Durthy A. Washington - CliffsNotes on Morrisons Song of Solomon

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Song of Solomon explores the quest for cultural identity. Based on the African-American folktale about enslaved Africans who escape slavery by flying back to Africa, it tells the story of Macon Milkman Dead, a young man alienated from himself and estranged from his family, his community, and his historical and cultural roots. Milkman is mentally enslaved and spiritually dead, but with the help of his eccentric aunt, Pilate, and his best friend. Guitar Bains, he embarks on a physical and spiritual journey that enables him to reconnect with his past and realize his self-worth.

The action of Song of Solomon spans thirty-some years. The narration comprises two distinct sections. Part I (Chapters 19) is set in an unnamed town in Michiganpresumably Detroit. It traces Milkmans life from birth to age thirty-two and focuses on his spiritually empty, aimless life as a young man caught between his fathers materialistic lifestyle and Pilates traditional values. These chapters are interspersed with various characters flashbacks to their pasts. We learn that Milkmans father, Macon, and Macons sister, Pilate, ran away from home after their father was murdered for protecting his land. However, after a disagreement between them, they each went their own way. Although both Macon and Pilate eventually end up in the same unnamed Michigan town, Macon refuses to speak to his sister, whom he feels is an embarrassment to his social position in the town. This section ends with Milkmans decision to leave Michigan in search of Pilates illusory goldMilkmans inheritancewhich Macon is sure his sister hid in one of the many places she lived prior to coming to Michigan.

Part II (Chapters 1015) begins with Milkmans arrival in Danville, Pennsylvania, where his paternal grandfather had built the near-mythological Lincolns Heaven, a prosperous farm for which he was killed. Unable to find Pilates gold in Danville and prompted by the mysterious stories surrounding his ancestors. Milkman traces his ancestry to the fictional town of Shalimar, Virginia, where he meets his fathers people and discovers the true spiritual meaning of his inheritance. The novels ambiguous ending centers on Milkmans flight across Solomons Leap.

Song of Solomon is Morrisons third novel and one of her most commercially successful. Published in 1977, the noveltentatively titled Milkman Deadwas condensed in Redbook. It was later chosen as a main selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club, which had not selected a novel written by a black author since Richard Wrights Native Son in 1940. The same month in which it was published by Knopf, Song of Solomon was sold to New American Library, a paperback publisher, for an estimated $115,000 and quickly became a bestseller. Well over half a million copies are now in print, and translation rights have been sold in more than ten countries. The novel won fiction awards from the National Book Critics Circle and the American Academy and Institute of Letters. It also won the National Book Award for best novel and made the front page of the New York Times Book Review. Since Morrison is known primarily for her womanist writings that portray the challenges of growing up black and female in a white, male-dominated culture, the phenomenal success of Song of Solomon, which features a black male protagonist, is especially remarkable. (Womanist, according to Alice Walker, who coined the term, is the African-American equivalent of feminist. Consequently, while feminists focus on sexism and strive for womens liberation and economic equity, womanists focus on both sexism and racism, demanding respect for the achievements and contributions of black women and recognition of the black woman as an integral part of the male-dominated black community.)

Morrison, asked why she chose a male protagonist for Song of Solomon, responded, Because I thought he had more to learn than a woman would have. She also confessed to intentionally trying to feel things that are of no interest to me but I think are of interest to men, like winning, like kicking somebody, like running toward a confrontation; that level of excitement when they are in danger. Drawing on a variety of stories, myths, and legends, the novel centers on two key stories: the Yoruba folktale of the flying Africans and Song of Solomon, or Song of Songs, the twenty-second book of the Old Testament.

Song of Solomon is often classified as an impressionistic coming-of-age novel, or bildungsroman, that merges elements of fantasy and reality. According to Morrison, the novel is about a man who learns to fly and all that that means. But its also about the ways in which we discover, all of us, who and what we are. And how important and truly exciting that journey is. In part, Song is a wakeup call for young black males struggling to survive in white America. Given Morrisons insistence that a strong family and community are the means to black survival, we can surmise that the novels abbreviated titleSOSis no accident.

Although Morrison dedicated this novel to her father, we can also read it as a love song to young black men who, as Morrison illustrates through the character of Milkman, are doomed to spiritual death and self-alienation unless they read and understand their history.

Historically, Song of Solomon was published in the wake of the Black Arts/Black Power movements. Advocates of the Black Arts movementincluding Larry Neal, Etheridge Knight, Sonia Sanchez, and Nikki Giovannibelieved that the primary objective of all black artistic expression was to achieve social change and moral and political revolution. Consequently, if art fails to make a political statement, it is irrelevant. The movements philosophywhich countered the protest literature movement of the 1940s and 1950s led by such writers as James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison, and Richard Wrightis best summarized by Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones), who believes that art should be fists and daggers and pistols to clean out the world for virtue and love.