Cruelty In Toni Morrison's Song Of Solomon

Cruelty towards anyone is horrible, but directing it at someone simply due to his

or her race is simply barbaric. Throughout her novel, Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison

emphasizes this kind of brutality towards African Americans and records different

reactions to such events. Morrison utilizes the characters’ reactions in order to grasp the

reader’s attention and fly him or her to the pre-civil rights era. This enables the reader to

view it not from the perspective of today’s ideologies, but from a first-person account of

yesteryear.

One such example occurs at Tommy’s Barbershop when a radio broadcaster

stunned the community with news of another murder. The radio announced that a man

named Emit Till had been stomped to death for whistling

What he think that was? Tom Sawyer Land?

(sic)’” (Morrison 81). This is a clear example of internalized oppression that has echoed

throughout the United States since the beginning of slavery. Following Freddy’s

comment, Guitar rebuts his stance so clearly by stating, “’So he whistled! So what!’

Guitar was steaming. ‘He supposed to die for that?’” (81). Astonishingly, many men,

including Porter, Nero, and Railroad Tommy seemingly agree with his rhetoric; that he

was supposed to die, at least under the law of the south. Finally, in defending his

manhood, Porter bluntly says to Freddy that, “’[a] living coward ain't a man’” (81). This

foreshadows Porter’s involvement in the Seven Days, proving that he believes it is

necessary to take action into their own hands if the law will not.

As seen above, each person reacts differently when it comes to injustice and the

formation of the Seven Days is an example of a radical reaction to depravity. Fed up

with the killings of African Americans, Guitar joined the Seven Days, an organization

that murders random white victims. Guitar describes his role to Milkman as “…[helping]

to keep the numbers the same” (154). As detailed in the book, after each murder

Right under their horses’” (233). His story shows that even the police resorted

to brutality when supposedly trying to combat it.

Today, activists and even ordinary citizens respond to brutality against African

Americans, specifically from law enforcement, drastically different than in the novel and

in the past. For instance, there was public outcry for justice after the murder of Trayvon

Martin. The freedom rights group, “Black Lives Matter…was…formed during the protest

for George Zimmerman’s arrest and trial” (Ruffin). This group was wildly successful in

spreading its message. Black Lives Matter “…used newly developed social media to

reach thousands of like-minded people across the nation quickly to create a black social

justice movement” (Ruffin). On a separate occasion, on August 9, 2014 protesters from

the movement appeared in droves in Ferguson, Missouri after the shooting of Michael

Brown (Ruffin). Again, activists used social media to aid their cause. Unlike characters

in Song of Solomon, citizens of today are able to take advantage of new technology that

connects like-minded individuals to each other in ways never before possible.

The multiple scenes of wantonness depicted throughout Song of Solomon