Fly Away

*I'm finished with the book, so beware of spoilers*

For thousands of years women have been viewed and represented as the epitomes of sweetness, love and care. There is what is known as the maternal instinct - which everyone subconsciously expects a woman to have - and many people claim that if the government were run by women, there would be less wars and violence. Society, on the other hand, portrays men as responsible leaders who must take care of their oh-so fragile wives. However, Toni Morrison dared to take a completely different approach on men in her novel, Song of Solomon. They are not such responsible beings, but simply the opposite of women: spiteful, selfish and condescending.

Hagar loved Milkman. But guess what? He did not love her back: he simply used her. The only two other people who also actually loved Milkman were his mom and Pilate (yes, both women). "From the beginning, his mother and Pilate had fought for his life, and he had never so much as made either of them a cup of tea." (331) He never loved them back, while they would give up anything for him.

In addition, in Song of Solomon, since men are incapable of love, they end up objectifying women. Unsurprising, isn't it? After all, by now we are all used to misogynistic jokes that include the words "sandwich" or "kitchen." Yes, that's getting old and even less amusing than it was initially. But when Morrison exemplifies such objectifying behavior in a very subtle manner, the message is far more striking than that of any chauvinistic "joke." "Naked came ye into this life and naked shall ye depart," (316) writes Morrison as she quotes the minister's words at Hagar's funeral (Yes, she dies... I warned you of spoilers). This is perfectly standard, but then she explains that this is a "sermon... he had always believed suitable for the death of a young woman." (316) Yes, "young woman." Why doesn't she say it's suitable for any death - elder, adult, or child - but rather decides to specify that it must be a "young woman" who died? With this nonchalant phrase she is exhibiting the minister's pervertedness, as even when a woman has died, he is still thinking of her as a mere sexual object. And if this is what the minister is like, - someone who is supposed to be saintly and holy - what can you expect from all the rest?

Hagar has loved Milkman for a while now, and she is desperate for the feeling to be mutual. But, of cousre, it's not. What else can you expect from a male character in this novel? So Hagar goes crazy after looking at herself in the mirror, repeating "no wonder" over and over again. (308) She thinks it's "no wonder" that he doesn't love her. That's how far she's gone: her own perception of herself depends on that of a man's. If a man won't approve of her, neither will she.

So, how does Hagar seek to earn this approval? By seeking to make herself beautiful, of course. Now Morrison is not only demonstrating how gender roles cause insecurity in women, but also how, as a result, females seek to appeal to men in order to gain back their confidence, and they end up changing themselves and trying to be "beautiful." So Hagar goes out and buys a diamond's-worth of clothes and make-up so she can be pretty. She believed that beauty was the key to everything: "She could spend her life shimmering in peaches and cream. In satin. In luxe. In love." (311)

What's even worse is that this pursuit of "beauty" makes Hagar feel ashamed of herself and of her race. "He don't like hair like mine," she says. (315) "He loves silky...penny-colored hair...and lemon-colored skin...and gray-blue eyes...and thin nose... He's never going to like my hair." (315-316) She wants to change simply because she thinks he doesn't like her appearance, while in reality, there's no deep reason to why he doesn't like her: He is simply indifferent, and never actually thought of how much he hurt her.

But everybody in this book is hurt in one way or another. The only way to get rid of this suffering is through death or flying... or both. The book begins with a man flying toward his death (the only way in which he was able to successfully eliminate his problems), and towards the end the reader finds out that Solomon (Milkman's great-grandfather) escaped all of his issues by flying away. "He just took off...No more cotton! No more bales! No more orders! No more shit! He flew, baby." (328) Wouldn't it be splendid? To just fly away for a while? But it's impossible: You either keep your feet on the ground or float away forever.

Song for Salomon

Since there were some problems with my song during The Tempest (which I was unfortunately responsible for) I decided to try to make up for it with a musical video blog for Song of Solomon.

Let's Be Friends For Now

For centuries we have developed as humans as a whole. Technology, science and medicine, literature and language, etc. all owe their development to humans. However, it's not like humans worked together to attain all these. On the contrary, most of it was acquired through individualism and by working with only those that can help you, regardless of what happens to the rest. Survival of the fittest at its finest.

However, humans could get into sub-groups in order to facilitate survival. Two of these, according  to Guitar and to Booker T. Washington, are Whites versus African-Americans. "Cast Down your Buckets where you are," a famous speech by the latter, categorizes the American society into basically "whites" and "blacks." He implies that these are America's fundamental groups and that they stick together.

