Every now and again a book comes along that has a soul. This soul can thrive within the characters or the rich content it displays. The " Song of Solomon" has soul, plain and simple. Toni Morrison knitted a soul into the backbone of this novel with her mastery of imagery. Every sentence and scene has the potential to hold a powerful symbol or meaning needing to be discovered by the reader. Almost all of these images root from Toni's opinions of black depression yet they still very in how they are shown. The bulk of the images relate to the Old Testament of the bible. These images exist in a similarity or theme that is shared by the bible version and the novel version of the character in mention.
             It should be obvious to anyone reading this book that Toni Morrison knows a great deal about the Old Testament. This is easily supported by the fact that most of her characters all share names with religious figures. In this paper six of them will be described. This will be done by first summarizing the excerpt from the bible then an explanation of the relationship. The list starts with Hagar.
             We know Hagar as the jealous murderous lover in the book but look how she compares to the bible's Hagar. Hagar was Sarah's Egyptian maid. God had promised Sarah and Abraham many children, however they remained childless. If the wife was childless, it was custom to permit the maid/slave to substitute as the wife. Hagar bore Abraham a son, Ishmael. When Sarah gave birth to her own child, she became jealous of Hagar, and forced Hagar and Ishmael to the desert. Hagar and Ishmael wandered in the desert and would have died from thirst, but God directed them toward a well. Genesis 16,21,25. The strongest similarity here is the jealousy that drives to kill. In both cases jealousy was strewn from a relationship with a man. The question that remains is why didn't Toni call Hagar, Sarah. Maybe this was because Hagar represents the...