Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon
Begin: 10/12/07
End: 10/21/07
Quality: Ten out of Ten.
Reason: Reading Plan.
Genre: Fiction. African-American Fiction. Literature.
Original Language: English.
Date of Publication: 1977.
Fog Index: N/A
Flesch Index: N/A
Flesch-Kincaid Index: N/A
Complex Words:N/A.
Number: A Few.
Synopsis: Well, it’s really quite a number of stories, now isn’t it. The main one is Milkman and his lack of identity but that doesn’t really do justice to the story, not by a long shot.
Thoughts: What to say about this book? Well, first of all, can I just take a moment and fucking bow down before Toni Morrison? She is seriously the best damn living writer we have. A fucking national treasure.
This is my favorite of any of Ms. Morrison’s novels. I know that Beloved is heralded as the cat’s meow and I do not for a minute doubt that it deserve’s that title. I love that book, I really do, but it’s just so damn depressing. While Song of Solomon is very uplifting and, I think, much more lyrical. Plus, it is quite a bit more accessible than, probably, any of Morrison’s other novels. The characters are just so alive and remarkable. Pilate. Who is not completely mesmerized by Pilate? She appears in this novel and everyone else just pales in comparison. She is one of those characters that I want in my life, that I really feel is an old friend because I have spent so much time not only reading the novel but also thinking about her. Macon, Ruth, Dr. Foster, Circe. Guitar. Sing. Solomon. These are all characters that will stay with you for a long time, even those whom the book only touches on briefly.
Now, there are a couple aspects of the story that I would very much like to delve into for a moment. The first issue is that of names. This is such a hugely important aspect of this book.
We have the difference between what the official names for places are such as Mercy Hospital and Mains Avenue. Yet, the oral tradition of the African Americans in the town refers to it as No Mercy hospital and Mains Avenue as Not Doctor Street. The locals know the reality and call it like they see it. We have the names that the first Macon Dead populated his farm with. He named it Lincoln’s Heaven. He names the animals in the same manner. The names of places are accurate “namings” of the reality of these places.
Then there is what people are named, either by their parents, by bureaucrats or by the community. Macon Dead does not allow anyone to speak the name of his wife. He also does not use his real name of Jake, instead he goes by the name that the “drunk yankee” gave him. And we see how happy and completed Milkman becomes when he discovers the names of his grandparents. We should not forget, especially in a Toni Morrison novel, the mythology of names. The power one gets from knowing someone’s true name. We also have Pilate who carries around her name in a snuff box, the name that her illiterate father wrote out for the midwife. Is it coincidence that First Corinthians is the sister who decides to love considering that is the epistle most concerned with love?
We have the names that were given to Milkman and Guitar, not their real names.
“What’s your trouble? You don’t like your name?”
“No.” Milkman let his head fall to the back of the booth. “No, I don’t like my name.”
“Let me tell you something, baby. Niggers get their names the way they get everything else- the best way they can. The best way they can.”
The other major thing that I wished to talk about was flying. The epigraph of the novel is…
“The fathers may soar / And the children may know their names” The novel then opens on Robert Smith’s attempt at flight. It is a theme that while I would not say runs through the novel is nevertheless extremely important to the novel. Flight is a means to escape(overstating the obvious, I know) and we see various characters escaping their oppression. Solomon, Milkman (although that can be questioned) Robert Smith, Pilate. Pilate can fly while her feet touch the ground, Milkman notes at one point. Solomon flies off, leaving his children and wife bereft of a father, and goes back to African, escaping the oppression of slavery.
“He walked there now-strutted is the better word, for he had a high behind and an athlete’s stride-thinking of names. Surely, he thought, he and his sister had some ancestor, some lithe young man with onyx skin and legs as straight as cane stalks, who had a name that was real. A name given to him at birth with love and seriousness. A name that was not a joke, nor a disguise nor a brand name. But who this lithe young man was, and where his cane stalk legs carried him from or to, could never be known. No. nor his name. His own parents, in some mood of perverness or resignation, had agreed to abidge by a naming done to them by somebody who couldn’t have cared less. Agreed to take and pass on to all their issue this heavy name scrawled in perfect thoughtlessness by a drunken Yankee in the Union Army. A literal slip on the pen handed to his father on a piece of paper and which he handed to his only son, and his son likewise handed on to his; Macon Dead who begat a second Macon Dead .”
