Often in stories, there is always a complex group of characters, each with their own wishes, wants, and baggage. Without expanding upon and giving their characters a personality, background, and purpose, authors fail to grasp the reader’s attention as well as deny them a character to relate to. Toni Morrison, however, has not only understood and complied with this necessity, but has thrived under it. She has learned to write her characters as unique individuals with a life all their own, who are forced to face situations of life head on or run away from their problems, with what they do and with whom they interact effectively shaping them for the rest of their lives. In Toni Morrison’s novel, Song of Solomon, Hagar Dead expresses a wide array
Because of this, Hagar found her answer elsewhere in the form of her cousin Milkman, initiating an incestuous relationship between the two that would last for a few years until Milkman, once obsessed and in love, decides to end the affair for good, equating her to the “third beer...the one you drink because it's there, because it can't hurt, and because what difference does it make?” (Morrison 91), and completing the action through a written letter sent to her door. Upon reading the letter, Morrison writes that the termination “sent Hagar spinning into a bright blue place 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 that crackled away until she ran out into the streets to find Milkman Dead” (Morrison 99). If Hagar did not express any signs of psychological damage before this act, there is no possible way that would continue to hold true. When Milkman ended things, Hagar, for the first time, was denied what she wanted and forced to deal with the outside world and its true weight. In this instance Bakerman, in his proposed theme of failed female initiation, asserts that “when it is time for
After Milkman’s cold hearted letter to Hagar, she takes to watching Milkman from afar in order to soothe her pain and give herself a glimpse of her lost desire, rationalizing her actions by believing “any contact with him at all was better than none, [so] she stalked him” (Morrison 128). Even though Hagar’s needs have boiled down to center solely around Milkman and how she may be able to get him back, she avoids him and keeps herself from confrontation. When Ruth learns of Hagar’s monthly attempts to kill her son, she rushes over to Pilate’s house to come face to face with her son’s near murderer. Once they meet, Hagar recognizes her as “the silhouette she had seen through the curtains in an upstairs window on evenings when she stood across the street hoping at first to catch him, then hoping just to see him, finally just to be near the things he was familiar with” (Morrison 136). This shows how Hagar would watch Milkman from the shadows, leaving him unaware and giving herself a small dose of hope that she may be with Milkman again. The only time Hagar ever actually confronts Milkman in the time after their breakup is during her monthly attempts to kill him because she can not have him in life, therefore she will have him in death. In the views of the neighboring citizens of the town, Hagar, as well as others driven mad by love, were pitied but
ames are one of the first identifiers a person is given, and yet as infants they are given no choice in this identifier that will be with them for the rest of their lives. In Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon the use of the biblical names Hagar and Pilate serve as a means to show the importance of defining the path of one’s life for one's self, as supposed to letting one's name define it for them. Through juxtaposition and parallels, Morrison teaches a universal lesson of the importance of self definition.
Near the end of the book Milkman seems to change his view of his father, with some help from the positive memories of the old men in the passage.
Before Milkman could reach where he intended on going in Virginia, his car breaks down so he went to an auto shop in Shalimar, Virginia. In Shalimar heWhen Milkman goes to Pennsylvania to look for the gold, he was actually in search of his family’s past. One of the themes in the story is how the history of African Americans histories are not clear and unrecorded. The fact that the history of Milkman’s family history is so unclear and unrecorded he goes through a long journey to find it. Along the way he goes through many places and meets many people that help him find his family history.
In fact, community is not only the end of his quest but the means; Milkman makes progress only as he acknowledges community. In the characterization of Milkman's father, Macon, and his father's sister, Pilate, the novel sets up a distinct conflict between individualistic and community values. Her communication with her father's ghost, for example, demonstrates her belief that human relationships have substance; her use of conjure in Milkman's conception has helped carry on the family; and her song, "Sugarman done fly away," becomes the clue to the family's history. Macon, on the other hand, represents the individualism of "progress."
Rather, she discusses the thought that women are too dependent on men. One can argue that Ryna’s and Hagar’s reactions to their partners abandoning them are too extreme. When Hagar dies, Pilate exclaims “she was loved,” expressing that Hagar’s depression revolving around Milkman was needless, since she had a whole support system in Pilate and Reba. Another example of this is Macon’s abandonment of Ruth and Ruth’s dependency. Ruth, throughout the novel, is dependent on men for love. She forms a too intimate relationship with her father, but eventually he dies and she is left without his love. She does have a husband, but he denies physical affection and emotional support to her, and she becomes desperate without those presences. When she has her child, Milkman, she has almost a possessive relationship with him, not wanting him to leave her because she is afraid of losing another man, though Milkman does not really love his mother, much like he does not really love Hagar due to his blindness to other people’s emotions and wants. Morrison writes Ruth as obsessed with having a mutual sense of affection with a man after they emotionally abandon her, even though it is not really a necessity for her. Pilate helps clarify this, exclaiming that Ruth treats Milkman like a “house,” and says that if he does not have him, then that is
In the same episode, he begins his incestuous affair with Hagar, leaving her 14 years later when his desire for her wanes. Milkman's experience with Hagar is analogous to his experience with his mother, and serves to "[stretch] his carefree boyhood out for thrifty-one years" (98). Hagar calls him into a room, unbuttons her blouse and smiles (92), just as his mother did (13). Milkman's desire for his mother's milk disappears before she stops milking him, and when Freddie discovers the situation and notes the inappropriateness, she is left without this comfort. Similarly, Milkman ends the affair with Hagar when he loses the desire for her and recognizes that this affair with his cousin is not socially approved, leaving Hagar coldly and consciously, with money and a letter of gratitude.