Similarly, Guitar in Song of Solomon is part of a clandestine group whose objective is to even-out the score in the battle between African-Americans and whites. So for every attack on the African-American community, this groups is in charge of carrying out a similar attack, in which they kill the same amount of people in pretty much the same manner.

Nevertheless, these subcategories are both manufactured illusions that continue today. People believe that races stick together, but they're wrong, and Toni Morrison, in Song of Solomon, takes the initiative to get rid of this myth. This novel does display the conflict between the two previously-mentioned races. However, this is a minor theme, whereas conflicts among the African-American community are prioritized.

Morrison is able to juxtapose Guitar's paradoxical ways by beginning the chapter with him explaining his plans to avenge the death of four little African-American girls in a church bombing, and then immediately following this with Milkman's plan to steal gold from his own aunt - to which Guitar happily obliges. So then, how can Guitar claim to fight for his race, while he is simultaneously betraying it. And not just any African-American, but his best friend's aunt, who they've both known since they were kids. Such hypocrite, only interested in "the lure of something he had never had - money." (181)

There is the common belief that human beings stick together, but they don't. They are selfish, and will only do what benefits them, despite contradicting claims. Not even family is a bounding tie anymore. And humans will work with whoever is convenient at the moment. Milkman and Guitar, for example, were drifting apart. But Milkman wanted help, so he sought his former friend. Once it's over, they'll probably go back to being acquaintances, since they don't need each other anymore. After all, there's not much more to life, but avarice and the thirst for success.

Song of Solitude

Every school year we are assigned to read at least one classic. Many times, only the teacher fully understands its essence, and thus gets why it is considered a literary canon. Meanwhile, students only wonder what makes it so special, since we don't understand most of the symbolism and depth. There's One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriela García Marquez, for example, which is read or at least known by almost every Colombian. While many people don't understand this novel's profoundness and literary strength, it is undeniable that it has become a canon in Spanish literature. And while reading Song of Solomon I couldn't help but be reminded of this Colombian-novel, because, even though they treat completely different subjects (the former dealing with Colombian struggles, while the latter with American ones), there are several items and techniques that make them surprisingly similar.

One Hundred Years of Solitude narrates Colombia's violent history throughout the years, its causes being issues such as political disagreements. This is done through the characters' lives, thus making it a story instead of a dense history lesson. Song of Solomon does pretty much the same thing: It portrays the racial inequality through the characters' eyes, thus making it all the more real.

Both of these novels also deal with gender inequality, exhibiting women's role as inferior. In One Hundred Years of Solitude there's a prostitute (Pilar Ternera) who is just an item to men while she is a very caring woman who wants someone to love her back. Similarly, in Song of Solomon, Milkman is with Hagar purely out of pleasure but feels absolutely no appreciation for her. Although she loves him, he doesn't. So she also has sex with him to receive his love, but to Milkman she is only an item that requires no commitment.

Additionally, in both of these novels the passage of time is unusual. In Song of Solomon, the story abruptly shifts from Milkman as a newborn to Milkman as a three-year old, leaving the reader baffled. Throughout the novel, time keeps on going by very quickly (from a three-year old Milkman to seven-year old one, and then to a teenage one, and then to an adult one). The same occurs in One Hundred Years of Solitude, where characters begin to age without the reader being aware of it, until suddenly they are all grown up or dead.

Since time goes by so quickly, it is evident that new generations will surge, and in both of these novels the authors take advantage of this to give hidden meanings to the characters' names and to repeat these names in order to make their objective clearer. In Song of Solomon there are three Malcolm Dead's and all three of them are very similar to each other (the main common traits are greed and selfishness). In One Hundred Years of Solitude there ends up being twenty-two Aureliano's (keep in mind that this larger number is due to the fact that it takes place in a greater lapse of time) and all of them have the characteristic of being violent.

Both of these novels treat completely different topics. However, they represent society through similar means, and this makes both the purpose and the outcome quite similar. Making two works that are so unknown to each other, essentially the same.

Modifying Modifiers

Dangling modifiers are something we're supposed to learn about in Middle School... I'm guessing, because I didn't. So before beginning the assignment, I actually had a mini-debate with myself over whether to begin reading this article or start off by looking up the term's definition. I settled for the latter. And good thing I did, because looking up the definition would have been a waste of time, since I actually knew what it was.

