What happens in Part Two, Chapter 16 of Song of Solomon?
In this chapter, Hagar dies—not from any injury inflicted by Milkman, but from a deep emotional despair that began when she realized he would never love her as she longed to be loved. After her rain-soaked, failed attempt to kill Milkman leaves her hair a mess and her dignity shattered, she retreats to her bed. Reba and Pilate watch helplessly as Hagar deteriorates, her last clear moment spent desperately listing the beauty products she thinks would have made Milkman desire her. She dies holding onto that dream. Pilate, who has endured so much—poverty, exile, her father's murder—finds herself devastated by this loss. She and Reba prepare Hagar's body, and Pilate sings over her granddaughter, her grief so profound that it fills the room with silence. The chapter ends with Pilate's renowned lament at the funeral, her voice soaring into the church and quieting every mourner. Morrison does not sugarcoat the death; instead, she presents it as the tragic and inevitable conclusion for a woman who learned that her value was tied solely to romantic love.
Analysis
Morrison's craft here is strikingly controlled because the emotion is at its peak. Hagar's death unfolds not through dramatic action but through an accumulation of details—the shopping bags, the cosmetics, the wet hair—objects that critique a culture selling women the notion that desirability equals survival. The list of beauty products acts as a grotesque dowry, a collection of items Hagar believed would earn her love, and Morrison lets the absurdity linger without comment, trusting readers to feel the horror.
Pilate's grief creates a tonal shift. Throughout the novel, she has embodied self-sufficiency, the woman without a navel who needs nothing from society. Her breakdown here is seismic; it shows that even the most grounded individual can be shattered by the loss of a child. The blues song she sings—"Mercy"—blurs the line between the sacred and the secular, between mourning and praise, reflecting Morrison's connection to the African American oral tradition.
This chapter also furthers the novel's central theme of flight versus fall. Milkman is learning to fly; Hagar is falling. Her death is the price of his growth, and Morrison does not let that moral burden go unrecognized. The prose slows to a nearly liturgical rhythm during the funeral scene, with the syntax itself enacting the mourning, each clause a step in a procession that has no destination other than fully experiencing grief.
Key quotes from Part Two, Chapter 16
“There is no suitable gift for the woman who has everything she needs and nothing she wants.”
Morrison's narratorial aside as Pilate and Reba struggle to comprehend what Hagar was reaching for in her final days, framing the tragedy as one of desire without object.
“And she was loved, Pilate thought. Deeply loved. Just not by the one she wanted.”
Pilate's interior reflection over Hagar's body, a quiet indictment of the narrowness of romantic love as the sole measure of a woman's worth.
“Mercy. Mercy. Mercy.”
The single word of Pilate's funeral song, repeated until it fills the church—Morrison distilling an entire tradition of blues lamentation into one syllable of grief.
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