Song of Soloman
White people off-stage:
how African American people live and their choices
also historically accurate because during Jim Crow (separate but unequal)
America doesn’t really exist for black people as for white people
Magic Realism
fantastical events narrated in the tone of realism
Magical figure: Pilate: embodiment of nature itself, embodiment of the will to live
Omniscient narrator:
each character own thoughts and motivations. narrator is never author
sometimes narrator simply giving you important info : all-knowing about everything
provides exposition(info to advance story or plot: geography, backstory, setting) unrelated to characters
Mary’s bar, important to the culture of this town (83-84) why different kinds of people go to this institution.
(162): sociological characterizing people who have no access to water (landlocked) — set up that milkman has urge to leave.
Morrison presents readers with the conundrum but provides no judgement
G and M arguing what do we do about people being oppressed and system not caring
Historical context
Emmett Till Lynching (real historical event) 1955
“There were no questions about how stomped him — his murderers had boasted freely — and no questions about the motive” (80)
No arrest, no trial, no indictment — leads to the Seven Days”
Living with knowledge of how fragile and powerless you are
(82)
…“whatever his proof of who he was and where he was”… (100 or 101)
Being a black man in Jim Crow America
Logic of the Seven Days
Guitar: “If the Negro was hanged, they hang…”
Robert Smith was one of the seven days and couldn’t do it so kills himself
about how long can you take powerlessness and fight against the oppressor
Morrison validating the motivation of Black rage against whites
milkman feels he’s individual, Guitar feels more deeply his ethnic identity
Novel works off binary oppositions: white/black, living/dead, male/female
motif of flying (air) v. ground (earth)
2 words only have meaning within the pair
Ideological binary oppositions: one term has always been assumed to have higher value than the other.
set up this way: eve created out of Adam's rib. fe-male, ab-normal, white vs. non-white
“North to what?” : doesn’t exist w/o a south
Pilate:
milkmaid to all good things
Milkman: “It was the first time in his life that he [was] completely happy”(47) — at Pilates house
Macon tells Milkman about his childhood with Pilate
Staying with Circe, the midwife, in Danville, PA:
The ghost of their father after being shot (lynched)
Pilate vs. Ruth:
“They were so different, these two women” (138-9) : poetic interpretation of Ruths actual thoughts
(139)- both supernatural relationships with father. both vitally interested in Macon deeds son (both in a sense his mothers)
Names:
black neighborhood is called the blood bank
Present Context
non-binary (racial, sexual) terms : there is a fluidity and a continuum all fairly recently
Opening scene sets up entire novel
milkman and guitar best friends
milkman is first black child born in (No) Mercy Hospital (white). assisted by smart four-year-old guitar
their relationship is central to novel
Ruth (dead doctor’s daughter) Dead and Pilate
pilate sings as if to call forth the baby (5-6); Pilates herbs helped Ruth give burth
Why does Robert Smith Commit suicide
Color symbolism
red rose
Black woman singing black song (sugarman)
Segregated geographies
in fictional small city in Michigan 1931-1963
black map of town has different names than the white map: how different and unequal the lives are. can live side by side and being white/black changes everything
black people dont have white insurance agent
Life / Death Binary Opposition
Death (Robert Smith)
Birth (Milkman) : lives in the dead family. somewhere there must be an alive family.
Flight / Ground
thinks can fly and is brought to the ground by the fact that he can’t
Pilate sings : “sugarcane gone home”
Scene 2
setting up patriarchal household : dead household
reflects dominant social values
the women are objects of the men
Ruth, Carinthians, Lena
Macon to Ruth: “You by yourself ain’t nobody. You your daddy’s daughter!”
neighborhood has male-only neighborhood institution (ex. pool hall)
Milkman can’t distinguish between his sisters
kids take fathers name
setting up matriarchal household
important that her name is pilot in a n
piloy'only female “institutions”, live close to land and close
house run and determined by women : mother to daughter, mother to daughter.
