LITR 5731: Seminar in
American Multicultural Literature
Student Research Project
Kimberly Dru Pritchard
April 27, 2006
The
Alternative Community as a Redefinition of the Traditional
in Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon
As the era of slavery dawned in the United States, countless members of the African community involuntarily entered a country as foreign in topography as it was in sociology, leaving behind a society rich in tradition, culture, and custom. Voiceless and choiceless, African communities disbanded, and their cultural and historical identity vanished. Prior to the African’s forced arrival into this country, their lives followed traditional communal patterns of established order, convention and ritual. However, as slaves, their communities disappeared, and families, scattered like chattel across the South, ceased to function in the traditional patriarchal pattern. Andrew Billingsley, author of Black Families in White America, states that “the Negro slaves were converted from the free, independent human beings they had been in Africa, to property. This process of dehumanization started at the beginning of the slave-gathering process and was intensified with each stage along the way” (49).
Even after the Civil War freed these men and women of enslavement, the “new Americans,” found themselves bereft not only of their native land but of their family, home, and community. To say that the African American community struggled through a rebirth and reformation following the Civil War would indeed be an understatement. Heretofore living a life of impermanence and oppression, the newly freed slaves were now forced into a society rife with prejudice and racism. Their sense of community shattered, the freed men and women began the difficult task of rebuilding not only their individual identities but their cultural heritage as well.
Over the years, intensive research has been conducted analyzing the impact of slavery on African American community and family life. From W. E. B. DuBois’s early studies including The Philadelphia Negro (1899) and The Negro American Family (1909) to research such as Melville Herskovitz’s The Myth of the Negro Past (1941), Kenneth Stampp’s The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South (1956), the 1965 Moynihan Report, and Andrew Billingsley’s Black Families in White America (1968), the African American community has been the subject of concentrated scrutiny as scholars have analyzed their minority status as well as the far-reaching effects of slavery on this group both collectively and individually. Although the conclusions are varied, one general consensus remains unchanged. The African American, “denied a legitimate social, economic, and political place in American society”, lives as the Other, “the outsider, the historically and principally unassimilated minority” (Page 6). Therefore, in order to gain status and place in American society, the freed men and women gradually reconstructed not only a historical and cultural identity but a sense of community as well.
Most critics agree that a strong communal atmosphere assists in the formation of group as well as individual identity (Wieland 87). As the African Americans became established members of their newly-formed society, the rebirth of community became paramount to their survival. Families, schools, and churches provided sanctuary to those who endured years of oppression and abuse at the hands of the dominant society. Moreover, drawing from their traditional past, including the idea that “individual fulfillment only occurs through harmony with the community and the cosmos,” the new citizenry focused their efforts on the communal world as a means of recovery and rebirth (Smith). One significant piece of the African American puzzle, the church, dominated their lives providing a collective center for spiritual growth, social life, communication, and entertainment. The African American church also enhanced individual pride and self-respect because each member was recognized as an important part of the whole (Littlejohn-Blake 412).
However, not all African American communities thrived, and, consequently, alternative or substitute communities formed in order to enhance or even replace those that failed. For example, the traditional, nuclear family often welcomed the addition of extended family members in order to provide resilience and financial stability. Other surrogate communities such as the local barber shop, the women’s beauty parlor, and even secret societies formed to provide alternatives to traditional yet dysfunctional communities. As a result of the creation of these traditional and alternative communities, one thing is certain among the African American population, identity is dependent upon and inseparable from community, even if the community itself is seriously flawed (Wieland 84).
This certainty not only exists in the African American society, but it is acknowledged and addressed time and again in African American literature as well. Early slave narratives such as those authored by Olaudah Equiano, Harriet Jacobs, and Frederick Douglass, for example, chronicle the impact of community on the African American both during and after the Civil War. Even the works of contemporary authors such as Maya Angelou, Rita Dove, and Toni Morrison develop and expand the idea of the African American community and its function or dysfunction within the dominant culture. Toni Morrison in particular provides readers a glimpse into a black society where traditional communities thrive or are replaced by alternative, pseudo-communities. In her novel Song of Solomon, Morrison brings the richness of the African American community to life with cultural and ethnic insight. Critic Ralph Story indicates that her “intuitive and experiential understanding of the urban, Northern black community is strengthened and enhanced by her consciousness of Afro-American history and culture and the external forces which have swirled within and without its citizenry” (155). Consequently, Morrison’s literary plunge into the communal world of the Dead family allows the reader not only a glimpse into traditional black culture during the 1940s and 50s but also a look into the world of alternative communities established as a means of survival in a hate-filled, white world.
