The Themes in Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison - Research Paper Example

? The Themes in Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison Jerry Ciacho The Themes in Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison Toni Morrison is an American novelist, editor, and professor. Her novels are known for their epic themes, vivid dialogue, and richly detailed characters. Among her best-known novels include Song of Solomon, a 1977 novel. It trails the life of Milkman, an African-American residing in Michigan. In this story, according to Loose Ends: Closure and Crisis in the American Social Text by Russell Reising, “Milkman, Morrison’s protagonist, whose search for personal identity and cultural bearings moves Song of Solomon, finally discovers one of the truths of his past, implicitly, e communal past of African-Americans.” (Reising 318) There are numerous themes that the novel presents. The epigraph of the novel, “The fathers may soar / And the children may know their names” is the very first allusion to one of the novel’s fundamental themes. Although flight can be an escape from restricting conditions, it also leaves a scar to those who are abandoned. Solomon’s flight permitted him to finally be liberated from enslavement in the cotton fields of Virginia. However, it also meant leaving Ryna, his wife with twenty-one kids. Even though Milkman’s flight frees him from the life in Not Doctor Street, Michigan, his flight is at the same time self-centered as it causes Hagar, his lover, to die of intense grief. The novel’s epigraph tries to cease the link between flight and abandonment. For Pilate, as Milkman comments, she can take flight without ever having to lift her feet off the ground. Pilate has surmounted flight, able to be free of submission without leaving anybody behind. Another theme evident in the book is the abandonment of women. Men’s recurrent relinquishment of women in Song of Solomon demonstrates that the story’s female characters have to suffer double the burden that men do. Not only are they oppressed and plagued by racism, but the women in the story are also left with no choice but to pay the expense for men’s liberation and freedom from slavery. Guitar, at one point in the novel, tells Milkman that black men are the misunderstood toilers of humankind, but on the contrary, the occurrences that happen all throughout the story indicate that it is the black women who more appropriately suit this description. The scenes that portray women’s relinquishment validate that in the novel, men carry accountability and are responsible only for themselves. However, women are accountable for not only themselves, but also for their family, and the community that they live in. For example, after suffering enslavement, Solomon finally flew back home to Africa without letting anyone know of his departure, but his wife, Ryna, who was likewise a slave, was left with no other option but to stay in Virginia to look after her twenty-one children all by herself. In Chapter 12, Milkman hears children singing, “O Solomon don’t leave me here /?Cotton balls to choke me?/ O Solomon don’t leave me here?/ Buckra’s arms to yoke me?Solomon done fly, / Solomon done gone?Solomon cut across the sky, / Solomon gone home.” (Morrison 303) According to The Songs Became the Stories: The Music in African American Fiction, 1970-2005, “this [the song] is an example of how the representation of music in Song of Solomon creates a space for a call and response interaction between text and reader. (Cataliotti 19) Solomon’s song suggests that when men are finally liberated from subjugation, they usually leave women behind. “O Solomon don’t leave me here” portrays Ryna’s decline into hopelessness and insanity, as Solomon gets ready for his flight back home to Africa. Although Solomon ultimately escapes bondage, his flight puts Ryna in a more difficult situation, leaving her to take care, nurture and raise their children up and at the same time toiling in the cotton fields. The second chapter of the book also provides more insight on the oppression of women by men. “He didn’t mean it. It happened before he was through. She’d stepped away from him to pick flowers, returned, and at the sound of her footsteps behind him, he’d turned around before he was through. It was becoming a habit—this concentration on things behind him. Almost as though there were no future to be had.” (Morrison 35) This passage denotes to the theme of distress and suffering imposed by men on women. During the trip to Honore Island, Milkman accidentally urinates on his sister. As Lena articulates in the ninth chapter, urination turns out to be a symbol and representation for Milkman’s conduct to his sisters and the other women in his life. Milkman is so worried and troubled with his own problems and hardships that he does not see that his family gives him special treatment. Women behind the scenes continuously care and support him. These women include his sisters, Pilate, Hagar and Milkman’s mother. He fails, conversely, to give back their bigheartedness and generosity to him. The theme of male freedom and emancipation with the expense of female subjugation and further suffering is mirrored in Milkman’s relationship with Hagar. It also persists throughout the novel. In addition, as written in Racial Myths and Masculinity in African American Culture, “for him [Milkman], flight is freedom and his newly established state of psychic emancipation enables him to view himself and other in a more sympathetic terms. From the narrator, we learn that Milkman, ‘smiled, remembering Pilate… He was homesick for her, her house.’ (300)” (Leak 130) Song of Solomon’s title refers to one of the books in the Bible of the same name, highlighting that the novel addresses long-standing themes. The book in the Biblr portrays a conversation between two lovers, King Solomon and his gorgeous, black Shulamite spouse. Morrison’s novel correspondingly is also somewhat a celebration of the victory of human love. Morrison chooses biblical names for the characters in her novel to emphasize the alignment of these characters with distinguished figures. Consequently, the majority of these characters in the story carry with them not only their individual and personal past as expounded in the novel, but also the history of the biblical character with the same name. By giving her characters the same name as that of prominent figures in the Bible, Morrison likens them to larger-than-life champions whose experience surpasses social and historical limitations. An examplewould be Hagar. The Hagar in the Bible is Sarah’s servant, who eventually bears Abraham, Sarah’s husband, a son and is then expelled from his sight. Similarly, Milkman in the novel, who relishes in her offerings, uses the Hagar in Morrison’s book. The resemblance of both Hagars’ involvements proposes that women will be mistreated in any patriarchal civilization. Based on this crooked concept of gender roles, the culture in the novel considers men and women inversely. Whilst men fly away from their wife, children and the community they live in, they are nonetheless respected as heroes. Women, however, who do the same are considered to be immature. Though Solomon deserted his family by flying to Africa, succeeding generations remember him as the courageous patriarch of the entire community. Simultaneously, Ryna, who was abandoned by her husband and was left to raise her twenty-one children while working in the cotton fields, is remembered as the woman who became insane because she was too feeble to take up her end of the agreement. Citizens of Shalimar have christened a frightening, dark ravine after Ryna, whereas they have ascribed Solomon’s name to a picturesque mountain peak. The public respects and honors Solomon’s relinquishment of his wife and children but chastises Ryna’s incapability to take care and raise their children by herself. The third main theme that is prevalent in this novel is the issue of racism as it is the main reason for suffering in the novel. Racism has enduring detrimental effects on the society. Slavery triggers Solomon to escape toward freedom and to end his marriage to his wife, Ryna. This escape and abandonment instigates many generations of disturbance. The information that his father died due to the neglect of his white employers’ makes Guitar particularly sensitive to the prejudices and discriminations effected against African-Americans. Emmett Till’s killing and the bombing of the Birmingham Church remind Guitar of his own personal tragedy, converting him into a coldblooded, revengeful killer. Guitar’s experience in life demonstrates that racism estranges its victims from their native societies and triggers them to lose touch with their humaneness. References Reising, R. (1996). Loose Ends: Closure and Crisis in the American Social Text. Durham: Duke University Press. Cataliotti, R. (2007). The Songs Became the Stories: The Music in African American Fiction, 1970-2005. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc. Leak, J. (2005). Racial Myths and Masculinity in African American Literature. Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press. Morrison, T. (2004). Song of Solomon. New York: Vintage International. Read More