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Milkman's Use Of Contrast And Mirror Images In Chapter Five

Decent Essays

Chapter 5 presents a series of contrasts and mirror images that reflect the tenuous relationships between various characters and provide conflicting perspectives on love, sex, and survival.

Milkman's pondering his impending death at the hands of Hagar, his distraught ex-lover, at the beginning of the chapter evokes many similar references to the presence of death throughout the novel. For example, note that Milkman's picturing his own death as a "spurt of wine-red blood" foreshadows Hagar's funeral scene at the end of Chapter 13, when a "sympathetic" wino drops his liquor bottle, "spurting emerald glass and jungle-red wine everywhere." Resigned to let Hagar kill him if she wants to and can, Milkman is almost exhilarated by thoughts of death:

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