Male / Female
traditional gender roles (Dead) and transgressive ones (Pilate)
Macon to Pilate(his sister): “Why can’t you dress like a woman?”(20)
should not dress in a way that is sexualized unless you are meant to
In Macon Dead’s Household - Patriarchal - based on wealth, social status (33)
Milkman breastfed until he is 11 : dysfunctional family
Hard, cold, independent. imitating his boss (works for a white middles class landlord, —> anxiety about social status)
Macon likes to show off car, his daughters
In Pilate’s household
based in nature/environment
Milkman experiences household of song and warmth and direct communication (Macon, 27-30)
Milkman thinks: “No wonder his father was afraid of them” (47, 49) : their house is the opposite
living black female culture vs. dead imitation of white middle class (31-33)
Malcom: “Pilate can’t teach you anything you can use in the world” — yea in this world, Malcom’s patriarchal world
Pilate = Pilot
teaches manners and ethics
Pilate: embodiment of nature itself, embodiment of the will to live
Magical realism - crawling out of death mother, no umbilical chord
smelling of nature
Many Characters tell their stories to Milkman
novel doesn’t judge any of the characters
Black powerlessness, Black rage, Emmett Till
novel unfolds over 30 years
The plot: Milkman’s search for self (identity) vs. Malcon’s greed and gold
in mirror: “[He] lacked coherence, a coming together of the features into a total self”
Chapter 6: The 7 days have their reasons — revenging lynching on white people
validating black rage: at what point do you fight back
Pilate and Macon: the gold in the cave — where is it now? (Milkman and Hagar)
Milkman at 31
“except for the one time he had hit his father, he had never acted independently” (120)
Everything boring
Buffered from race issues by class privilege
equates being serious with being miserable so has pursued pleasure as a way of rebelling against family
Backstories of the Dead: Macon v. Ruth
Multiple perspectives: can Milkman learn “the whole truth” at 31"?
Sisters look prematurely old and mother looks prematurely young
Macon feels delighted when feels son belongs to him
Milkman hits his father
saw mother as frail woman “content to do tiny things”
so shocked at being assaulted he could not speak
Macon: did Ruth have incenstuous relationship with father
Multiple Perspectives
of every event
each character orally tells pov to milkman
honoring oral traditions - African American culture has all kinds. Opening song, family theatre, songs and rhymes providing important info and taught and learned person to person
Mother to son
self-knowledge
“I am not a strange woman; I am a small one… he tried to kill you’” (124)
“I wouldn’t have been able to save you except for Pilate”(124).
Should the reader take sides
there is never a single truth concerning interpersonal relationships
each character gets to tell his or her story
should never believe only one person: novel will not direct you what to think, who to care about etc… open culture
Pilate’s childhood of wandering: farming, “root work”
Pilate wanted to learn and did. Everything she does now. created own agency as a young girl
Grandmother’s name is Sing Dead: you must sing your ancestors stories and bring them to life
Oral traditions: communication where, knowledge, ideas and culture is preserved and transmitted orally from one generation to another. People telling Milkman stories. Oral histories are sophisticated. folktales, verses, storytelling
Milkman is a detective and the problem to solve is his family. He grew up in a very dysfunctional family.
Macon dead I was most popular and charismatic member of community
Grandfather was essentially lynched for his success and his murderers never came to trial.
Father only wants what white men have
Symbolism: title, gold, bones, flight
Song of Solomon — only book of the Bible that is also romantic poetry
Erotic poetry is an allegory for the depth of the love between the Jewish people (bride) and their God (bridegroom)
This novel is her Song of Solomon (song of love) to black men who in order to change have to feel safer in this world than they have (they have been racially othered/murdered)
“Sing! Sing!”
The Dead sisters call out Milkman’s patriarchy (and their fathers constructed)
Intersectionality - experiences of discrimination and oppression based on more than one factor : interconnected nature of social categories as they create overlapping, independent systems of discrimination for a given individual or group
In SOS the black women cope with both systemic racism and patriarchy
have to be obedient to father and son
Pilate interacting with the police
Milkman pissed on them since he was born, they started making artificial roses. He is trying to be protective in his own way : Nina calls him out and Milkman says I don’t wanna hear it
Historical context
chooses a male protagonist because 1977, second-wave feminism: Because it is men who have to change
1977: Most non-black Americans knew little about African American lives, history
Mini-series, Roots (1977)
Lawrence Levine wrote Black Culture, Black Consciousness (1975)
Family Saga
sympathy for every character: gives it to reader to make sense of situation
about recovering family past
Birmingham, Alabama 1963
bit of Sunday dresses hanging in the air
Narrative Structure
Part I: is the dead family
at the end” “He felt a self inside himself emerge, a clean-lined definition self”(184)
Part II: Milkman finding roots
Milkman coming to understand the land the topography
What is self? the answer to “what’s your story?” The narrative that a person tells about their life and it changes
Opening scene keeps recurring:
Symbolic opposition between bones and money
Current society considers possessions and comfort as highest values (over ethics, morality, sacrifice)
Milkman’s goods tarnished but self is being built up
Milkman grew up thinking everything is a commodity to be purchased but small town values are different
Milkman takes journey from gold to the real treasure
Corinthians must escape the dead house it is smothering her self-actualization. her romance.
