Final Post: The Identification Crisis

This book was a coming of age story for multiple reasons. Milkman, the protagonist of Toni Morrison's novel Song of Solomon, went on a quest and at the end discovered his identity. After, Macon Jr, Milkman's father, tells him to retrieve gold from a cave in Virginia, Milkman starts his journey to get the gold but ends up on a spiritual journey trying to discover his identity. Eventually towards the end of his journey, flight surfaces as a symbol representing identity.

In the beginning of the book we are aware of childhood Milkman's wish to be able to fly. It appears at first that Milkman is just any other kid wishing for some sort supernatural power. But then, Morrison gives us myriad examples of the supernatural; forcing us to realize that this is the norm. So why shouldn't Milkman be able to fly? Well, for a lot of reasons. First, he doesn't really want to. It is shown through out the book that Milkman is very uncomfortable with the supernatural. When he sees his mom being suffocated by tulip buds, he tells his friend Guitar that it was just a dream. He denies it because he is uncomfortable with it. When Freddie, a janitor, tells him about ghosts he tell Freddie he doesn't believe him. But his failure to be convinced of the reality of the supernatural is not the only reason why he can't fly in the beginning of the book. He is "grounded" in the earth by material things. First, it is his love for sex with Hagar. He eventually rejects her and then his love for sex is replaced by money. Macon Jr., his father, tells him that there is gold in a cave in Virginia. Macon Jr. remembers a white peacock that appeared to him when he was a kid in the cave. It appeared while he decided on whether or not to take the gold. He ended up leaving it so he's sending Milkman to get it for him. Milkman concludes that if he recovers the gold from the cave in Virginia, he will be able to live independent of his father; a much needed privilege. Guitar finds out about his mission and asks him to bring him some of the gold too. Milkman agrees to this but Guitar doesn't trust him. They eventually begin to fight over this and Milkman runs away in search of the cave.While they are fighting a white peacock appears to the two of them just like the one his dad had seen in the cave. Milkman gets to the cave, but there is no gold. This is where he begins to find his identity. The peacocks are a symbol of greed and pride. Because they described the peacocks feather in the book as, "fanned out and pompous" (293) it's explicitly saying it is a very proud animal. It is described that Milkman and Guitar both look at the peacock but eventually turn away. Revealing how they recognized their greed for gold, but eventually ignored it for the gold they were about to receive. It is not untill Milkman "begins to shake with hunger. Real hunger" (253) after he is left food-less for a few days while hunting, that he realizes materialistic items are not what you need to survive in this world. He then discovers that his family lineage is important to him and he travels to Susan byrd, an elderly lady who took care of his great-grandfather, to ask her about his family history. She explains how his descendant were the flying African children. She described how Solomon and his wife Reyna gave birth to a son called Jake who turned out to be Milman's great-grandfather. After he heard this story of how his great-great grandfather flew, he became more self-aware. He realized what he had done wrong to Hagar (the girl Milkman rejected) and that his mom genuinely loved him. He realizes that his name is crucial to his identity and what he associates with it. After this he goes with his aunt Pilate to bury the bones of his great-grandfather. Unconvinced that Milkman didn't find the gold, Guitar had been looking for Milkman and found him with Pilate. It is their that Guitar shoots a gun at them in efforts to kill Milkman but misses and kills Pilate. Milkman sings to Pilate as she dies and stands up ready to face Guitar. It is then that he leaps and "wheels towards Guitar...For now he knew : If you surrendered to the air, you could ride it"(337). The symbolism of flight here is very important. Not only is it the transition from his materialistic mindset to the discovery of his rich identity, but it also shows his flight from boy to man.
I would strongly recommend this book because it is a very fresh read. Each page turned was like a bite deeper into a juicy cucumber. The novel never got boring; it screamed at your eyes for you to taste it's rough skin. Morrison's Milkman is a ten dimensional character who's problems are so specific they become relatable, but maintain unpredictable: therefore very fresh. It's even more invigorating if you read this book with Foster, Prose, Nabokov, O'Conner, and Perrine on your shoulders. In my journey through this book I found myself noticing Vampirism. For example, the "bloody red" tulip buds and Macon Dead Jr. and how both of them were pretty much sucking the life out of Ruth. But also being able to notice Morrison's techniques helped give more understanding to the novel. In Flannery O'Conner's essay Writing Short Stories, she mentions how you only need to write one story; there is no need to tie up loose ends in every character. If I hadn't been aware of this I would be left unsatisfied, still trying to figure out what was going to happen Reba, Milkman's cousin, and all the other side characters. Instead, I realized the irrelevance of the continuation of the story and was able to focus on what mattered: giving the story a greater deal of apprehension.

