Flight In The Song Of Solomon

The book opens with Robert Smith, a Mutual Life insurance agent as he plans to jump from Mercy Hospital in Michigan and take flight. The note he tacks around town reads “At 3.00pm on Wednesday the 18th of February, 1931, I will take off from Mercy and fly away on my own wings. Please forgive me. I loved you all. (signed) Robert Smith, Ins. Agent”. As Robert Smith prepares to take flight, perched atop Mercy Hospital in anticipation with his blue silk wings flapping about his chest, a woman begins to sing “O Sugarman done fly away, Sugarman done gone, Sugarman cut across the sky, Sugarman gone home… (Morrison, Song of Solomon)”. Immediately, the theme of flight, and the importance of song are established in Song of Solomon. As crowds gather to watch the flight of Robert Smith, among the throng is a woman named Ruth Dead, standing with her two daughters and pregnant with her third child, a son. Then two things happen, Robert Smith leaps from the rooftop to his death, and Ruth Dead goes into labour and becomes the first Black patient to be admitted to Mercy Hospital. This is significant because the son she gives birth to is obsessed with flight, and when at age four the boy Macon Dead III (known in the story as Milkman) discovers that only planes and birds are able to fly, he loses interest in himself and becomes a peculiar and withdrawn boy, on page 11 Morrison writes “Mr Smith’s blue silk wings must have left their mark, because when the little boy discovered, at four, what Mr

In Tony Morrison’s “Song of Solomon” it explores the discovery of ethnic identities. It depicts the life of Macon Milkman Dead, a withdrawn loner who doesn’t feel accepted by others and is disconnected with his family and heritage. With help from others in his community Milkman takes a trip to discover himself and his roots bringing him closer to the true meaning of his purpose. Milkman in turn realizes that flight represents liberation from a life of restrictions, set in an era of racism and separation. Flight may seem as a positive solution to such a life of problems and discrimination, however, holds very negative aspects in family settings. Abandoning your own and severing those mutual bonds plays a significant role in the life of the loved ones left behind. Most are left recovering from their loss, or completely lose hope such as Hagar. Solomon leaving his wife Ryna and children behind was necessary sacrifice he had to make in order to be free. Solomon is never punished or looked down for his decision; in his song it acknowledges his accomplishment as a great achievement. In “Song of Solomon”, the ability of flight symbolizes the escape from oppression while searching for freedom.

At the beginning Milkman is not very pleasant, he was similar to his father, self-centered and mean. Macon

In the novel Song of Solomon, a central motif of flight was dominant throughout the entire book. Song of Solomon starts off the first scene of the book with a man surrounded by an audience who are watching him decide whether or not he is going to jump off the roof of a building. The man that was on top of the building was Robert Smith. It is never said in the book, but it can be assumed that Robert Smith was one of the Seven Days men. The Seven Days is a group of black men who respond to a person of color getting killed by a white person by taking seven days to kill one white person for every person of color that is killed. Smith’s attempt to jump off of the building seemed like he actually believed that he could physically fly, even though he ended up just falling to his death. The theme of flight was mentioned countless times throughout the rest of the novel, and even in the last scene of the novel, when Milkman “takes flight” for the first and last time, multiple physical references to flight are mentioned. The central idea of flight is what the book centers around and flight helps create a journey that is full of personal growth and reflection for the main character Milkman. The countless references about flight, and a link between self acceptance and naming in the book create the build up that leads to Milkman’s “flight” at the end of the book.

When Milkman is first introduced in the novel, he is described as “concentrat[ing] on things behind him. Almost as though there were no future to be had” (35). It is important to note that

Guitar Bains has been Milkman's best friend since they were children. The two share many memories and through them developed a strong bond. As Guitar and

Clearly, the significant silences and the stunning absences throughout Morrison's texts become profoundly political as well as stylistically crucial. Morrison describes her own work as containing "holes and spaces so the reader can come into it" (Tate 125), testament to her rejection of theories that privilege j the author over the reader. Morrison disdains such hierarchies in which the reader as participant in the text is ignored: "My writing expects, demands participatory reading, and I think that is what literature is supposed to do. It's not just about telling the story; it's about involving the reader ... we (you, the reader, and I, the author) come together to make this book, to feel this

