The Theme of Song of Solomon
I. Introduction
Toni Morrison is the first black woman writer in American literature who has
won the Nobel Prize. Her works have attracted great attention from literary critics at home and abroad for a long time. In her life, she has produced eight famous works, including The Bluest Eye, Sula, Song of Solomon, Beloved and so on, thus receiving the National Book Critics Award, Pulitzer Prize and other prizes (Carmean, 1993). Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison’ s third novel, is the only one regarding a male as protagonist among her eight works. This novel has won highly evaluation from critics and is considered the best black American work after the publication of Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison. It is a typical initiation story of black people. The protagonist, Milkman’s maturity and awakening of male consciousness make up the theme of this novel. There is no aim in Milkman’s life. He does not know his own name, nor comprehends the cultural tradition. Being selfish, he never thinks over others’ ideas. With the guidance of his aunt and friend, he becomes an inheritor of African American culture, finally finding the root of his nation and going mature gradually.
This paper aims to have a brief study on the two main themes of Song of Solomon, the themes of flying and growing up. This paper includes four parts. Part one is the introduction of the paper. Part two is the background information that introduces the writer Toni Morrison and the novel Song of Solomon. Part three is the main body of the paper. It analyzes the theme of Flying from two aspects and Milkman’s growing up with understanding flying and traditio2. Part four is the conclusion.
2. Background Information
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This part conducts a brief introduction on the writer Toni Morrison and the novel Song of Solomon. Toni Morrison was the writer of Song of Solomn. The first part introduces Tini Morrison’s life experiences and her major works. The second part introduces the main content of Song of Solomon.
2.1 Toni Morrison
Toni Morrison was born in Chloe Anthony Wofford in 1931 and spent the first
years of her life in Ohio. She received an undergraduate degree in English from Howard University and completed a master’s program at Cornell. When many of her classmates had difficulty pronouncing her uncommon first name, she changed it to Toni (a derivative of her middle name). In 1958, she married Harold Morrison, an architect from Jamaica, and the couple had two sons. They divorced six years later. After pursuing an academic career teaching English at Howard, Morrison became an editor at Random House, where she specialized in Black fiction.
At the same time, she began producing a creative work that would make her the first African-American woman to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993. Morrison’s first novel, The Bluest Eye, was not an immediate success, but she continued to write. Sula, which appeared in 1973, was more successful, earning a nomination for the National Book Award. In 1977, Song of Solomon launched Morrison’s national reputation, winning her the National Book Critics’ Circle Award. Her most well-known work, Beloved, appeared in 1987 and won the Pulitzer Prize. Her other novels include Tar Baby (1981), Jazz (1992), and Paradise (1998). Meanwhile, Morrison returned to teaching and was a professor at Yale and the State University of New York at Albany. Today, she is the Robert F. Goheen Professor in the Council of Humanities at Princeton University, where she teaches creative writing. Morrison once said that she wanted to help create a canon of Black work, noting that Black writers too often have to pander to a white audience when they should be able to concentrate on the business of writing instead. Many readers believe Morrison’s novels go a long way toward the establishment of her envisioned tradition.
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The poetic, elegant style of her writing in Beloved panders to no one. Morrison challenges and requires the reader to accept her on her own terms.
2.2 Song of Solomon 介绍层次不清
Song of Solomon, a rich and empowering novel published in 1977 that focuses on black people’s life across America, following the path of Milkman’s dead, a young black male in search for his identity. Toni Morrison’s gift of storytelling clearly shines through her poignant writing, as she presents Dead's search for his culture and history, impeded by the society he lives in. Song of Solomon not only focuses on African American community life, it is also a stark depicter of white oppression. The novel earned Toni Morrison a National Book Critics Circle Award and an American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters Award. In contrast to her earlier works, Song of Solomon encompasses a wide variety of black communities across America, from the liberal Midwest to the old-fashioned and somewhat conservative South. It is a novel that arouses consciousness in the face of an African American’s struggle of confinement into a life of possibility.
