Pilate is the ancestor who, as the critic Stelamaris Coser notes, represents "the only sign of a vital black tradition surviving in the urban industrial environment." Milkman's "pilot" on his "flight" home, she defies virtually every stereotype of a black woman and exemplifies Morrison's rejection of binary thinking.
Just as Milkman fails to recognize Pilate's innate beauty and dignity until he sees it reflected in the women of Shalimar, we may fail to recognize her courage and power until we place it within the context of African history and classical mythology. Viewed from these perspectives, we find that Pilate is both griot — a storyteller — and village elder, charged with preserving the cultural memory of her people, and a wise, moral teacher who offers a new vision of the future. A conjurer and root woman skilled in the art of voodoo, she is a healer and peacemaker who has no qualms about resorting to any means necessary to protect those she loves.
Pilate values family and community and reveres her African and American heritage, as symbolized by her quilt. Driven by an unselfish desire to care for others, Pilate gives up her wandering lifestyle to provide a stable home for her granddaughter, Hagar, and to watch over Ruth, her sister-in-law, who is "dying of lovelessness." Exhibiting both male and female characteristics, Pilate is associated with images of snakes and serpents. Thus, she is both Adam and Eve, both Christ and Satan. When Milkman first sees her, she is seated with "one foot pointed east and one pointed west," a posture that indicates that she embraces both Eastern and Western (African and American) traditions and values. Pilate's aggressive, masculine stance and her reverence for her fourth-grade geography book allude to the angel in Revelation who holds a little book and sets his right foot upon the sea and his left foot on the land.
