Analysis of Toni Morrison’s Song Of Solomon

1182 Words3 Pages

Analysis of Toni Morrison’s Song Of Solomon

When someone looks up at a bird they see something soaring through the sky free from the world’s troubles. Through out man’s history they have been trying to find a way to be as free as birds and learn to fly. Unfortunately it has been an unsuccessful feat for man to accomplish. Although man has never really been able to fly on their own, they are able to fly with the help from a little machinery and ingenuity. Macon Dead Jr, or milkman, the nickname he adopted because he nursed from his mother, the protagonist of Song Of Solomon by Toni Morrison, had been trying to fly all of his life. But until he discovers his family’s history and his self-identity he unable to discover the secret that has been plaguing man for many centuries, how to fly. All people want to be free, but it takes a great feat, like flying, for them to be able to. Morrison expresses this idea through the symbolism of flying and Milkman’s yearn to be free and fly, his family history, and the incident with Pilot and the bird. By discovering this Milkman is able to finally learn what it means, and how it feels to fly.

Flying symbolizes many things to Milkman that help him understand his family history and finally become free. According to the Webster Dictionary fly means “to travel by air… to flee.” (208) “The central image is Milkman’s desire to fly.” (Mainiero 224) Milkmanwants to flee from his life and be free from all the burdens he has become so accustom to. Morrison shows flying as something that is used to escape or for Milkman to finally find happiness. He would be “as happy as a fly” (Morrison 142) if he could just escape the people he feels is holding him back and causing him so much despondency. Throughout...

... middle of paper ...

...lps Milkman realize how to fly and find himself.

Flying is one thing that will make anyone feel boundless and free from worries and trouble. Everyone wants to feel this kind of freedom, however unless they can fly, they are unable to. It’s obvious that Milkman would want to feel this freedom from all of the burdens that he has been presented with through out the entirety of his life. In his eyes things have gone from bad to worse, and from worse to unbearable. His family history has made it evident to him that it is possible for him to fly and be free, and his ancestors have, he just needs to learn how to do this. Pilate has really brought this idea home with the symbolism shown from the bird flying away with the one object that symbolizes her being, her earring. So in the end Milkman “now [knows]… if you surrender to the air, you [can] ride it.” (Morrison 363)

Show More
Related

  • Transformation of Milkman in Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon

    1788 Words  | 4 Pages

    In Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon, the character of Milkman gradually learns to respect and to listen to women. This essay will examine Milkman's transformation from boy to man.

    Read More

  • Free Song of Solomon Essays: Father and Son Relationship

    841 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Transformation in Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison

    2033 Words  | 5 Pages

    ...is past, as well as the mistakes of the people in his community. Milkman fights the oppression much like his great grandfather does by rising above it, and by soaring over his own oppression. Since he used a non-violent stance I felt this could represent Martin Luther King Jr. who helped African Americans to rise above oppression as well. Although he doesn’t bring a change of masses, Milkman himself has changed, and through time he can show others how to ride the wind. Milkman helps to show that flying does not have to be seen as a physical action, but as an ability an individual has to make a life away from oppression, in a world that oppresses many. An individual flying in the novel is seen as a victory over all the obstacles one has to hurdle in life. It’s the character of the individual that determines whether or not you surrender to the wind and fly, or if you stay on the Earth wondering why things never change.

    Read More

  • Authority and American Usage, by David Foster Wallace

    1937 Words  | 4 Pages

    The impact and effectiveness of using proper rhetoric was a strategy of “good” writing that I was not aware of until my senior year of high school. While taking AP Language and Composition my junior year, my fellow students and I believed that we had survived countless essay workshop activities and writing assignments with emphasis on word choices, grammatical structure, syntax, punctuation and spelling. By the time we had entered AP Literature our senior year, we felt we could achieve success; we already knew how to write in the correct format and structur...

    Read More

  • The Fall of the Potato: Causes of the Great Famine

    1434 Words  | 3 Pages

    - Edwards, R. Dudley and T. Desmond William. The Great Irish Famine: Studies in Irish

    Read More

  • Destructive Love in Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon

    1770 Words  | 4 Pages

    When an emotion is believed to embody all that brings bliss, serenity, effervescence, and even benevolence, although one may believe its encompassing nature to allow for generalizations and existence virtually everywhere, surprisingly, directly outside the area love covers lies the very antithesis of love: hate, which in all its forms, has the potential to bring pain and destruction. Is it not for this very reason, this confusion, that suicide bombings and other acts of violence and devastation are committed…in the name of love? In Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon, the reader experiences this tenuity that is the line separating love and hate in many different forms and on many different levels—to the extent that the line between the two begins to blur and become indistinguishable. Seen through Ruth's incestuous love, Milkman and Hagar's relationship, and Guitar's love for African-Americans, if love causes destruction, that emotion is not true love; in essence, such destructive qualities of "love" only transpire when the illusion of love is discovered and reality characterizes the emotion to be a parasite of love, such as obsession or infatuation, something that resembles love but merely inflicts pain on the lover.