Song of Solomon is also Morrison's first novel to be written through a male protagonist view, and the narrator's extraordinary manner of weaving in and out creates an even more spellbound lure into the novel's plot. This technique follows in part from the author's interest in folk storytelling traditions; Morrison patterns the novel after a Yoruba folktale about African-born slaves who could fly back to Africa whenever they wanted. Morrison alludes to other ancient storytelling and folk art traditions as well. The title itself comes from the Song of Songs (or Song of Solomon) in the Old Testament, a rhapsodic love poem consisting of addresses between a lover and a beloved. The lyrics of the Song of Solomon as presented in the novel are a variant of a Gullah folktale, further emphasizing the importance of oral tradition. Interestingly, Morrison may have taken this interest in roots and history even further with the name of Solomon, as that was the name of her own grandfather, a former slave.
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3. Themes of Song of Solomon
Flying and Growing up are two main themes of Song of Solomon. The theme of Flying can be understood from the reconstructing of historical consciousness and the tradition of black women. Milkman’s consciouness of the historical tradition of flight makes him growing up in some way. Men’s flight is always followed by abandonment to women. The theme of growing up of Milkman is also analyzed in this part. How Milkman grows from an aimless young person to a mature and responsible person is analyzed in this part.
3.1 The Theme of “Flying” 过渡语一段即可。下边两段可放在后
边的论述中
3.1.1 Understanding “Flying” from Reconstructing Historical Consciousness
The concept of flight is clearly addressed in the beginning of the novel with Mr. Smith’s jump - his attempt to fly. Although flight may have positive attributes of the possibility of escape, it also contains negative connotations. Escape suggests leaving behind one's old world and thus pain for those left behind. Solomon, who flew back to Africa, leaved behind his wife Ryna and their twenty-one children. Solomon's departure, although happy in the face of his struggle with slavery, is disastrous for Ryna, who went mad with grief. Milkman's escape from Not Doctor Street, a relief from his daily unhappiness, is devastating for Hagar, who eventually dies from heartbreak.
Milkman’s understanding of Flying can be seen from a historical point of view. Solomon’s flight allowed him to leave slavery in the Virginia cotton fields, but it also meant abandoning his wife, Ryna, with twenty-one children. While Milkman’s flight from Michigan frees him from the dead environment of Not Doctor Street, his flight is also selfish because it causes Hagar to die of heartbreak. The novel’s epigraph attempts to break the connection between flight and abandonment. Because Pilate, as
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Milkman notes, is able to fly without ever lifting her feet off the ground, she has mastered flight, managing to be free of subjugation without leaving anyone behind.
Morrison’s extensive use of flying as a literal and not just metaphorical event pushes Song of Solomon toward the genre of magical realism. The novel’s characters accept human flight as natural. For instance, the observers of Robert Smith’s flight encourage him rather than rush to prevent his leap, implying that they do not see his flight as a suicide attempt. Instead, the onlookers behave as though Smith’s flight might be possible. Furthermore, the residents of Shalimar, Virginia, do not think that Solomon’s flight is a myth; they believe that the flight actually occurred. Morrison’s novel belongs to the genre of magical realism because in it human flight is both possible and natural. For the long period of time during which Milkman doubts the possibility of human flight, he remains abnormal in the eyes of his community. Only when he begins to believe in the reality of flight does he cease to feel alienated.
3.1.2 Understanding “Flying” from Black Women’s Tradition
Black women are the weak group in the black society. Men’s flight
contributes a lot to women’s suffering. The overall theme of flight, therefore, is associated with abandonment. Although it is an impossible feat, flight is regarded as natural in the novel. It is believed that Milkman's great-grandfather, Solomon, literally flew away by simply spinning around with his arms spread out until he elevated. The community's acceptance of flight as normal highlights Morrison's use of magical realism in her writing. Even the novel's epigraph, \fathers may soar and the children may know their names,\refers the theme of flight(Smith, 1991). Men’s repeated abandonment of women in Song of Solomon shows that the novel’s female characters suffer a double burden. Not only are women oppressed by racism, but they must also pay the price for men’s freedom. Guitar tells Milkman that black men are the unacknowledged workhorses of humanity, but the novel’s events imply that black women more correctly fit this description. The scenes that describe women’s abandonment show that in the novel, men bear responsibility only for themselves, but
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