Jason Kimbrell

2 October 2012

Midterm

The Bible, Names, and Children: A Web-Review

            I have a habit of writing and rewriting papers. I find myself interested in every topic I come across and find it difficult to pick just one thing to write on. For my web-review, I decided to review midterms that tackled the topics I was unable to address.

The first essay I read was Samuel Mathis’s “The Life-Giving Word: Biblical Language in African American Literature.” Mathis argues that African American writers use Biblical language, references, and songs in order to both “assimilate and resist the dominant culture by the using the white man’s words against him.” He examines four texts: Jacobs, Douglass, Morrison, and Jupiter Hammon’s “An Evening Thought: Salvation by Christ.” I found his commentary on Song of Solomon’s Magdalene called Lena most insightful. He asserts that she is not based on Mary Magdalene, but in fact Mary’s sister. I had this misconception, and my interpretation of the novel is much stronger with the clarification.

I feel like the essay left something to be desired in its attempt to tie the allusions to African American resistance. Mathis offers a short lesson in publication history, but does not cite any sources. He does the same thing in his analysis of the Hammon poem, in which he claims “Caucasian Americans believed that [a lamentation] was a simple religious cry for forgiveness of sins since slaves were seen as very religious.” If Mathis had documented this detail, his argument would be much more powerful. However, even without the sources, the midterm was well worth the read for the Biblical information.

Next, I examined Corey Porter’s essay “By Any Other Name, or, The Importance of Names and Naming in American Minority Culture.” Like Mathis’s midterm, I was attracted to Porter’s midterm as it was a topic I was interested in while reading Song of Solomon. Porter asserts that names are both the anchor of the individual and the community. He goes on to analyze Equiano, Morrison, Amiri Baraka’s “Leroy,” and Jacobs.

I found the Song of Solomon analysis most interesting because of its explanation of why things are named. Not Doctor Street, Solomon’s Leap, Ryna’s Gulch, and Mercy are names “significant not only to individuals, but to entire communities, for their representative explanatory or allegorical nature.” Porter explains conversation between Milkman and Lena about the tree as Milkman realizing that people have names and “should be treated as though they do.” I address this scene in my midterm as an example of obvious, unnecessary, and distracting symbolism.

Finally, I reviewed Rachael Risinger’s essay “Responsibility is a Hallmark of the Aristocracy.” While both Mathis and Porter focused heavily on allusions, Rachael Risinger offers a class analysis of Morrison, Douglass, and Jacobs. Risinger’s interpretation of Harriet Jacobs’s relationship with Dr. Flint is enlightening. She asserts that Jacobs gave away her virginity to “avoid being sexually exploited” by her master. This led me to consider Jacobs’s relationship to her children. Is it possible that she planned the pregnancy? If so, were her children a weapon, a blessing or both?

I was not very convinced by her commentary on Morrison. She likes that the novel takes place one generation after the fall of sharecropping. I can relate to her observation that grade school’s “forty-acres-and-a-mule story” is a lie, but the section did not discuss the novel’s depiction of class like her commentary on Douglass and Jacobs.

Although I set out to read essays that address topics other than my own, I found they actually supplemented my ideas. Toni Morrison uses many Biblical allusions to create new layers of meaning, as Mathis points out. Porter’s analysis of names reveals names are full of meaning, and I bring up Singing Bird as an example of obvious symbolism. Rachael Risinger’s discussion of virginity brings to light that anything can be interpreted as a symbol, in this case, as corruption of innocence and the taint of slavery. Overall, I found the web-review helpful in developing my topic.  

Symbolizing Solomon: A Critique of Toni Morrison’s Use of Symbols

            Symbols are an important part of literature. They allow writers to communicate deeper meaning by assembling the mundane in inventive ways. Deeper connections allow writers to tell stronger stories. A symbol is an image that has meaning. To quote the course site, it “provokes meaning, but not absolutely and definitely.” A symbol is “context-sensitive.” It gains its meaning based on its position in a text. A cloud might cover the moon, but when the cloud covers the moon while a character loses sight of his dream, then the cloud and moon become something more. The puritans punish Hester Prynne by branding her with the  scarlet letter “A,”, but the multiple meanings of the letter A create a dialog between the reader and the text that continually changes the narrative, even after it is finished. Symbols exist to enhance a text. They are tools for adding meaning.

            Good symbols are incorporated into the text’s narrative seamlessly. All written works have a narrative. I define it as the sequence of ideas in a text. Although events may not occur chronologically in a story, the sequence in which they are told forms the narrative. The symbol must have a logical position. Narrative requires that the reader suspends his or her disbelief. The reader must give in to the author and live inside the world of the work.

Symbols backfire when they draw attention to themselves. Rather than enhance the narrative, they appear forced, like a puzzle piece shoved into the wrong spot. This upsets the  suspension of disbelief and the reader leaves the text. The symbol takes over, and the narrative it is supposed to support takes a back seat.

            Symbols have played a significant role in our assigned texts. They persuade others to stand up against slavery, to pay attention to the condition of African Americans in American society, to understand the inner-workings of the oppressed and how to rise up and right the wrongs of the oppressor. This has proven very effective in most of our texts. However, Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon is the exception to the trend. I find Morrison’s symbols so obvious that they sacrifice narrative for meaning. In order to demonstrate this, I will compare effective symbols in Martin Luther King’s “Dream Speech” and Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life with Song of Solomon.

