Throughout his life, because of this, he achieves, at least spiritually, his namesake; he is dead to life. "It was becoming a habit-this concentration on things behind him. Almost as though there was no future to be had." (p 35) Milkman does not look forward to the future. He does not know himself, or his past, and he is unable to find flight, life, without knowing those things. .
As Milkman grows, he becomes a self-centered person, caring only for himself and what will help him. Anything that does not touch him directly does not exist for him. His father's words to him, "Then you'll own yourself and other people too," (p 55) are unable to be fulfilled by him. Milkman cannot own himself because he does not know who he is, and he has lost the initiative to discover it when he 'died' from the lack of ability to 'fly'. When he looks at himself, he sees this undefined mess of himself. " But it lacked coherence, a coming together of the features into a total self." (p 69) His father tells him, " if you want to be a whole man, you have to deal wit the whole truth." But Milkman is unwilling to deal with the whole truth: of himself, of his family, or of his life. Until he does, he will never be able to fly. The peacock that Milkman and his friend Guitar see in the park introduces an important part of the image of flight. The peacock is able to strut and has a beautiful tail, but is unable to fly. The reason for this, according to Guitar, is that, "All that jewelry weighs it down. Like vanity. Can't nobody fly with all that [stuff]. Wanna fly, you got to give up the [stuff] that weighs you down." In other words, in order to fly, to live, one must leave vanity, possessions, fear, behind. One can fly only if unburden, with only oneself to carry, but one must know who that self is and what burdens him before he can shed all in order to attain flight. Pilate, through her inheritance, a bag of old bones, brings in another part of the image of flight.