As I read the article I could only question why Corbett goes through the trouble of doing all of this. But then I realized that not only did I know what a dangling modifier is (in case you don't know click here, or read the article, which does a great job at explaining it), but I've also played Corbett's role and had the task of finding dangling modifiers. Where? Well, the famous SAT, of course.

The SAT's Writing section always has sentences with dangling modifiers. The test-taker is in charge of locating these errors and correcting them. But it's pretty hard as it is, even if you have only one sentence to look out for per question. So I can't even begin to imagine the trouble Corbett goes through to find all these hidden errors in random texts. He might be used to it for having done so for a long time, or he might be only starting out. But either way, he's undeniably a prescriptivist.

Crushing the Façade

Most characters in books are usually simple and flat. By this I mean that they can easily be described in a few words. Hermione Granger is an intelligent girl, Dick Hickock is a cold-blooded pedophile, Blaire Waldorf is a spoiled rich girl, etc. There might be a bit more to them, but not much. That's basically it. Never before had I been faced with a character as complex as Macon Dead.

Initially, Macon Dead is portrayed as greedy man who only cares about his wealth, and everything else - including his family - is irrelevant. The narrator even explains in a detached tone that "he still wished he had strangled [his wife] back in 1921." (63) This fits so perfectly the image the reader has of Macon Dead that it comes as no surprise.

However, when Macon Dead beats his wife after she tells a short anecdote, the audience is most certainly taken aback. And afterwards, when Milkman hits his father to defend his mom, the reader supports him - or at least I did. However, I was in no way expecting what comes next: After Milkman retires to his room, his dad comes in and opens up in an extremely unexpected way. He ends up confiding in his son the hardships of his marital life and confessing that he has a feeling that Ruth and her father had a sexual relationship. It is then that I realized that there is a lot more to Macon Dead than the greed he shows to the rest of the world. It might be his greed what created these new feelings or it might have been these feelings that created a façade and masked him with greed.

However, I guess we shall never know whether Ruth actually had something going on with her dad. Macon began suspecting so after she refused to support him and convince her father to lend him money. Yet, this might as well have been a harsh and erroneous conclusion. But then again, Morrison has already implied such behaviors when the narrator tells about how Ruth forced her dad to give her a goodnight peck every night (although he felt uncomfortable) and how she breast-fed Milkman prior to him surpassing infancy - and thus he earned the nickname. I guess we'll never know the absolute truth... if there even is one.

An Underlying Purpose

There are contests being held all around the world, all the time. There are small ones, like whoever behaves best gets to be the line leader, and huge ones like the lottery. But all these have in common one thing: there's a winner. Reba, in Song of Solomon, would win both of these contests and any one in between. She's that type of person, the lucky one.

However, there is one thing that makes winning a bit difficult: her skin color. Because of her dark skin, Reba once almost didn't win the prize she deserved at Sears: a diamond. "The only reason they gave it to her was because of them cameras," (46) and since the winner was an African-American, Sears decided to give a second place prize, and only published the pictures of this runner-up.. of course, he was white.

Once again, Morrison is exemplifying racism in society. She demonstrates it by referring to the  when Macon Dead says "[Whites] kill a nigger and comb their [dog's] hair at the same time." This sentence on its own proves how paradoxical whites can be: murderers and loving owners at the same time. However, notice how in both of these positions whites have the upper-hand. Just like they did in society.

I believe there is a reason why Morrison decides to make Reba a lucky person. Maybe, she is a personification of luck and Malcolm Dead is greed. Ruth could also be added to this list of personifications, personifying childishness since she breast-fed her son until he was a grown child and she still loved having her father kiss her goodnight, even when it made him uncomfortable.

There must also be a purpose behind Morrison's allusions to American History characters. Malcolm Dead fondly reminisces his childhood, and as he does he names his childhood farm animals: "President Lincoln; [the] foal, Mary Todd; Ulysses S. Grant, their cow; General Lee, their hog." (52) Morrison cant have chosen these names just because she liked it, there has to be a deeper reason, and I still need to find out why.

In addition, there are some topics that Morrison leaves unanswered, probably to appeal to the reader's curiousity. For example, early in the novel, Hagar admits that "some of [her] days were hungry ones." (48) The reader and the other characters present in the scene automatically assumes she has been hungry for food, until Pilate says, "Reba, she doesn't mean food." (49) However, Morrison does not explain what she has actually been hungry for. It remains a secret. But a secret that the audience will hopefully soon discover.