In the “Dream Speech,” Martin Luther King uses property as metaphor for personal freedom. Dr. King’s dream is “deeply rooted in the American dream.”  He begins by acknowledging that the American dream uses wealth as a goal and a measure of success. He explains that “the Negro lives alone on an island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity.” However, the Negro has been denied access to the American Dream. This denial sets up the definition of property within the text. In Dr. King’s eyes, America has “defaulted” on “a promissory note”—the promise of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness detailed in the Declaration of Independence. Thus, he commodifies freedom and makes it a material good. Because the African American dream’s fulfillment is perpetually in waiting, these rights can never be fully gained but must always be fought for. Dr. King’s metaphor relies on the images of the island and the promissory note. Both images are logically placed in the text and integrated into the speech so that they do not stand out. The reader does not step back to interpret them, which adds instant meaning to the speech that could not be established any other way.

            Another example of an effective symbol is Sandy Jenkins’s root in The Narrative Life of Frederick Douglass. Jenkins gives Douglass the root as a supernatural object that will prevent Covey from acting against the slave. The root turns out to be a sham, as Douglass and Covey get into a brutal fist fight two days later. The victory, however, leads Douglass to self discovery and reawakens his desire for freedom.

            The root plays two roles: first, it dispels what Harriet Jacobs calls “a slave’s superstition.” Douglass proves that only action can fight slavery. This is an empowering statement, as it means something can be done about slavery. It is not a wait and see game. Second, the root acts as a symbol for new beginnings. Although it did not supernaturally prevent violence, Douglass introduces it into the narrative at the same moment that the “slave begins to become a man.” The symbol works because it is subtle. The reader does not step away to interpret the meaning of the root. It presents itself as a logical idea, and its power relies on the subconscious connection between roots and beginnings.

Song of Solomon’s symbols distract from the narrative by drawing attention to themselves. One way Morrison does this is through her symbols’ sheer incredibility. In one scene, Lena accuses Milkman of attempting to control the family after telling his father about Porter. Lena points to a dying tree and tells Milkman that it was the same tree that he had peed on as a child. Lena's point is that Milkman has gone through life “pissing” on everyone around him, doing what he wants, taking what he wants, and damn the consequences.

            Even in a novel where the main character is named “Milkman” because his mother breast-fed him for too long, it is hard to accept that Milkman's sister would keep a twig that he peed on, plant it, and take care of its offspring. Milkman is a privileged young man that gets what he wants regardless of others' feelings. The point could have easily been made by simply referencing the pee-story from earlier in the novel. By actually having the tree present, Morrison hits the reader over the head by making the incident more profound than it actually is.            

Another instance of obvious symbolism is the flying Africans theme. The legend works to develop Milkman's character. Milkman seeks to escape from his sheltered life and to break free. The story of Solomon not only gives him a precedent for this, but also teaches him the valuable lesson of what gets left behind in an escape. Although I admire this motif, its execution sacrifices consistent narrative. Bird and flight imagery abound, but once the reader identifies the theme, the symbols dominate. The novel becomes a clue-hunt, like the “Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band” album after hearing the Paul-is-dead rumor. For example, isolated statements about flight stick out. When Guitar asks Milkman what he would do if Michigan was Montgomery, Alabama, Milkman replies that he would “buy a plane ticket” (104). Later, Milkman “reluctantly... [gives up] the elegance he had felt on the flight” after boarding the Greyhound bus to Danville (226). The isolated incidences become so numerous and overwhelming that they devalue more powerful examples of the theme. Milkman's grandmother was named “Singing Bird,” a clue that leads to Milkman’s revelation about his family and self-discovery (304).  However, it gets lost in a sea of other flight-images.

The flying Africans theme is problematic in that it requires symbols such as these to function. My criticism is not that the novel is any worse off for it. On the contrary, it succeeds because of it. My criticism is that the narrative itself suffers. It ceases to be a story, and instead, it becomes a puzzle.

It could be argued that I have selected two very different texts to compare with Song of Solomon. Morrison’s text is a work of fiction, not a speech or slave-narrative. My point is that Toni Morrison's use of symbols draws the reader out of disbelief. Any creative work requires that the audience suspend reality. Morrison breaks that bond. Dr. King's speech Douglass's narrative offer examples of effective symbolism because they use subtle connections between images, ideas, and context.  

Song of Solomon: The Graphic Novel

Yet Song of Solomon is a very compelling novel because it layers meaning on meaning. What would happen if the novel was presented visually? Could the novel’s symbolism and narrative work seamlessly through images? I believe that it can.

            For my semester project, I will combine the creative and conference paper options. I intend to produce and present selections from a graphic novel based on Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon. For the sake of this assignment, I will focus on sections with the flying Africans theme. Some potential scenes include the opening chapter, the hunt, and the novel’s finale. One way to handle the flying Africans theme would be to depict characters as birds. For example, Milkman admires Pilate because she can fly without leaving the ground. I could make her a penguin, since penguins can’t fly, but are very graceful nonetheless. In addition to the graphic novel, I will submit a conference proposal that will introduce the concept and explain the reasoning behind my design choices. I hope to present this at the UHCL Spring Conference.