Since Morrison focuses most of her attention on the breakdown and failure of the conventional communities in the novel, the successful, traditional communities such as Lincoln’s Heaven, Danville, and Shalimar are seriously underwritten. In fact, in some cases, the thriving community of Lincoln’s Heaven surfaces through the avenue of memory in the tradition of oral storytelling thereby providing only a second-hand glimpse into the functional African American world in the novel. Furthermore, the successful community offers less substance in terms of development and structure, and therefore, the reader can only assume that the flourishing community existed and provided the necessary comfort and safety for its members. Therefore, the author’s development of alternative communities to replace failed traditional ones allows a “kaleidoscopic view of communal black life,” and here, “we find the dramatization of the conflicts the protagonist(s) must experience, confront, overcome, or resolve in the process of becoming” (Samuels 53).
Yet, the success of the childhood home of Macon and Pilate Dead, as described in the early pages of the novel, does provide a significant link to the breakdown of the traditional communities and the subsequent creation of alternative societies. Lincoln’s Heaven exists in Macon and Pilate’s memories as an idyllic, peaceful place where Macon worked alongside his father, tilled the land, and minded the livestock. The memories of his childhood home are clear, but “for years, he hadn’t had that kind of time, or interest” to reminisce about “the well, the apple orchard, President Lincoln; her foal, Mary Todd; Ulysses S. Grant, their cow; General Lee, their hog” (Morrison 51).
Additionally, when Milkman discovers his father’s past, Reverend Cooper, a Danville man once acquainted with Milkman’s grandfather, provides additional information about Lincoln’s Heaven. Milkman hears “about the only farm in the county that grew peaches [and] the feasts they had when hunting was over. They talked about digging a well, fashioning traps, felling trees, [and] warming orchards with fire when spring weather was bad” (Morrison 234). The peaceful farm, a sanctuary for the Dead children, provides Macon and Pilate a model by which they can fashion their future life as it was “a locus of communal pleasure in the county” where community members interacted and thrived (Storhoff). Moreover, the farm represents human endeavor, the bond of community, and a model for success, yet it exists only as a memory due to the tragic loss of Macon and Pilate’s father by the hand of a white man. As a result of their father’s murder, Macon and Pilate lose their identity, their familial bond, and their connection with the community. Through Morrison’s depiction of Lincoln’s Heaven as the unreachable utopia of the novel, the failure of the traditional communities and the need to provide or create alternative models surfaces as a significant motif.
Undoubtedly, one such model of the unsuccessful traditional community can be found in the family history of Guitar Bains and the devastating loss of his father. As a boy, Guitar lived the carefree existence of most young children until he learned that his father “got sliced up in a sawmill” (61). Guitar’s memory following this horrific event includes a visit from his father’s boss who “came by and gave [the] kids some candy” (61). The callousness of the white man, coupled with the devastation of his father’s death, destroys his traditional community, and his path in life is forever changed. As a result of this experience, Guitar lives an altered existence and eventually joins the secret society, Seven Days, which further alienates him from his former life. Guitar’s decision to join this radical group demonstrates his need to create an alternative community in order to replace the traditional one that failed and shattered his childhood. Gerleen Grewal, in her critical work on the novels of Toni Morrison, Circles of Sorrow, Lines of Struggle, explains that by joining the Seven Days, Guitar attempts to bridge the alienation he feels by using his restless energy for a purpose (71). In the beginning, Guitar’s choice seems noble, but the reality is that his alternative community provides an equivalent vengeance against the white community for mollifying his family with an offering of candy upon the death of his father.
Furthermore, Guitar rationalizes his choice by explaining to Milkman that what he’s “doing ain’t about hating white people. It’s about loving us” (Morrison 159). In his explanation to Milkman, one understands that the Seven Days provides Guitar an alternative community albeit a warped one where he is acknowledged and accepted as a contributing member of a larger group. Additionally, the inclusion of the Seven Days in the novel allows Morrison to reach into the historical black community and its contemporary equivalent to reveal a dissonance which has always characterized the African American world. The Seven Days is a group grounded in both contemporary and nineteenth century African American history. The group can be linked back to black secret societies of the nineteenth century, an intriguing consideration, since their existence, unlike that of many such groups in the late 1960s, was not necessarily documented or even acknowledged (Story 152). Yet, Guitar, desperately in need of an identity and a place to belong, believes that his membership in the Days gives him that sense of belonging as well as a position of empowerment as a black man in a white society.
