Essay On Song Of Solomon

While Milkman is searching for his family’s history in Shalimar, he encounters the song about his ancestors Solomon’s flight. Another example of selective perception, even though Solomon abandoned his family and his community, the fact that he escaped slavery turned him into a religious figure in Shalimar. Milkman describes Shalimar as a place where “everything was named Solomon” (302). However, the thing that really caught Milkman’s attention was a song sung by children about his grandfather and great grandparents and how his great grandfather Solomon flew. The town being named after Solomon shows the respect the people have for the escapee, even though it has been close to a century since the abolition of slavery, but because he is the one of the few people who did escape to the north during before abolition, escaping oppression, he is still

At the beginning of the novel Milkman visits Pilate's household on a regular basis. Seeing it a refuge from his exceedingly dull life, he involves himself in the lives of his relatives; especially in that of Hagar. Throughout his adolescence, Hagar brushes off Milkman's lascivious glances and displays of affection; however, as he matures, Hagar takes interest in Milkman and falls in love with him as she fulfills his sexual desires. Once Milkman's lust for Hagar abates, he chooses to unceremoniously dump her and seek others within his own social group to fill the void (or rather, for him to fill her void). Hagar, abashed, searches for Milkman's reasons for the sudden, unexpected change, but when she sees him with another woman her fury unleashes and initiates a colossal cascade of emotion that results in Hagar's monthly attempts to kill Milkman. Feeling that she deserves Milkman's love and attention more so than other women, Hagar rationalizes her actions with a very simple attitude: Milkman will either love me and include me in his life, or have no one at all. Hagar's need for Milkman's death soon vanishes, she cannot bring herself to murder the one she loves; however, this does not impede her from seeking other paths to Milkman's heart. Although Hagar's raging emotions result in

Besides the children of Macon Dead, there are other biblical allusions in the names of people. One of these is Hagar, Pilate's son and Milkman's cousin. Though the biblical Hagar is not well known, her character in the Bible reflects, in some ways, the character in Morrison's novel. In the bible, Hagar is Sarah's handmaiden. When she bares the son

Hulga did not care about anyone else but herself. She lived in self-pity. There are many disabled kids, adults and veterans in the world. There are professional runners and people without limbs that work and do amazing things. Even though she had these issues she thought she was better and too good for everyone else. Mrs. Hopewell states that Hulga, “was brilliant but she didn’t have a grain of sense.”(O’Connor 558) Hulga even

The African American families in Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon present abnormality and dysfunction. Normalcy, seen in common nuclear families, is absent. The protagonist, Milkman, is shaped by his dysfunctional relationships with parental figures.

It can be said that Song of Solomon is bildungsroman which is defined by The Encyclopedia Britannica as “a class of novel that deals with the [coming-of-age or] formative years of an individual”. Furthermore, in a bildungsroman, a main protagonist usually undergoes some transformation after seeking truth or philosophical enlightenment. In Morrison’s novel, the plot follows the main protagonist Milkman as he matures within his community while developing relationships with others and discovering his individual identity. In an essay titled Call and Response, Marilyn Sanders Mobley notes that “What Song of Solomon does ultimately is suggest that a viable sense of African American identity comes from responding to alternative constructions of

In chapter 5, Milkman spends a lot of his time at Guitar’s house, in order to hid from Hagar who is roaming the streets, stalking and trying to kill him, having already attempted for his life multiple times. Hagar is feeling overpowered by her love for Milkman and the abandonment he caused her by breaking up with her through a letter, causing her to go mad and try to kill Milkman. Milkman lays on Guitar bed and discuss a conversation that he had with his mother earlier that week, when he is suddenly disrupted by hearing Hagar break into Guitar’s apartment. Milkman does not move when Hagar enters the room and attempts to kill him with a butcher knife, and being only

As Hagar’s love for Milkman grows more and more obsessive, Morrison reveals the bitter consequences of life as a woman seeking intimacy in a strictly patriarchal world. In the beginning of the novel, Hagar is associated primarily with her female relatives, Reba and Pilate. Even then, well-fed Hagar declares, “Some of my days were hungry

