Money hungry men and abandoned women

Throughout Song of Solomon, a few clear gender roles pop out to me: the men are driven by money and their personal ideals rather than reality and the women in the book often end up alone and somewhat mad.

Let's start with the men. The three main males in the novel are Milkman, Macon, and Guitar. We can see that Milkman clings to his own perception of the world rather than reality because he stays in a somewhat childlike state into his thirties and need others to point out his flaws. If he would've just accepted the reality of his situation, he would've left his father's house sooner, maybe had a family, and would be able to find fault in himself without having to have one of his sisters yell it at him. Macon Dead also suffers from a similar alternate reality. He is stuck in the delusion (or truth?) of his wife's sexual relationship to her father. Even though it is unclear what exactly went down, when Macon tells the story to his son, he neglects to tell him about how he tried desperately to kill his unborn son. Maybe if Macon would've tried to figure out the real truth, he and his wife could've returned to their previously functional relationship. Guitar is driven by how the Seven Days view the world. To many people outside the Days, he sounds more like a psychopathic serial killer than a vigilante superhero fighting to preserve the balance of the population but Guitar truly and completely believes that he and the Days fight for good. In his reality they do make a difference and though it is hard for him to care it is his duty.

The men are also driven by money, as illustrated by their quest for the gold. All three of them long for the gold while they assume Pilate, who they think has it, would be able to just hang it from the ceiling completely untouched. Milkman allows his desire for independent financial security to fly him to Pennsylvania and Virginia. I think this thirst for wealth amongst the men is because wealth means financial stability and independence and thus symbolizes freedom.

The women on the other hand often end up alone, abandoned by the people that once surrounded them and a little crazy. Again, three examples come to mind, Hagar, Pilate, and Circe. Hagar was obviously abandoned by Milkman. After he so tactlessly tosses her aside, she takes to stalking him and using any available object to kill him. She becomes obsessed with his death yet cannot kill him. She seems pretty crazy. Pilate is abandoned when her father is killed and her brother leaves her after killing the miner. She is all alone in the world but still manages to make a home for herself. She and her home are both classified as crazy by many people. She is doesn't fit the preexisting gender role of women. She is a bootlegger with a child and grandchild but no men around. Her house is loose and free, especially sexually. Finally, Circe. She is abandoned when the man of her house dies and the lady of the house commits suicide. Abandoned by all human company she becomes a unreal, ghostly old woman breeding dogs in the empty mansion. She seems crazy too. It is important to note though that the women are only perceived as crazy by some people.

Some of the characteristics of the two genders are easily observable as following these patterns. It is interesting how these two roles interact throughout the book and create the confused social interactions throughout the book. Morrison takes these general roles and presents them again and again in different scenarios to emphasize her point.

Flight and Escape

Flight is an obvious motif throughout Song of Solomon. The epigraph, "The fathers may soar and the children may know their names", is the first clue the reader gets to this theme. The opening scene of the novel makes as even more explicit reference to this theme. Robert Smith, an insurance agent, commits suicide by jumping off the hospital but in his last note, he doesn't see it quite like that. He says, "I will take off from Mercy and fly away on my own wings." In his eyes, he is escaping from the pains of the world through his "flight". Milkman too has his own encounters with flight. First, when he finds out that he, as a human, will never be able to fly without the assistance of some kind of machine he is devastated. Through this piece of knowledge, he loses freedom and means of escape from his family. The next encounter that comes to mind is the winged woman on the hood of his father's car. He stares for hours on end at her and yet she can never escape the hood of the extremely unhappy Dead car. If she could fly, she would be able to eliminate her bond to the car and escape. The primary example of this motif of flying is that Macon finally escapes his family and the lifelong rut he's been in by actually flying away from it in an airplane. Here this motif becomes so wonderfully literal that it is pretty hard to deny. Though Milkman is still connected to his family, flight allows him to escape from the people that had been around him for virtually his entire life.

Also, as a potentially relating note, Pilate could not fly away from her problems and old life, though she did walk away from them, which could be why they still seem to follow her.

Online journals...