Guitar discovers the importance of community through membership in a dangerously evil secret society. This young man, thrust into manhood without the benefit of parental guidance, loses his way through the avenue of prejudice and racism. Another of Morrison’s characters, Pilate Dead, also travels the path of prejudice but for entirely different reasons than Guitar Bains. Pilate Dead’s idyllic childhood on the family farm ended abruptly with the death of Pilate and Macon’s father, Jake. Like Guitar, Pilate was thrust into a world of harsh reality without the benefit of family and community to guide and comfort. Pilate remains somewhat of an anomaly throughout the novel as the world outside her tiny, self-actualized community seems to marvel at her incongruities. Even her house screams “social outcast” to Milkman upon his first glimpse of the “large sunny room that looked both barren and cluttered. A moss-green sack hung from the ceiling. Candles were stuck in bottles everywhere; newspaper articles and magazine pictures were nailed to the walls” (Morrison 38). However, it becomes clear that Pilate has grounds for choosing her marginalized lifestyle. While working in New York “pickin’ beans,” Pilate’s sexual encounter with a young man leads the community to discover the fact that she has no navel (142). The “root woman was assigned the job of finding out” her secret, and her horrified reaction to Pilate’s smooth stomach seals her fate (143). At this point, Pilate learns that she has but two options. Because other people are inevitably terrified by her physical difference, she can either hide it (and her real self) or give up any expectation of ever being accepted (Kubitschek 77). Shunned from the community, Pilate finally learns that because she was born without a navel, she will never be acknowledged as a member of traditional society.
As a result of this realization, Pilate’s life changes, and she takes on a Walden Pond existence both physically and spiritually, for she lives “in a cabin, a narrow, single-story house on the outskirts of town where she is a harvester of life’s true offerings” (Samuels 61). In her Thoreau-like lifestyle, Pilate attempts to recreate the ethereal quality of life on Lincoln’s Heaven where she lived within a loving, safe, and encouraging environment. Ironically, the alternative community, where she now lives with daughter Reba and granddaughter Hagar, provides Pilate with a sort of notoriety if not status within the traditional community.
Harry Reed, in his critical article “Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon, and Black Cultural Nationalism,” states that “in the eyes of many, [Pilate] was strange, but she possessed the basic quality of the old black world,” and this, in turn, “makes it possible for her to accept if not flourish in her isolation” (77). Furthermore, Pilate demonstrates her strength and her desire to both persevere and preserve her alternative vision of community. After being initiated into the cruelties of the white world and to the insensitivities of her own black world, Pilate chooses to build a world of her own. With this in mind, Pilate’s alternative community adds a rich flavor of black cultural heritage to the text as well as elevates her to the mystical status of “Earth Mother.” Pilate “embodies the spiritual resources of African-American folk traditions, and as such, she appears as a kind of supernatural character…a voodoo priestess and conjour, a mythical storyteller” (Bjork 151).
She also demonstrates her earthy, mystical connection time and again as she reforms not only her personal community but herself as well. Knowing that she is denied “partnership in marriage, confessional friendship, and communal religion,” Pilate accepts her fate and works hard to overcome the odds and obstacles she must face as a woman alone who raises and provides for her family (Morrison 148). Pilate asks the difficult questions about life in order to find what is ultimately important, and “she tackled the problem of trying to decide how she wanted to live and what was valuable to her” (Morrison 149). The truth that this woman finds lies in her unconditional acceptance of and adaptability in a society that shuns her. Her “deep concern for and about human relationships” becomes paramount to her survival in the alternative community that she has created (Morrison 150).
