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.