Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison: Obsession With Flying
Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison narrates the story of Milkman Dead and his obsession with flying. Solomon, he later discovers, was an ancestor who tried to fly from bondage with his son Jake but couldn't take him along to the destination as Jake fell off somewhere in the middle. The book is full of repetitive motifs and themes. The story of Solomon and Jake itself is adapted from Daedalus/Icarus Greek myth. The novel follows Milkman's obsession with flying and chooses flight as an important theme. In fact the novel opens with it when Robert Smith, an agent of the North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company, decides to "take off from Mercy and fly away on my own wings" (3). But Pilate fails to save him and sings a song at his death: "O Sugarman done fly / O Sugarman done gone," and he, at least, "had seen the rose petals, heard the music" (9). The very next day, Milkman is born at Merc
But the author used the theme and repetitive motifs to highlight the significance of Solomon's story of the greatest escape. He was alone in the sky but somebody was applauding him, watching him and applauding. Throughout the novel, Song of Solomon is consistently relived with the help of this theme of flying. y Hospital and as if he had been touched by Smith's blue silk wings, Milkman wants to fly as well and "when the little boy discovered, at four, the same thing Mr. Solomon wanted to escape his reality and his responsibilities and used flying to do that. This is where the theme of flying comes into play again but it comes with a moral message. Milkman doesn't really get to fly except once on a plane but even then even then "the wings of all those other people's nightmares flapped in his face and constrained him" (222). But not with arms stretched out like airplane wings, nor shot forward like Superman in a horizontal dive, but floating, cruising, in the relaxed position of a man lying on a couch reading a newspaper. When Milkman and Guitar spot the peacock, Milkman wonders why peacock couldn't really fly and Guitar looks closely at the bird and explains: "Too much tail. Milkman confusion with his identity and his obsession of flying is something he better understands when he learns about the Solomon story and how he had wanted to fly leaving behind his wife Ryna and their twenty other children. Author has been accused of using flying as a method of self-discovery while it actually appears as a means to shun responsibility. Many years later when Milkman is a grown man, he and his friend Guitar see a peacock. Smith had learned earlier -- that only birds and airplanes could fly -- he lost all interest in himself" (9).
Common topics in this essay:
Song Solomon,
Mercy Hospital,
Milkman Guitar,
Insurance Company,
Milkman Dead,
Similarly Milkman,
Daedalus/Icarus Greek,
Toni Morrison,
obsession flying,
Solomon Jake,
Robert Smith,
song solomon,
repetitive motifs,
theme flying,
desire fly,
fly shit,
solomon's story,
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Acceptance Essays