Pilate thrives in the alternative community that she forms, but other members of the Dead family are not so fortunate. The traditional community in the Dead household exists only as a facade as each member of the family functions entirely separate from the family unit, and the dysfunctional family might as well be dead as none of them has a normal life. Their lives appear to function in the traditional pattern of family gatherings, Sunday drives, and afternoon visits, but the reality that washes into the Dead household floods the family with discord and drama. Ironically, even the residents on Not Doctor Street see through the Dead’s mask of traditional family values. For example, during the ritual of the Sunday afternoon drive, residents “watched the family gliding by with a tiny bit of jealousy and a whole lot of amusement, for Macon’s wide green Packard belied what they thought a car was for” (Morrison 32). In fact, the townspeople call the Packard “Macon Dead’s Hearse” (33). The car, like the Dead family, serves only one purpose and that is to establish the deceptive disguise that buries whatever black identity or heritage the family has. In doing so, Macon makes an effort to rise above the black community and into a semblance of white upper-middle class society. Critical author Susan Vega-Gonzalez explains that even though they are a well-off American family with a determination to ascend the social ladder in a capitalist system, that very system has worked to the detriment of their ethnic values and identity. Therefore, the traditional community in which the Dead family resides is nothing more than a masquerade ball replete with costume and mask.
Consequently, the members of the Dead family function separate and apart from one another because of Macon’s perverted view of true family life. The result of this belief leads each member of the household, including Macon, to create an alternative community in which to survive. Unlike Guitar and Pilate, who are forced to create alternative communities in order to overcome prejudice and social isolation, Macon’s wife Ruth, creates a replacement community in order to escape the tirades of her husband and the fact that “his hatred…glittered and sparked in every word he spoke to her (Morrison 10). Ruth’s father, Dr. Foster, raised his daughter in a conventional family setting, and when her mother passes, she becomes mistress of the Foster home. When she marries Macon Dead, the newlyweds live in her father’s house, and Ruth takes care of her father until his death. However, Ruth soon discovers the cruelty and hatred of her husband, his resentment of her relationship with her dying father, and the fact that he withholds sexual gratification from her. Here, Ruth turns inward and creates an alternative community to better suit her needs. Her husband makes it clear that his wife’s relationship with her father prior to his death was strangely perverted and unnatural. He explains to Milkman that “nothing could be nastier than a father delivering his own daughter’s baby” because “he was a man before he was a doctor,” but they “ganged up on me forever…and no matter what I did, they managed to have things their way” (Morrison 71).
Unfortunately, Ruth’s alternative version of community locks her in the past. “Rendered invisible and inconsequential by her boorish and dominating husband,” she seeks comfort in any reminder of her life prior to the entrance of Macon Dead (Bjork 152). For example, the watermark on the mahogany dining table is a constant and essential part of her alternative community because it connects her with the past. Every evening as she “unfolded the white linen and let it billow over the fine mahogany table, she would look once more at the large water mark” (Morrison 11). The watermark holds such significance for Ruth because it pushes her into the past where she feels safe and protected in her role as daughter and hostess in the Foster mansion. Moreover, Ruth actually visits her past life on a regular basis by making secretive trips to the cemetery where her deceased father rests. Ruth admits to her son that Dr. Foster was “the only person who ever really cared whether I lived or died,” and she “didn’t care if that somebody was under the ground” (Morrison 125). Ruth’s fantasy world ensures her father’s continued presence, validates her identity, and gives her life meaning while locked in a sterile marriage (Samuels 55).
Not only does Ruth use the visits to her father’s grave to form her pseudo-community, but she also finds comfort in nursing her son far beyond the age of weaning, and, in so doing, weaves a somewhat perverted fantasy allowing herself to believe that the baby’s “lips were pulling from her a thread of light. It was as though she were a cauldron issuing spinning gold” (Morrison 13). Ruth’s fantasy-like existence only exacerbates her isolation from the family as well as the separation from her husband. Ruth Dead’s traditional community fails her, and even though her alternative community appears to bring her existence some sort of order and comfort, the truth is that her life will always remain blemished with the vestiges of incest and unwholesomeness.
Similar to Ruth, her two daughters Magdalene called Lena and First Corinthians form alternative communities to replace the traditional, familial model that has failed. Like their mother, as members of the Dead household, the two sisters also experience their father’s anger and disappointment that “sifted down on them like ash, dulling their buttery complexions and choking the life out of what should have been girlish voices” (Morrison 10). Oppressed and suppressed by a family in name only, the sisters, more often than not, function as one voice. The fact that they spend their time making artificial flowers clearly suggests the stagnant quality of their false, hollow, virginal lives which, paradoxically, does have some quality of stability (Samuels 74). However, First Corinthians and Lena, educated women with college experience, are actually too elegant and too proper for the local bachelors. In fact, “these men wanted wives who could manage, who were not so well accustomed to middle-class life that they had no ambition, no hunger, [and] no hustle in them” (Morrison 188). Consequently, First Corinthians and Lena, enslaved to flower-making, live a life devoid of love and affection.