Peacocks of Gold

Milkman, the protagonist of Toni Morrison's novel Song of Solomon, has started a quest to look for gold. This is not surprising because his character in the book has resorted to defining his identity with the value he puts on materialistic items. For example, he's uninterested in all the women in his community, but he thinks he should have his wife and the value he places on owning a wife dictates that his identity includes having a wife. So in this case a wife is a material item. My prediction is that he will recover from all his little material obsession. My first reason is because Morrison has alluded to his abandonment of loving the gold. When Milkman talks with his friend Guitar they argue about how they should split the gold. Guitar doesn't believe that Milkman should be trusted in bringing back Guitar's gold. While their bickering was going on, a ghost peacock appeared. At this moment, Milkman started evaluated whether or not he really needed the gold: revealing his awareness of greed and questioning his involvement in it. By showing this display of his maturity, I believe Morrison is foreshadowing that eventually Milkman will give up his greed. Though his thoughts don't express the need to give up his greed, the fact that he questions why he has greed is sufficient because the first step in overcoming a problem is being aware that you have it. The other reason why I believe that he will leave his materialistic mindset in his childhood is because in a town of whimsical mien, Milkman appeared to be an unfit puzzle piece with a normal demeanor. The people Milkman has encountered so far (his mom, dad, sisters, aunt, barbers, and shop owners), have all been revealed to believe in the supernatural and have encounters with it. Milkman is the only character so far who has expressed any form of suspicion in the supernatural. It is revealed to us that he sees his mom chocked by tulip buds but he tells his friend Guitar that it was a dream. When he spends a night in Ryan's Gulch (a ravine haunted by a women by the name of Ryan) with a group of guys and begins to hear eerie sounds of a woman crying, he is the only one in the group to suggest that it's just the wind. His inability to be convinced by the supernatural is made very clear in the book. At the beginning of the book, Morrison goes through great lengths to show his disbelief in ghosts and other mystic creatures. But towards the middle of the book, she gives distinctions of Milkman changing his point of view. He begins "experiencing the sight of Macon Dead I" (251) as well as a white peacock. In seeing these apparitions, Milkman's character doesn't face them with uncertainty. Instead, he recognizes presence with conviction. As the ghosts become more frequent and Milkman's self-awareness becomes more evident. There are clear parallels set between the supernatural and his greed. For example, when he becomes aware of his greed he also notices the apparition of a peacock. Though he eventually ignores the peacock, he believes it is there just like how he recognized his greed was there.
If he is able to overcome his disbelief of the supernatural, he will eventually be able to overcome his greed.