See white peacock and realize it is a completely unusual event: Guitar tells Milkman peacocks can’t really fly but can’t fly. flight vs. ground for milkman
In Danville PA “he felt free”
Emotional masking before Whites — hiding one’s intelligence
Part of white supremacy where Blacks need to conform to white stereotypes
Pilate in front of police
Milkman things: “Pilate had been shorter … Ange her hands were shaking as she described how … her husband had been lynched in Mississippi 15 years ago … [She] did a little number for the cops.”
Being legible: how will white people see.
After: “Pilate was tall again… And her own voice was back”(207)
Milkman learns what emotional maturity looks like
In shalamar he experiences class hostility. does not know the protocols in this town and they feel he is treating them as objects (of a lower class)
this is a class not race issue
can he come to life in a family where everyone’s spirits have been smothered?
he proves himself by not backing down - both of them get cut up: convinces the men round him that he can talk the talk : proving that he is just a man, and just a black man like them
strength of oral traditions: children’s songs, family history, geography
learns mythical history of parents and grandparents
Heddy - Native American woman, Milkman’s great grandmother
Mother of Sing(ing) Byrd, raises Jake as her one
when his father Solomon “flies off,” and his mother Ryan goes crazy
Jake and Sing leave Shalimar with a wagonload of slaves
wind up in Danville, PA, where the Butlers Lynch/murder/kill him for his success
Symbolic racial solidarity between Blacks and Native Americans(runaway slaves welcomed and intermarriage) : Morrison playing omage to this
his great grandparents were there at the start of this town. nobody talks about white people beyond the town
Oral traditions and folklore: a children’s song/game turns out to be a vessel…
the songs of Solomon: Shalimar Virginia and the town legend of “flying Africans”
Soloman’s General store, Shalimar, Va. (Solomon = shallemone = Shalimar)
The kids in Shalamar sing “Solomon, dont leave me here” as opposed to sugarman as was sung in the beginning : what is the story they are singing he asks?
Flight and groundedness (roots, trees, one’s people) vs. flight and “freedom”
Milkmans love of flight as a child
watching and listening to the kids play he realizes that this is never the sort of innocence he experienced as a child : he grieved because he could not fly, he was bullied for being rich
every person needs both flight and ground:
constantly wanting to fly means escape, but being too grounded = trapped
milkman achieves the balance: white peacock soaring away
Milkman thinking more and more about Pilate
“He found himself exhilarated by simply walking the earth” : first major connection to pilate. all of the words of what Pilate are are now repeated in Milkman’s description of walking.
Morrison represents gender equality using only form (prose, 285, 293)
Omniscient narration of the romantic night of Milkman and Sweet
He, She, He, She : sentences alternate what man and woman does
applicable to any man or woman in the world (not names)
How men can learn gender equity: he can fly knowing that somebody is on the ground (a woman, a future partner) keeping him tethered
Reclaiming one’s roots: self, identity: what’s your story? Who are your people?
ethnicity and race paradigm: difficult to know who you are without knowing the answer to these questions
what is the story the kids are singing he asks?
search for self : draws your attention to how much self is knowing what your emotional resources are (277 long paragraph). privilege: you think you deserve certain things
old self was supported by material possessions but it is falling away: who are you without your material possessions : everything that marked him is gone
—> forgives father. that was his fathers way of being successful demanding respect in this society
self is tied to family, people, country, ethnic group
you do not raise yourself and everything you do is not because of you, that is a lie
“Here he was walking around in the middle of the 20th century trying to explain what a ghost has done. But why not? he thought. One fact was certain: Pilate did not have a navel. Since that was true, anything could be, and why not ghosts as well?”(293) : Magical realism a metaphor for possibility, challenges white narratives
Ending
ethnic beliefs about death
Pilate passing the torch to milkman
meaning of milkman’s name has altered to a more positive sense : delivering the nourishment/life to members of the dead family
both feminine and masculine methods of healing are valid, having both is necessary (flight and groundedness both necessary), but the ultimate result of either is also unknown which is why ending is ambiguous
violence, just the masculine way, is destructive to the psyche