deciding "she wouldn't [collect] her hair into a ball at her nape now for anything in the world" (202). Morrison paints this comparison in order to emphasize the fact that Corinthians Dead has truly transformed into Corrie Dead, as she notes, she is "no longer afraid to mount the porch steps" (202). Morrison's audience, men and women alike, receive this message of the transformation of romance and even sex through the formal, reverent tone with which Morrison describes this encounter.