When beginning to read Song of Solomon, it was not clear where the book got its title. To be honest, I'm still not entirely sure. But one thing I did see was the similarity between the Solomon legend about the two mothers and a baby and Hagar, Ruth, and Milkman. This metaphor only goes so far, but I think that it works for the most part. In the legend, two women are brought before Solomon because they are fighting over who the baby actually belongs to. Solomon decides to resolve this issue by cutting the baby in half. The happy part of this story comes when the real mother would rather the other woman have the baby than it be killed, and so Solomon gives the baby to the real mother. In Song of Solomon there isn't a judge, but there are two women fighting over a boy.
I'll talk about Ruth first, since she is the real mother. The relationship between Ruth and Milkman can seem a bit weird at some points, at least from Ruth's side. The circumstances of Milkman's birth, and how it was forced on Macon are a bit questionable, but regardless, it is clear that Ruth wants and loves Milkman. We have the fact that Ruth nursed Milkman until he was too old to be nursing, giving him his nickname. To me, she wanted to be connected to Milkman as much as possible. I think that Milkman reminds Ruth of her father, and we all know that there was definitely a weird relationship there. But there is also something to be said about the perseverance that Ruth had in keeping Milkman through everything that Macon made her do to try and abort him.
Hagar, on the other hand, has probably the most powerful lust for Milkman that a person can have for another. Hagar kind of creeps me out because she is okay with incest, and she wants to murder the person she loves most in the world (who is her cousin). It is hinted in one of the first scenes with Hagar that she is a sexual being. She claims that she has been "hungry" when she has always had food. Then later we get that she and Milkman "see" each other frequently, and we get that it becomes easier and easier for Milkman to get sex from her. It seems to me that she becomes addicted to him and obsessed with him. And then she snaps when she realizes that she can no longer have him. And that's when she decides that no one can have him if she can't.
Both characters want Milkman all to themselves for reasons that I think can easily be classified as abnormal. Hagar would be comparable to the woman pretending to be the mother in the Solomon legend that would just let Milkman die since she can't have him all to herself. I'm not entirely sure how Ruth would act in a situation like that, but she is definitely more likely to let Milkman live rather than have him chopped in half. Overall though, Pilate gets it right when she tells them that they shouldn't bother with him. He is for sure put off by Hagar trying to kill him and he has never really considered Ruth as someone worth keeping around. After breaking it off with Hagar, he doesn't give either of them any of the attention that they wish they could have from him.
