Semnificația numelui în construirea identității în „Song of Solomon” de Toni Morisson
The meaning of the name in the construction of identity in "Song of Solomon" by Toni Morisson

Summary/Abstract: The identity of a person assumes a complex phenomenon, inculcating variegated aspects and meanings. The article is centered upon the investing of a person with a denomination. To bestow a name to a subject is to recognize the subject’s existence, and also its spatial and temporal dynamic. The name functions as a social pre-identity. The self interacts with the other, who no longer is an abstract figure, but becomes a recognizable referent. In Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon, the name helps to form a character’s identity, investing it symbolically. The main character, Milkman, gets his true name as a result of a set of events, which outlines the idea that man is the result of social actions, and of hereditary factors. The article stresses the careful process employed by the writer in selecting the name of the characters, in order to cast a light upon their personality, and most of all to create an ideological subtext. Each character becomes an idea, a concept. Milkman symbolizes the oedipal complex, ventured in an attempt of escaping the parental figure. Song of Solomon, although considered a novel obsessed with names (Duvall, 90), symbolizes an obelisk aspiring to reach the symbolic existential horizon, because in the end a human life is a symbol of spiritual trials, of returning to myth and origins, but mostly of Icaric flight when human assumes his destiny to conquer his own supremacy.

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