“Gimme hate, Lord,” he whimpered. “I’ll take hate any day. But don’t give me love. I can’t take no more love, Lord. I can’t carry it. Just like Mr. Smith. He couldn’t carry it. It’s too heavy. Jesus, you know, You know all about it. Ain’t it heavy? Jesus? Ain’t love heavy? Don’t you see, Lord? Your own son couldn’t carry it. If it killed Him, what you think it’s gonna do to me? Huh? Huh?” (26)
“And heard as well her shouts when the baby, who they had believed was dead also, inched its way headfirst out of a still, silent and indifferent cave of flesh, dragging her own cord and her own afterbirth behind her. But the rest was true. Once the new baby’s lifeline was cut, the cord stump shriveled, fell off and left no trace of having ever existed” (28)
“It was becoming a habit-this concentration on things behind him. Almost as though there were no future to be had.” (35)
“Taken apart, it looked alright. Even better than all right. But it lacked coherence, a coming together of the features into a total self. It was all very tentative, the way he looked, like a man around a corner of someplace he is not supposed to be, trying to make up his mind whether to go forward or to turn back. The decision he made would be extremely important, but the way in which he made the decision would be careless, haphazard and uninformed.” (70)
“The lengths to which lost love drove men and women never surprised them. They had seen women pull their dresses over their heads and howl like dogs for lost love. And men who set in doorways with pennies in their mouths for lost love. ‘Thank god,’ they whispered to themselves, thank god I ain’t never had one of them graveyard loves.” (128)
“Two growed-up women talkin’ about a man like he was a house or needed one. He ain’t a house, he’s a man, and whatever he need, don’t none of you got it.” (138)
“I don’t remember my mother because she died before I was born” (141)
“So I knew right away what he meant cause he was right there when we did it. He meant that if you take a life, the you own it. You responsible for it. You can’t get rid of nobody by killing them. They still there, and they know yours now.” (208)
“Stop sniveling,” it said. “Stop picking around the edges of the world. Take advantage, and if you can’t take advantage, take disadvantage. We live here. On this planet, in this nation, in this county right here. Nowhere else! We got a home in this rock, don’t you see! Nobody starving in my home; nobody crying in my home, and if I got a home you got one too! Grab it! Grab this land! Take it. Hold it, mybrothers, make it, my brothers, shake it, squeeze it, turn it , twist it, beat it, kick it, kiss it, whip it, stomp it, dig it, plow it, seed it, reap it, rent it, buy it, sell it, own it, build it, mutiply it, and pass it on, can you hear me? Pass it on.” (235)
“You think because he doesn’t love you that you are worthless. You think because he doesn’t want you anymore that he is right- that his judgement and opinion of you are correct. If he throws you out, then you are garbage. You think he belongs to you because you want to belong to him. Hagar, don’t. It a bad word, ‘belong’. Especially when you put it with somebody you love. Love shouldn’t be like that. Did you ever see the way the clouds love a mountain? They circle all around it; sometimes you can’t even see the mountain for the clouds. But you know what? You go up top and what do you see? His head. The clouds never cover the head. His head pokes through, because the clouds let him; they don’t wrap him up. They let him keep his head up high, free, with nothing to hide him or bind him. Hear me, Hagar?” He spoke to her as he would to a very young child. “You can’t own a human being. You can’t lose what you don’t own. Suppose you did own him. Could you really love somebody who was absolutely nobody without you? You really want somebody like that? Somebody who falls apart when you walk out the door? You don’t, do you? And neither does he? You’re turning over your whole life to him. Your whole life, girl. And if it means so little to you that you can just give it away, hand it to him, then why should it mean any more to him? He can’t value you more than you value yourself.” (305)