In Song of Solomon, through many different types of love, Ruth's incestuous love, Milkman and Hagar's romantic love, and Guitar's love for his race, Toni Morrison demonstrates not only the readiness with which love will turn into a devastating and destructive force, but also the immediacy with which it will do so. Morrison tackles the amorphous and resilient human emotion of love not to glorify the joyous feelings it can effect but to warn readers of love's volatile nature. Simultaneously, however, she gives the reader a clear sense of what love is not. Morrison explicitly states that true love is not destructive. In essence, she illustrates that if "love" is destructive, it is most likely, a mutation of love, something impure, because love is all that is pure and true.
Freedom is heavily sought after and symbolized by flight with prominent themes of materialism, classism, and racism throughout Toni Morrison’s novel Song of Solomon. The characters Milkman and Macon Dead represent these themes as Macon raises Milkman based on his own belief that ownership of people and wealth will give an individual freedom. Milkman grows up taking this idea as a way to personally obtain freedom while also coming to difficult terms with the racism and privilege that comes with these ideas and how they affect family and African Americans, and a way to use it as a search for an individual 's true self. Through the novel, Morrison shows that both set themselves in a state of mental imprisonment to these materials
...er obligation to her children, and is unable to flee from her problems as she did in the past. The final paragraph is proof of Helga’s inevitable doom. As it would seem throughout Helga’s life, she has struggled to be free of her sexual and racial confusion. Becoming pregnant for the fifth time explains with a bold certainty the title of Larsen’s novel. It seems that the more Helga struggles to be free, the more she sinks herself deeper into the quicksand.
Independence is something most humans strive for, although some are not lucky enough for it to be an option for them. When a person loses their independence they lose the faith in themselves that they are even capable of being independent. Once the right is taken away, a person will become dependent on others, and unable to function as they used to. Most people would sit back and let their right be taken, but not Hagar Shipley. Hagar loses her independence as most do, because of her age. Doris confronts Hagar about an accident she had when she wet the sheets, and Hagar begins to feel the vice slowly closing down on her already tiny slice of independence. Feeling threatened, Hagar snaps, “That’s a lie. I never did any such thing. You’re making it up. I know your ways. Just so you’ll have some reason for putting me away.” (Lawrence 74) As if Hagar wasn’t having a difficult enough time wat...
Song of Solomon tells the story of Dead's unwitting search for identity. Milkman appears to be destined for a life of self-alienation and isolation because of his commitment to the materialism and the linear conception of time that are part of the legacy he receives from his father, Macon Dead. However, during a trip to his ancestral home, “Milkman comes to understand his place in a cultural and familial community and to appreciate the value of conceiving of time as a cyclical process”(Smith 58).
In New York, Helga is also consumed by the animal instinct of flight. When Dr. Anderson calls on her after a chance meeting at a nightclub, Helga “had no intention of running away, but something, some imp of contumacy, drove her from his presence, though she longed to stay” (51). Once again, Helga succumbs to her overwhelming desire to leave an uncomfortable situation. Later she realizes with a “sense of helplessness and inevitability…that the weapon she had chosen had been a boomerang, for she herself had felt...
Hagar’s duality and ambivalence towards Manawakan values is revealed as she simultaneously seems to flout as well as continue those. It gives way to the development of her complexity as a character that remains with Hagar throughout her life and affects her relationship with others. She finds herself unable to express herself to either of her brothers. She wanted
When one is confronted with a problem, we find a solution easily, but when a society is confronted with a problem, the solution tends to prolong itself. One major issue that is often discussed in today’s society that has been here for as long as we’ve known it, is racism. Racism is also a very repetitive theme in Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon. Almost every character has experienced racism whether it be towards them or they are the ones giving the racism in this novel. Racism is a very controversial topic as many have different perspectives of it. In Toni’s novel, three characters that have very distinct perspectives on racism are Macon Dead, Guitar, and Dr. Foster. These characters play vital roles throughout the novel.
As a result of her upbringing, Hagar possesses pride that despises weakness in any form. As a young girl she displayed this trait when her dad slapped her hand, I wouldnt let him see me cry, I was so enraged (Laurence 9). As previously mentioned before, Hagar could not portray her mother to comfort her dying brother. She characterized her mother as the woman Dan was said to resemble so much and from whom hed inherited a frailty I could not help but detest (Laurence 25). When Hagar brought upon the subject of marriage with Bram Shipley to her father he made it clear that theres not a decent girl in this town would wed without her familys consent (Laurence 49).