    Read More

  • Milkman's Transformation in Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon

    689 Words  | 2 Pages

    Milkman experiences many changes in behavior throughout the novel Song of Solomon. Until his early thirties most would consider him self centered, or even self-loathing. Until his maturity he is spoiled by his mother Ruth and sisters Lena and Corinthian because he is a male. He is considered wealthy for the neighborhood he grew up in and he doesn't socialize because of this.

    Read More

  • Materialism And Classism In Song Of Solomon By Toni Morrison

    1082 Words  | 3 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • Flight as a Literal and Metaphorical Symbol in Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison

    1193 Words  | 3 Pages

    During the long period of time in which Milkman doubts human flight, he is essentially shunned from his community. However, by accepting human flight as both a natural and possible occurrence, Milkman achieves acceptance. In actuality, flight as a means of escape is conveyed as a selfish act, harming all those left behind. Furthermore, in reference to Robert Smith and Milkman, death, not flight, was what caused them to essentially escape. In Song of Solomon, flight comes across as an act of desperation, in which those involved would risk anything to escape their troubled lives. Only when you “surrendered [yourself] to the air” could you truly escape and find freedom (Morrison 337).

    Read More

  • Katherine Mansfield The Fly Analysis

    711 Words  | 2 Pages

    Like the Boss finding himself caught in a soul-sucking pit of anguish, the fly becomes stuck in a pot of black ink that it cannot escape from. After being freed, the fly is “ready for life again.” But Boss, inspired by the fly 's perseverance, can 't resist throwing a blot of ink on the fly, just to see how it will react. During the next few minutes, the Boss inadvertently kills the fly. While not a perfect parallel, this action does seem to suggest a connection to the Boss 's own condition. Whenever Boss reaches the point of moving on, of “taking the helm” and “going strong”, he remembers his son and throws himself back into the inky blackness of despair. And like the drowning fly, Boss can only take so much of

    Read More

  • Examining Emotional Turmoil in 'Children of the Sea'

    1052 Words  | 3 Pages

    Throughout the story, she hopes that bright butterflies deliver her good news of her beloved one. However in the end of the story, a black butterfly delivers her some news, “now there are always butterflies around me, black ones that I refuse to let find my hand” (Danticat, “Children of the Sea” 28) referring that the male narrator’s boat sank. In “A Wall of Fire Rising” Danticat uses the air balloon symbolizing freedom, and hope for Guy, “Sometimes I just want to … sail off somewhere and keep floating until I got to a really nice place … where I could be something new.” (Danticat, “A Wall of Fire Rising” 237). Throughout the story Guy is tempted to fly the balloon, and when he does, he commits suicide because is inferred that he wouldn’t go back to his lifestyle being the shadow of the sugar mill. Both the butterflies and the air balloon, symbolize flight, being able to escape from their circumstances to be

    Read More

  • The Kite Runner Symbolism Analysis

    609 Words  | 2 Pages

    The symbol that ties this book together is the event of running the last kite. This is an event that all of the kids look forward to during the kite flying competition; they love the thrill it brings and the excitement of catching it. The side that many do not see until later is that it signifies an ending to an event loved by so many. It also brings out this competition

    Read More

  • A Trip to Redemption in Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner

    717 Words  | 2 Pages

    ..., the dependence of one on the other. Although the kite "spins, dips, and steadies", it stays in the sky with free, natural movements (122). Verbal interaction is not required to keep the kite flying because their communication through the kite speaks volumes louder than sound itself. Decades later, when Amir Flies a kite with Hassan's son, Sohrab, the paper toy's flight expresses more than anything Amir could say. "Then I blinked and, for just a moment, the hands holding the spool were the chipped-nailed, calloused hands of a hare lipped boy" (369-370). By watching this kite and seeing Hassan in its ascent, Amir begins to feel redemption and atonement for his painful past. The flight of the kite at the end of this novel does not close the door on Amir's past of guilt and burdens, but rather reestablishes his memory of Hassan and offers hope for a redemptive future.

    Read More

  • Toni Morrison Beloved Analysis

    820 Words  | 2 Pages

    Cruelty is the idea of gaining pleasures in harming others and back in 1873, many African American slaves suffered from this common ideology according Heather Andrea Williams of National Humanities Center Fello. Toni Morrison, an African American author who illustrates an opportunity for “readers to be kidnapped, thrown ruthlessly into an alien environment...without preparations or defense” (Morrison) in her award-winning novel Beloved as method to present how cruel slavery was for African Americans. In her fictional story, Beloved, Morrison explained the developement of an African American slave named Sethe who willingly murdered her own child to prevent it from experiencing the cruel fate of slavery. Nonetheless, Morrison

    Read More

  • Celtic Tiger In Ireland Analysis

    2117 Words  | 5 Pages

    During the twentieth century, the world began to develop the idea of economic trade. Beginning in the 1960’s, the four Asian Tigers, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan, demonstrated that a global economy, which was fueled by an import and export system with other countries, allowed the economy of the home country itself to flourish. Th...

    Read More

More about Analysis of Toni Morrison’s Song Of Solomon

Open Document