When someone looks up at a bird they see something soaring through the sky free from the world’s troubles. Through out man’s history they have been trying to find a way to be as free as birds and learn to fly. Unfortunately it has been an unsuccessful feat for man to accomplish. Although man has never really been able to fly on their own, they are able to fly with the help from a little machinery and ingenuity. Macon Dead Jr, or milkman, the nickname he adopted because he nursed from his mother, the protagonist of Song Of Solomon by Toni Morrison, had been trying to fly all of his life. But until he discovers his family’s history and his self-identity he unable to discover the secret that has

     When Hagar reaches Shadow Point, hungry and confused, she eats some food from her paper bag. She feels restored but is very thirsty

Over the course of the novel, one realizes that Hagar's loneliness and depression are, in fact, brought on by her pride, detached emotions, obstinacy and ignorance which she uses, subconsciously or not, to push those who love her most away. Hagar Currie was incapable of loving others, much like

In the same fashion that the law binds the Biblical Hagar to Abram and Sarah, Hagar Shipley is bound by - as D. Blewett points out - the Currie code of values, the Shipley freedom, and the Manawakan elitist attitude, in addition to her own pride (Blewett 36). Hagar Shipley is a modernised version of the Biblical Hagar, in that, people can no longer be bound as slaves in western culture but are, quite often, bound by personal or social restraints, like Hagar is. Hagar's freedom is limited by the conflicting influences - internal versus external - in her own life. The Currie virtue keeps Hagar from expressing any outward form of emotion, which, ultimately, limits or ruins the majority of her relationships, including her marriage to Brampton Shipley. Initially attracted to the Shipley casualness and freedom, because it is the exact opposite to the Currie conformity, Hagar marries Bram, a poor farmer and social

Hagar must bear many things. Her memory, although razor-sharp when she recalls the events of her youth and middle age, falters when it comes to the immediate past. Her dignity also takes a strike due to old age as she depicts, ““How it irks me to have to take her hand, allow her to pull my dress over my head, undo my corsets and strip them off my, and have her see my blue veined swollen flesh and the hairy triangle that still proclaims with lunatic insistence a non-existent womanhood”” (…) As the narrator exposes her weakness to her peers, she felt humiliated and week. In comparison with my volunteering, I also encountered similar states of minds. Throughout the conversations, seniors convey their concerns of becoming a problem to society and some without family or friends, are being submerged by the care of others. They exposed their utmost intimacy, revealing the point where they could be defeat. Once a prideful and independent person, they are being defeated by old age and its isolation state. Some of them still move on and no matter if their body is aging, they are just like us spiritually and even

Throughout the novel, The Stone Angel, Laurence explains Hagar’s, lifelong journey of unscrambling her inner problems, in order to discover her true identity. Hagar is in the midst of determining whether she has really lived her life to its fullest potential and she considers what she could of done differently. In her old age Hagar is reexamining her past life as she moves forward on a journey toward self-discovery. It is not until the end of a long life that Hagar experiences her revelation. The forward movement of the novel is combined with moments from the past. During the beginning moments of the novel Hagar remembers herself as a young girl in this way: “There was I, strutting the board sidewalk like a pint sized peacock, resplendent, haughty, hoity-toity, Jason Currie’s black haired daughter.” (Laurence 6) Throughout her life her pride never left her side and because of this her relationships with her father, brother and husband were destroyed. Her pride also led her to the death of her son John. Her stubbornness nature resulted in her marriage to fade, Marvin to be unhappy, her daughter-in-law’s frustration, and her own death. Due to her pride she was unable to show love and affection to those around her. Even at a young age Hagar always refused to show emotion because she was too proud to let people see her weakness. This is evident when Hagar says, “I wouldn’t let him see me cry, I was so enraged” (Laurence 9) This is very unlike

Hagar is blind to her own faults. Stubborn and resentful of everyone around her and won’t let herself be happy and yet Hagar is the kind of character you root for, she strives for independence which no