Their secretive ways further emphasize the breakdown of their traditional community as they seek alternatives to replace what is lost. For example, Corinthians works as a maid in the home of author Michael-Mary Graham, but her mother believes that she works as the woman’s secretary. Corinthians, a victim of her father’s anger and her mother’s adherence to social conventions, lives in dread that her parents will learn that she has been a maid for two years and not an executive assistant to her employer. All that their mother dreams and hopes for her daughters becomes a cruel joke as the stagnant sisters, starved for love and affection, build lives based on deception and untruths. Their existence serves only one purpose and that is to conform to the social conventions set forth by their parents. Even as children, the two sisters were paraded “like virgins through Babylon” when their father “took [them] to the ice house,” and they “stood there in front of those sweating black men…leaning forward a little so as not to drip water on [their] dresses” (Morrison 216). These two, even as innocent children, are indoctrinated into the cruel façade of society operating as a means of creating the illusion of the traditional, well-establish family.
However, Corinthians manages to break away from her static, showcase life in the Foster mansion and plunges further into a world of secrets and deception in order to attain an alternative to her dysfunctional, emotionally barren life. Yet, this alternative to the conventional community that brings Corinthians heartache and stagnation offers nothing more than a superficial relationship with a man connected to the murderous Seven Days. As Karla Holloway states, “certainly Porter as her future holds [little] promise…[and] she will have no one to fall back on [as] her parents’ love is clearly contingent on her never stepping out of line” (96). Yet, First Corinthians breaks from her stagnation and defies her father’s iron-fisted rule by agreeing to spend a clandestine evening in Porter’s rented room. At first, she “declined immediately and repeatedly for several days until he accused her of the very thing that was absolutely true: that she was ashamed of him” (Morrison 194). Emotionally and physically depraved, First Corinthians finally agrees to join him, but only after a ridiculous display as she “climb[s] up on the fender and lay[s] full out across the hood of the car” (Morrison 199). Indeed First Corinthians breaks free from her father’s traditional yet dysfunctional community and creates a viable alternative, yet the reader is left to wonder whether or not her substitute will heal the emptiness created by her years in the Dead mansion.
Just as First Corinthians manages to fracture the physically and psychologically limiting bonds of her familial community, her sister also takes a step toward creating an alternative environment heretofore absent in her static life. Lena’s moment of truth arrives when she proclaims to Milkman that she does not “make roses anymore” (Morrison 216). The 43 year old woman finally leaves behind the trappings of her former self along with her lackluster life, defies the conventional community in which she has existed, and chooses to break into a new mode as her ego suddenly solidifies and becomes separate from that of her sister (Holloway 96). After spending a good portion of her life catering to her little brother’s every whim, Lena decides that now is as good a time as any to create a world in which she will flourish.
Ruth, Lena, and First Corinthians survive their barren, emotionless life by creating pseudo-communities that replace the traditional failures. Ironically, Macon, the party responsible for the emotional desecration of the Dead family, also endures an existence that lacks even basic human emotions. Like his sister Pilate, he lost his idyllic life the moment his father was blown “five feet into the air” (Morrison 40). From then on, Macon’s life focused on the acquisition of things making up for the fact that he was robbed of his material birthright as rightful heir to Lincoln’s Heaven (Samuels 60). With that in mind, it becomes clear that Macon’s self-imposed community of aggressive actions and insensitive brutality serves as an alternative to the traditional version that failed him as a young child. Even though Macon establishes a familial community by marrying Ruth and siring three children, he never accomplishes his true goal of recreating his vision of his boyhood home (Storhoff). Macon’s world revolves around hatred and viciousness as he avoids emotional interaction with other human beings and centers on gathering money from his rent house tenants. For example, when Porter goes “crazy drunk again,” Macon says, “I ain’t aiming to get him down. I’m aiming to get my money down. He can go on and die up there if he wants to. But if he don’t toss me my rent, I’m going to blow him out of that window” (Morrison 24). Macon can in no way acquire any amount of true satisfaction in taking money from poor black families to satisfy his pursuit of the American Dream, yet he continues to subvert his black identity in order to accomplish just that.