Even before his life journey also started Milkman those who were supposed to love him unconditionally tried to end him. Milkman 's father was that person; Macon dead was jealous of both his wife 's father and his unborn son. "I know he never told you that he killed my father and that he tried to kill you." (Morrison 124). Milkman 's mother Ruth told him the truth about his father, the man he was supposed to look up to and cherish. When his mother told him that his father tried to make her abort him, he was told that his aunt Pilate was the reason why he was alive. "Pilate was the one who brought you here in the first place ... Pilate? ... Milkman was coming awake" (Morrison 124). The moment in which he found out that his aunt was the reason for his existence was an end to what he felt against his aunt and a beginning. Milkman was starting to become less narrow-minded, he was beginning to leave his child like ways of thinking and started to noticed things and acted in them. Finding out that his aunt saved him made him realize that Pilate was the catalyst in his life. That his aunt someone who his father despised so very much was someone who helps give Milkman a chance in life. As the door that leads to his existing relationship with his father closed another opened; the one that further enhanced the

Milkman craves to find out where he really fits in the world and find himself. By him getting rid of his burdens he believes that he will be able. Thus through his venture to learn to fly he learns a lot more about himself and the world in general.

The first flight I will discuss is Zits journey into the Indian Boy in 1876. Zits gets to experience being a young boy who has a father and meets many famous Native American figures and he gets to experience the Native American culture. For the first time he identifies with the Native American’s and wants to be fully Native American, but in this boy’s body Zits does not have a voice. I believe the boy not having a voice could represent that children, generally don’t have a voice. Zits never had much if any say in where his next home would be and he certainly didn’t choose to be left behind by his father. During his flight he also witnesses a great battle, the torturing and dismantling of human men by the Native Americans. He is then told to kill a young white boy. This flight teaches Zits that being here doesn’t solve his identity crisis and he’s beginning to realize that maybe his actions were

Flight can be associated with birds and the ability to spread the wings and fly. This can often be seen in the novel. In this quote Alcee Arobin tells Edna;

She expresses herself in ways that are more destructive. Violence is the outlet Hagar sees in expressing herself. Her “graveyard love” for Milkman initially mutes her voice (148). His goodbye letter “sent Hagar spinning into a bright blue place where the air was thin and it was silent all the time, and where people spoke in whispers or did not make sounds at all, and where everything was frozen except for an occasional burst of fire inside her chest” (116). Hagar is hardly aware of her own emotions and finds it impossible for her to tell Milkman how she feels because she has no identity. Instead, Hagar turns to physical violence. She was a “doormat wom[a]n” that “wanted to kill for love, die for love” (336). When she tries to kill Milkman, she finds herself “paralyzed” by her obsessive love for him (150). Like Ryna, her love left her. When Milkman left and “dreamt of flying, Hagar was dying” (363). Hagar’s extreme obsession ultimately turns self-destructive and assists to the cause of her death. She spends her last hours in a frantic search for clothes and cosmetics that will make Milkman love her again. She dies convinced that “he loves silky hair . . . penny-colored hair . . . and lemon-colored skin . . . and gray-blue eyes” unlike her own (346). To Hagar, her African-American race and body are worthless if they do not attract Milkman; she was trying to create “this ideal of beauty” that she could never have (Pereira). Hagar’s dependence on Milkman and

Hagar after knowing that she isn't love back led her to murder Milkman. When Milkman got tired of Hagar, who was not caring about him that much till then, started to have interest in him. As soon as she realize that she couldn’t get the love back from him, she tried to kill him. She tried to attempt the murder for “six times in as many months”(130), each time with different weapons but failed, but she would not give up because she didn't want him to leave her. Murder was the way that Hagar showed her affection toward Milkman because “He’s the one who’s tryin to take himself out of her life. And she’ll kill him before she lets him do that”(139) states the nature of loving that one will kill others to get love. In this case, Hagar tried to kill him because he is the one who is trying to leave her and only way she knew how to stop it was to kill him since she can't control his feeling toward her. Her

Milkman’s journey for an identity takes him down a road in which he becomes as callous as his father.

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