LITR 5731: Seminar in American Multicultural Literature
Sample Student Midterm, Fall 2007

Gordon Lewis

Flight, Naming, Family & Dream Motifs in Song of Solomon

Coleridge describes the writer in these words, “. . . description and narration supplied the place of visual exhibition . . . the painting was not in colors, but in words (107).  Coleridge’s words provide an apt description of what Toni Morrison accomplishes in Song of Solomon where she paints a tapestry composed of threads of themes, characters and ideas that are combined in unique and unanticipated expressions that deliver a portrait of, and give voice to, the inhabitants of her novel.   Her novel has been identified as part of the literature of magical realism and as almost an epic as it touches on the character’s lives over five decades (Houchins 1).

One of the threads is the magical aspect of the novel which is all about the tradition within the African slave community about the capability of some Africans to fly.  Virginia Hamilton, author of The People Could Fly: American Black Folktales, notes that there are more than 25 flying references, tales and folktales.  Hamilton further comments that in all black folktales, people have names, except in the tale, The People Could Fly.  She assigned names to the characters in her version of the tale.

Powell places the historical roots of the flying African legend to an historical incident in the spring of 1803 when a group of Igbo slaves rebelled aboard ship.  After reaching landfall, the chained slaves committed suicide by walking into the Georgia swamp, and this disappearance of the slaves evolved into a tale that they had flown back to Africa (Powell 1).  However, the use of the concept that slaves could, or wished to “fly away” appears frequently in slave literature.  For example, Douglas writes in his narrative, “I would pour out my soul’s complaint . . . .  You are freedom’s swift-winged angels that fly around the world . . . .  O that I were free! . . .  If I could fly!” (388).

A teacher could use Morrison’s Song of Solomon almost as a text in a writing course as the novel so effectively illustrates concepts that the teacher is endeavoring to convey to student writers.  For example, the use of the full circle ending is so well illustrated by Morrison’s use of Robert Smith’s suicide note on the first page to introduce the theme of flying when Smith pens, “I will take off . . . and fly away on my own wings” (3) and then at the end of the novel Milkman leaps because he has learned that, “If you surrendered to the air, you could ride it” (337).  In between these two events, the motif is well developed.  Morrison frequently utilizes the repetition of a children’s song, or portions of it, about Solomon and his son Jake to reinforce the motif in the story.  In the last chapters, the reader learns that this Solomon is the great grandfather of Milkman.  Children’s rhymes about flying are introduced by at the beginning of the story when Pilate sings at the failed flying event of Mr. Smith,

O Sugarman done fly away,

Sugarman done gone

Sugarman cut across the sky

Sugarman gone home . . . . (6).

Morrison, in a Foreword to the Vintage Books edition of Song of Solomon discusses the flying motif as deliberate for both the novel and for her personal stage in writing.  She notes that Song of Solomon was her first attempt to move from a focus on female characters to male characters.  To accomplish this move in her professional writing, she felt that she had to travel from the locale in which she was familiar to new territory, “to fly” (xii).  She notes in the Foreward the importance of a sentence in the writing process and discusses the import of the opening sentence of this novel.  She states, “I wanted it to contain important signs and crucial information” (xiii).

In her discussion of the opening sentence of the novel Morrison makes the following notations. 

The insurance company is a well known black-owned company.  The sentence begins with North Carolina and closes with Lake Superior, geographical locations that suggest a journey from south to north, the direction common for black migration.  The agent’s flight is also north, towards Canada and asylum.  The flights in the novel of the agent, Solomon and Milkman also involve the abandonment of family and thus are ambiguous (xiii-xiv).

When Milkman later begins his journey of discovery, it again begins with the flying motif when on the first leg of his trip he flies on an airplane (220).  His journey reverses the traditional migration and he travels from north to south in this pursuit of self knowledge.

            Another central motif to the novel is about the importance of names.  The charity hospital from which Robert Smith leaps is named Mercy Hospital, but the African Americans refer to it as No Mercy Hospital since it was not until 1931 that the first colored expectant mother was allowed to give birth in the hospital (5).  This patient was the only child of the only Negro doctor, and the blacks referred to the street on which he lived as Doctor Street.  However, after the city posted notices that the street was named Main and Not Doctor Street, it was thereafter referred to as Not Doctor Street.  The main characters in the Dead family have names from the bible, except for Macon Dead who was accidentally misnamed.  In addition to the names of the characters that move through the novel, many of the areas have been given descriptive names.  As an example, Feather’s pool hall was located in the Blood Bank area, so named because of its reputation for crime.  Morrison devotes considerable attention to the naming process, frequently explaining how a character obtained their name.  In addition, there are numerous nicknames assigned including, of course, Milkman, Railroad Tommy, Hospital Tommy, and Empire State because he swayed.

            Naomi Van Tol, in a discussion of the novel, notes that traditionally, African Americans have been denied their own names.  In her commentary, she notes that the refusal of the black community in Song of Solomon to accept arbitrarily imposed names constitutes opposition to an oppressive white power structure.  She notes that the ability to choose our own names verifies individual power.

            Van Tol notes that perhaps the most powerful name in the novel is that of Pilate, the name of the Christ-Killer, who was born after her mother had died in childbirth and subsequently, she was born without a navel.  The combination of her name and lack of navel permanently cast her in a role outside of society.