Macon’s alternative to Lincoln’s Heaven, the Dead mansion and his quasi-office otherwise known as “Sonny’s Shop,” also fails miserably and sits in stark contrast to Pilate’s effervescent, carefree lifestyle. Pilate may not have formed the perfect alternative to her traditional Lincoln’s Heaven, but she certainly learns to prosper as a woman full of emotion with a passion for life and her cultural identity. Ironically, it is Macon’s son, Milkman, who reclaims his father’s cultural identity through his search for his own alternative community. Locked in a life of cultural illiteracy, Milkman is unable to adapt to his own community or historical moment, but as he searches for and identifies his rightful place through his visits to Danville and Shalimar, his father Macon seems to soften somewhat even though “relations between Ruth and [him] were the same and would always be” (McKenzie, Morrison 335). Therefore, through his son, perhaps Macon finds some sort of peace in knowing that his identity is intact and that his ancestors found their deserved reward as they “flew on home…[and] left everybody down on the ground …and sailed on off like a black eagle” (Morrison 328).
Fortunately, Milkman’s physical and spiritual journey into the family’s past resolves at least some of the issues that touch nearly every member of the Dead family. However, prior to his quest for wholeness and self, Milkman, like his parents and sisters, struggles to create an alternate version of the traditional community in order to cope with the profoundly decayed version that has become his standard. Obviously, Milkman’s general malaise regarding life, goals, and commitment to others ties directly into the lives of the aforementioned characters, and, as a result, Milkman’s plight has ultimately been established. His alternative version of community entails years of abusing his position in the family as the only male child. Not only did his mother nurse him until “his legs [dangled] almost to the floor, but the other women in the household, Lena and First Corinthians, catered to his every need (Morrison 12). Furthermore, Milkman’s carelessness with women continues in his relationship with Hagar. His emotionless rationalization of their relationship ultimately leads to her crazed monthly tirades as she plots his murder. But, Milkman, paralleling his father’s cold, detached manner, composes a letter to Hagar proposing an end to their relationship. His plan is to go “back to his father’s office, [get] some cash out of the safe, and [write] Hagar a nice letter which ended: ‘Also, I want to thank you…I am signing this letter with love…but more than that, with gratitude’” (Morrison 99). Milkman’s letter, business-like and heartless, substantiates the fact that he is indeed his father’s son. His selfish, parasitic existence in the Dead household ultimately leads to his physical and psychological journey of self-discovery. Not only does Milkman unearth his genealogy and cultural identity, but he uncovers his historical community as well (Samuel 64).
Milkman’s search for an alternative community ends with his discovery of a permanent, functional, and traditional community that will serve his emotional and spiritual needs for the rest of his life. However, this recently discovered treasure comes to him only through an intense process of growth and renewal. When Milkman arrives in Danville, he finds Reverend Cooper, a man acquainted with his family history. As Milkman listens to Reverend Cooper unravel the mystery of his past, he “[feels] a glow listening to a story come from this man that he’d heard many times before but only half listened to. Or maybe it was being there in the place where it happened that made it seem so real” (231). Milkman’s personal and cultural identity begins to unfold, and little by little, he comes to understand the folklore of his parents’ past (Samuels 64).
Milkman’s metamorphosis continues as he learns the value of appropriate interaction with the townspeople who knew his father. To become communally literate, Milkman not only listens to stories told by men who shared his father’s youth, but he also learns what is polite and what is insulting in this new context (Kubitschek 78). As he journeys toward Shalimar, he finally comprehends the fact that society does not necessarily function in an emotionless vacuum as it does on Not Doctor Street. In fact, “where [Milkman] went, the Negroes were as pleasant, wide-spirited, and self-contained as could be…[and] none of the pleasantness was directed at him because of his father…or his grandfather’s memory” (Morrison 260). Milkman, unlike the others in the novel, comes to terms with the fact that his failed traditional community can never be repaired nor can an unstable alternative replace what is lost. Therefore, he must choose wisely in order to separate himself from the falseness of the Deads and accept the rite of passage that will result in his incorporation into his ancestral community (Samuels 65).
Finally, Milkman’s arrival and subsequent experiences in Shalimar results in his complete transformation. However, his entrance into the small community is not without difficulties. Milkman’s social and cultural illiteracy regarding communal behavior and decorum works to his detriment when he refers to the local boys in Solomon’s store with indifference. Instead of acknowledging their community and brotherhood, Milkman manages to widen the gap between North and South by referring to the locals as “them.” He asks, “You think maybe one of them could help with the car? (Morrison 265). Because of his impersonal reference to the townsmen, Milkman unknowingly insults the men and reveals his status as social outcast. Furthermore, his social ignorance continues when he flaunts the fact that he might need to purchase an alternate car since his is in need of repair. In her critical article “Southern Ethos/Black Ethics in Toni Morrison’s Fiction,” Lucille Fultz explains that Milkman’s “’crime’ of diminishing one’s people by flaunting white values” is “the most telling observation and interior commentary by the men of Shalimar [and it goes] directly to the core of Black Southern ethics.”
