Flight In Song Of Solomon Essay Example For Students

Flight In Song Of Solomon Essay Song of Solomon Song of Soloman:A Search for a BeginningO Sugarman done fly awaySugarman done goneSugarman cut across the skySugarman gone home(6)1Milkman was born to fly.Perhaps not!Maybe, he was just doomed to a life of flight.Toni Morrison seemingly presents her readers a choice.Milkman is born under a paradoxical cloud.His life seems to be destined for controversy.Toni Morrison eventually leaves the reader with a choose your own ending configuration.As in Beloved, Morrisons unique style of ending a novel with no finalization, only enhances the content and tickles the imagination. Evidence of the influence of Zora Neale Hurston is sprinkled liberally throughout the story.In addition to folklore and mythology, Song of Solomon is also rife with the cold, hard facts of reality.Did Milkman actually become airborne or was he merely a man, consistently trying to escape reality?Toni Morrisons, Song of Solomon, was inspired in part, by All Gods Chillun Had Wings (Andrews et al 103).Accord ing to this folk tale, at one time all Africans could fly.Through transgressions, they lost the ability of flight. On occasion, someone would shake off the weight of their burdens and be able to fly. Only a select few held onto remnants of the memory of flight.According to a legend in Hurston, the transgression, was eating salt.The Africans brought to Jamaica could all fly.They had never eaten salt.Those who ate salt after they arrived, stayed and became slaves because salt made them too heavy to fly.Those who did not partake, flew back to Africa. (Hurston 315).Whether Africans really fly or just escape a monumental burden, perhaps only through death, is a decision Toni Morrison has apparently left to her readers. Never the less, no matter what you believe, within Song of Solomon, the suggestion is, that in order to fly you must go back to the beginning, back to your roots.You must learn the art from the old messages. Denise Heinz explains, what she calls the Double Consciousness of Toni Morrison, as an endeavor to understand how self and identity are affected by society (Heinze 14).Everyone appears to be searching for an identity in Song of Solomon.Identities seem to be very transient and change with the whims of society.No one is who they appear to be and nothing is as it seems. Some of the characters never grasp their elusive identity.But then, they are afraid to reach too far back.If they should, they might not like what they find. So, they are content to continue in their less interesting, less challenging, much less introspective world. Song of Solomon is a scavenger hunt, with Milkman unearthing clues as he snatches up bits and pieces of wisdom that direct him to the treasure.Set deep within the black culture, the story begins in 1931 and moves quickly to the highly volatile sixties. In his quest for gold, Milkman uncovers the true treasure, his past.This knowledge unlocks the secret of his own identity.The ghosts of the past, explain the people of the present.In that instant, the secret of life becomes clear to him. The circumstances encompassing Milkmans birth gave every evidence of the inner turmoil that was to follow him throughout his life and seems to cast a foreboding cloud on his future.Macon Dead III seems doomed as he is born into a family as scattered and artificial as the very rose petals his mother dropped with her first labor pain. As the velvet petalsfloat to the ground, the insurance man spreads his wings and flies from Mercy.The flight is unsuccessful even though Pilate tries to sing him into the air.The death of Mr. Smith, and the confusion at Mercy (called No Mercy) Hospital allows Macon III to be the first black baby ever allowed to draw its first breath within those consecrated white halls. Baby Macon is brought home to Not Doctor Street, which is really Mains Ave.He begins his life in the house of Dead.For all intents and purposes, this dysfunctional family may as well be dead, for none of them have a life.A total lack of communication has effectively closed all the doors in the home, as each member seems to live within their own, small room. The real world is securely locked outside.No future, no past.To communicate would be to acknowledge the present.To acknowledge the present would mean accepting the past.Their names mirror their pathetic lives, even as they tell the story. Cathj EssayHagar feels she has no identity without Milkman.When Milkman casts her aside, she makes a desperate attempt to create an identity to induce him to love her again.Hagar tries to sculpt, what she feels, will be the perfect woman.She comes to the harsh realization that the image she sees in the mirror and the image reflected in Pilates and Rebas eyes, is vastly different.Hagar suddenly realizes, What if there is no me like my statue? (Hurston 581).Hagars link with the past is her graveyard love.This automatically condemns her. Guitar resents that Pilate has connected him with a past he despises, as she tries to get them out of jail and with that one look, the jeweled hatred in his eyes, (210) has exposed his inner self.Milkman, witnessing this, assigns a new and terrible identity to Guitar, as he realized that Guitar could kill, would kill, and probably had killed. (210).Guitar Baines bane is the destructive force and will have to be dealt with sooner or later.Guitar is so filled with greed, hate and death, he can not see the truth.When forced to confront his identity, he goes mad.His mind has become so twisted , he does not even realize he has crossed the line to insanity. Milkman begins his odyssey with Circe.He finds her living on a self-imposed island with her beasts, her pack of golden-eyed dogs, each of which had the intelligent childs eyes he had seen from the window (240).Circe then shows Milkman the path to the spirit of the cave, or underworld.This experience will lead him in the right direction for his homeward journey.He begins to trip over his roots and his quest changes direction.He has a long journey ahead, fraught with danger, before he can go home. In Shalimar, Virginia, the present begins to meld with the past:Solomon done fly, Solomon done goneSolomon cut across the sky, Solomon gone home.(302)Sugarman Shalimar ShaleemoneSolomon. They were all interchangeable, all one.Solomon had his own identity search, inadvertently carried on by his great grandson.His name was the key to the beginning.The gold no longer exists and the treasure is in Sing, and in Jake, a baby who fell from the sky, and in old bones and childrens games.The snuffbox could be returned to its proper place. Relieved of his vanities and reunited with his roots,Milkmans burdens could be cast off.Carrying with him, the message of the past, Milkman leaps into the air. When reading Song of Solomon, the reader acquires the feeling of being a very teeny person, walking into the middle of a very large rope that has been frayed at the end.Each strand is going off in its own direction, but at the same time, retains an imprint, a memory of where it belonged at one time.As you turn each page, the strands of the rope seem to converge in the distance.Soon they begin to twine and twist together.At the core, is a solid rope, with each strand braided neatly with the others to form a tightly woven story.With its many parts, but only one beginning,Song of Solomon is absolutely, the perfect soft-boiled egg (40). Works CitedAndrews, William L., et al.The Norton Anthology of African American Literature. New York: W.W. Norton ; Co., 1997.103Barnhart, C.L., et al.The American College Dictionary.New York: Random House, 1970.919Heinze, Denise.The Dilemma of Double-Consciousness: Toni Morrisons Novels. Athens:The University of Georgia Press, 1993.14Hurston, Zora Neale.Hurston: Folklore, Memoirs, other Writings.Ed. Cheryl A. Wall.New York: Penguin Books,1995.315, 581, 597, 618Morrison, Toni.Song of Solomon.New York:Penguin Books, 1977.