I Like Her Vulgar Paint

One thing bringing me pleasure in the text positive light shed on vulgar events. The happenings of this book are horrifyingly uncomfortable at times if you don't understand their purpose: giving the book a very piquant flavor. In order to establish the complexities of her characters in her novel Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison includes a lot bizarre events. For example, Milkman, the protagonist, is really named Macon, he gets the nickname Milkman because Ruth, his mother, used to breastfeed him long after he was able to eat real food. This can easily be viewed as very perverted and weird but Morrison delineates that the pleasure she is receiving from this act was not a perverted pleasure. At first, Milkman experiences "shame and impotence"(23) at this memory. but as we follow him along his quest we realize the extension of her motherly care is a result of love. On the day of her dad's funeral, Ruth is described, by her husband, as laying naked on the bed alongside his dead bloated body; even though Ruth states she was fully clothed. But it is these to contradicting details that describe the rift between Ruth and her husband.By using an outrageous event to grap the attention of the reader and eventually using it to develop her characters, Morrison makes the Song of Solomon a very pleasurable text.
Morrison's aggressive use of magical realism is also bringing me a lot of enjoyment. Milkman sees his mother getting suffocated by bloody, red, tulip buds. Freddie, the family's janitor, told Milkman his mom died after seeing a girl turn into a white bull. Also, Freddie constantly chats about ghosts as if they're as real as people. This motif of magical realism continues through the book with "men and dogs talking to each other" and other fantastical occurrences(277). Within the book you can feel Morrison's efforts to bring back the culture of the people she's describing. By adding magical realism she taps into a deeper layer of this culture. It adds depth to the development of the story; adding color and uniqueness. In the book the, motif of identity keeps showing up. Morrison uses magical realism to paint Milkman's journey. For example, she describes a fall day with meticulous detailing, "on autumn nights, in some parts of the city, the wind from the lake brings a sweetish smell to shore. An order like crystallized ginger, or sweet iced tea with dark clove floating in it... This heavy spice-sweet smell made you think of the East and striped tents and the sha-sha-sha of leg bracelets"(184). This combination of the realistic lake, wind, and shore with the suggestive, redolent characteristic of sweet ginger creates a specific painting in the minds of the reader while allowing the reader to still have control over what sweet ginger does to the image of autumn nights. This aspect of her writing is very enjoyable because the events in the story are so vividly illustrated while still being somewhat customizable by the reader; allowing an infinite amount of colors into her writing.

Dreaming of Buds and Bulls

  Throughout Toni Morrison's novel, Song of Solomon, there are myriad references to sexism and racism.  Milkman, the black middle-aged protagonist, grows up in the mid 1900s living with his mom and dad, Ruth and Macon Dead, and his two older sisters, Magdalene called Lena, and First Corinthians. One evening Macon Dead slaps Ruth after she makes an allusion to the sexual relationship she had with her own father. As a result, Milkman punches his father. It is after this that two dreams depicting sexist and racist themes are revealed. Milkman meets up with Guitar, his close friend, and relays to him his dream about his mom digging holes in her garden when malicious tulip buds grow out of the ground. The dream ends with her fighting for her life with them wrapped around her. When Guitar asks why he didn't save his mom from the tulip buds in his dream, Milkman says it was because she appeared to be enjoying the torture. I believe this dream has a lot of strong sexism. The strong, "bloody red heads" of the tulip buds that eventually smother her are probably referring to the male sex. In this book their have been plenty examples of males being dominant. For example, when Macon Jr. slaps Ruth, she merely looks down and doesn't say anything. Also, Milkman went on a rant earlier on in the book about how he feels the need to protect his mother. Or when Macon Jr. takes his family out on a car ride and objects everything Ruth says to him. But not only is the dream pointing out the motif of male dominance, it purposefully describes a submissive victim. She is described "hitting them away playfully, mischievously"(105). When they "were smothering her, taking away her breath, she merely smiled and fought them off as if they were harmless butterflies" (105). This reveals the weak-minded submissiveness of women in this novel.
  Following the description of Milkman's dream is the description of the dream Freddie, the family janitor, had. Freddie tells Milkman the story of how he became an orphan. Freddie's dad had died two months before he was born and his mom died during his birth. His mom was walking with a friend when they saw a neighbor on the road who said howdy. The minute she said howdy she turned into a white bull. Then his mom went into labor and after she gave birth she died at the sight of Freddie's new born face. The white bull was the cause of Freddie's birth and his mother's death; illustrating the increase of white supremacy and its' power over blacks. This power also was the reason why Ruth's father, a doctor, wasn't allowed to take any black patients. It was also why Macon Jr. stayed married to Ruth. Though he was suspicious of her having a sexual relationship with her father, he stayed with her in order to present himself as a respectable black person in the eyes of the white community.
Though there were other examples of racism and sexism, these two dreams gave very terse examples.