Milkman’s difficulties in Shalimar only strengthen his determination to resolve his personal crises and assimilate into a traditional, functional, and legitimate community. The men of Shalimar teach Milkman the “dos and don’ts” of community life. First, he learns that the local boys cannot live with themselves if they permit a stranger – even though he is a successful Black man – to put them down or show them up. Because Milkman depersonalizes them, the men, in turn, treat him as the “Other.” In fact, “they looked with hatred at the city Negro who could buy a car as if it were a bottle of whiskey,” and they proceed to refer to him as “the Negro with the Virginia license and the northern accent” (Morrison 266). Second, Milkman learns that he has not “’earned’ the admiration of the community,” and this misconception leads to a “bloody and formidable test of his manhood by the men of Shalimar” (Fultz). Last, Milkman learns that his newly recognized sense of emotional connection and responsibility goes far beyond romantic relationships or even family, as he deals with an African American community that extends over geographic space and time (Kubitschek 82).
Milkman’s journey into his past brings him satisfaction and contentment as he finally comes to terms with his life of selfish self-absorption and resolves to make the necessary changes that will lead to his happiness. Once an outsider to the ritualistic swapping of stories and other verbal banter in which most men engage, Milkman now realizes the importance of the socialization that takes place within the community as well as the fact that respect of the community is essential in order to become a participating member (Mobley 55). With that knowledge, Milkman is integrated into a traditional, functioning community that serves to develop and enhance his physical, psychological, and spiritual needs thereby creating a sense of identity and wholeness.
Milkman’s maturation and subsequent personal and cultural identity is the result of years of struggle in a community that provided no stability, affection, or acceptance. Unlike his pal Guitar and the members of his family, Milkman succeeds in not only discovering the true meaning of community but in integrating himself into the powerful nexus that brings him self-worth, integrity, and respect. Unfortunately, Guitar, his heart sealed by the devastating loss of his father, refuses to accept traditional communal values and instead devotes his life to death. Additionally, Milkman’s sisters, their caged, emotionless existence more animal-like than human, attempt to break through traditional yet failing communal standards by forming alternative lifestyles, but again, at what price? Corinthians’ lover, a member of the revenge-seeking Seven Days, offers little in the way of traditional, stable values, yet Corinthians insists that he is the “only thing that could protect her from a smothering death of dry roses” (Morrison 199).
Likewise, Milkman’s mother and father enslave themselves to an alternative community that brings neither of them comfort or satisfaction. Ruth, enmeshed in an inappropriately sanctioned relationship with her deceased father, believes her only comfort and protection lies in midnight visits to his gravesite. Macon, on the other hand, is never able to see beyond the world bequeathed to him by whites. As a result, he is uninterested in the family history as he is far too busy living out the American Dream of owning things, the very dream that caused white people to shoot his father (Rice 65).
In total opposition to her brother Macon, Pilate basks in the comfort and familial bonds formed between her daughter Reba and granddaughter Hagar. Her transcendental lifestyle, fueled by her outcast status as a young woman without a navel, generally serves Pilate in a positive sense. Unfortunately, even Pilate’s alternative community fails to protect her carefree spirit as “she reached up and yanked her earring from her ear…made a little hole with her fingers and placed it in Sing’s snuffbox with the single word Jake ever wrote” (Morrison 335). It is at this point that Pilate breathes her last breath in the arms of Milkman.
As Philip Page explains, “the characters in Song of Solomon must grapple with the issues of reconnecting with a hitherto neglected past, of seeking individual fulfillment in harmony with their community rather than in isolation, and of redeeming a future for themselves and their communities (35). In so doing, Morrison creates an accurate portrait of black American life in the mid 20th century. By undertaking the reconstruction of both history and context from her own people, Morrison emphasizes not only sociopolitical concerns but personal, individual concerns as well. On some level, Morrison’s characters reach beyond the printed page and touch the lives of those who “surrender to the air” (337).
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