            Danny Corrigan in his 2004 essay, “And the Children Shall Know Their

Names:  The Significance of Names in Classic Slave Narratives, Song of

Solomon, and Push,” notes that “several world religions and mythologies contain parables illustrating the inherent power contained in names as well as the actual authority derived from naming something. In the Book of Genesis, Adam is given the important task of naming all the animals in creation.”  Further, he notes, that in “The Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, The African,” “Equiano goes through at least three name changes.  By identifying himself both as Olaudah Equiano and Gustavus Vassa on the cover of his narrative, Equiano is able to achieve a bi-cultural perspective of his own identity: one, the African name given to him by his old culture, and the European name forced upon him by his new culture.”

            Another thread or motif characterizing the novel is the dysfunctional family relationships.  Milkman’s mother Ruth and father Macon have not had a sexual relationship for twenty years.  His aunt, Pilate, has an illegitimate daughter who also has an illegitimate daughter, Hagar and thus a blood relative of Milkman with whom he has a prolonged sexual relationship.  Pilate’s mother dies in childbirth and Pilate and her brother Macon Dead both witness the murder of their father.  Neither of Milkman’s sisters marries and one, Magdalene called Lena, who is college educated, settles for a relationship that begins in middle age with a laborer.  When Milkman seeks to find his identity, he goes on a quest to discover the roots of his extended family, partially in an effort to affirm his own existence.   

            This theme of broken family relationships exists throughout African American literature.  Inherent in the slave culture was the denial of family relationships that were the norm in the white society.  Slavers kidnapped Equiano from his home and he was quickly separated from his sister.  Frederick Douglas did not know who his father was and he has but a fleeting acquaintance with his mother who was located on a farm some distance from him.  He saw her only a few times in his life.  Karen Hrametz in her 2006 essay, “Alternate and Dysfunctional Family Patterns,” discusses the problems faced by Harriet Jacobs in our reading of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.  “Family separation issues were a major source of anguish among slaves. Harriet Jacobs tells in her narrative of the ever-present threat of losing relatives on the auction block.”  In order to avoid the lechery of Dr. Flint, “Jacobs spent seven years in the crawl space of her grandmother’s porch roof, with only the hope of being with her children in freedom to sustain her.  Jacobs’ story illustrates the anguish that slaves experienced over family separation issues. She endured much pain, as did all slaves, but she was one of the more fortunate:  not only did she escape slavery, but she also became free to raise her children as she so desired.”

            Another motif incorporated by Morrison relates to objective 3a in the course about the alternative dream narrative that in the minority culture may resemble, but is not identical to “the American Dream.”  The Dead family for at least three generations pursued the “American Dream” within the constraints available to the minority businessman.  Macon Dead, the grandfather, ignorant and a former slave, within one year leased ten acres.  Within sixteen years, he had one of the most prosperous farms in Montour County.  Macon Dead, the father, became a property owner with numerous tenants in the inner city in Michigan.  His son, Milkman, became a prosperous assistant to his father, dressed well, and was affluent.  They were living the American Dream.  They were role models for others of what could be achieved.   They were taking advantage of the opportunities available (Morrison 235).

            The discussion of the “American Dream” is a reoccurring topic within African American minority literature.  In addition to the famous “I Have a Dream” speech of Dr. Martin Luther King, Langston Hughes and Maya Angelou both address the topic in their poetry.

            Hughes asked the question in, “A Dream Deferred,” “What happens to a dream deferred?  Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?  Or fester like a sore . . .”

Maya Angelou, in “Still I Rise,” speaks to the oppression of the Black minority and asserts that in spite of much oppression, “Still I Rise.”  Angelou sentiment is part and parcel of the Dream parable, that in even in the face in insurmountable odds, the dreamer tries again and again until the goal is reached. 

            Of the Objectives pursued in this course, one of the most important to me in my course of study is Objective 5, to study the influence of minority writers and speakers.  This study of Nobel Prize winner Morrison, Maya Angelou, Langston Hughes, Frederick Douglas and others has been very rewarding.  I have enjoyed this journey, this flight though this literature.

Work Cited

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor.  “Lecture IX.”  From The lectures of 1811-1812. 

            The Tempest, ed. Robert Langbaum.  New York:  Signet Classics, 1998.

            106-118.

Douglas, Frederick.  “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas.”  Classic

            Slave Narrative. Ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr.  New York:  Signet Classic,

            1987.   323-436.

Hamilton, Virginia.  The People Could Fly.  New York:  Knopf, 2004.

Houchins, Sue, ed.  “Toni Morrison.”  27 Sept 2004<http://www9georgetown

            .edu/faculty/bassr/heath/syllabuild/iguide/morrison.html>

Jacobs, Harriet.  “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.”  Classic Slave

            Narrative. Ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr.  New York:  Signet Classic, 1987.

            437-668.

Morrison, Toni.  Song of Solomon.  New York:  Vintage International, 2004.

Powell, Timothy B.  “Ebos Landing.”  The New Georgia Encyclopedia.

            University of Georgia Press, 2007.  27 Sept 2004<http://www.

            Georgiaencyclopedia.org/he/Article.jsp?path=/HistoryArchaeology/

            Angebellum

Tol, Naomi Van.  “The Fathers May Soar.  Folklore and Blues in Song of

            Solomon.”  27 Sept 2004<http://spiny.com/naomi/thesis>