I think the online journals are a very useful tool. I found that when I was using mine religiously, writing solid posts, and reading what classmates wrote, it was much easier to construct good papers are topics of discussion in class. It's nice to have a place to just spew thoughts and then go back later to pick through the bits of randomness to find a gem. Though I have never experienced Mr. Mitchell's paper journals, I think that I would prefer the online format to the older hand written ones. First of all, I like the public aspect of the online journals as it facilitates the sharing of ideas outside of normal class discussion. I have often used other people's journals as a starting place for a paper or post of my own. The public aspect encourages a higher standard of writing as well. Also, although I prefer paper books and notes to devices such as Kindles, I like the way it feels to sit down at my computer to write. I think it makes the journals seem more legit, more like writing a real paper. Comfort is a big factor too. I can sit comfortably on my couch working on something else on my computer then immediately switch to my journal without the fuss of finding a notebook and pencil and sitting somewhere more conducive with writing. Also along the lines of comfort, I think typing is faster and easier than hand-writing. The discomfort of handwriting puts me in a test mindset and subsequently I tend to rush unthinkingly through handwritten assignments. Editing is much easier when typing as well. If you think of something after two or three more lines have passed, you just arrow up and make the addition. The editing process of handwritten works involves many more arrows and scratch outs resulting in a graphite mess from which Mr. Mitchell later must extract the genius hiding amongst the scribbles. Another convenience resulting from the online nature of the journals is that they are pretty easily portable. I can access mine on my phone whenever I get an idea and when Mr. Mitchell is grading he doesn't have to carry like a million of them around with him.

To concisely conclude, I like them. Not the paper ones. Do these next semester.

Meursault vs Ruth: Innocence, sympathy, and morals

Thus far in Song of Solomon, I have already observed many similarities between it and the books that came earlier in the semester. One comparison in particular caught my attention as I wrote my research paper on a similar subject. The issue has to do with serious moral failings but ambiguous reactions by the reader due to the innocence or naivety of the character involved. My comparison is between Ruth and her sexual encounters with her father and son and Meursault and him murdering the Arab. For some reason, I find Meursault a much more sympathetic character than Ruth. Even though his crime would be considered worse by courts, his innocence of consequence in the world is more compelling than Ruth's supposed innocence of the wrongness of her sexual endeavors. In all honesty, I think it is introducing sex into the equation that makes Ruth's innocence so much less believe. Sex is often used as a symbol of loss of innocence so when Morrison says Ruth is innocent in issues that have to do with sex it was difficult for me to sympathize with her. This ambiguous state of affairs foreshadows what Ruth later tells us about herself, her father, and Milkman's father.

"Hoodoo Love" and Obeah

A while back, Hoodoo Love was being preformed at Krannert in the Studio Theatre as part of the theatre department's showcase this year. The play deals with obeah or hoodoo in a similar situation to how Antoinette tries to get Christophine to use it on Rochester. The female protagonist in Hoodoo Love tries to get her traveling lover to stay with her and be true to her by going to her neighbor and famed practitioner of hoodoo magic. Similar to in Wide Sargasso Sea, the two lovers in the play begin to fall in love by natural means before the magic. In both stories, the women then deal out the appropriate potion and get their respective men intensely ill. The man in the play, however, doesn't realize that his partner tried to put a spell on him and doesn't figure it out until much later in the play. When he eventually does figure out what his girl is doing, he is extremely angry and it ruins their relationship. The reaction to people doing magic on a character to control their emotions is always frantic and intense.

So why does this idea of magic and love freak people out so much? It has to do with free will. Especially in hopeless situations, the only thing that one can be sure of having is the ability to choose. The idea that this inherent right of humans can be simply taken away by a potion or a ritual, is really terrifying. If you are inclined to take Rochester's side, you can use this instance in his defense. It is not a stretch to call Antoinette a villain because she is trying to alter the sacred institution of love with a sort of magic. I guess (not really), that you could say Rochester's retaliation is a fair punishment for someone like Antoinette. I am not inclined to this opinion because I favor Antoinette and don't think it's fair to think that Antoinette should somehow just know she didn't need to magic him while he is being so bad to her.

As a side note, this idea of love and magic and their interaction has been used as a theme in a variety of works. For example, Shakespeare's (or Bacon's depending on how you are inclined to believe) A Midsummer Night's Dream deals with the same issue but with a different, happier ending. Also, in Aladdin he isn't allowed to wish for love, just to tie in some Disney movie knowledge.

Christophine in a new light

I have really thoroughly enjoyed this book but when Antoinette went kind of crazy and was like biting Rochester I was concerned because she was really the only character I liked. I didn't know who I was going to side with now that my initial favorite was not entirely sane. After a brief time of wandering around in the book favorite-less, Christophine and Rochester started fighting and I started liking Christophine. In the beginning of the book, Christophine seems like this emotionally distant, creepy character. As we get to know her, it becomes apparent that she has a particular attatchment to Annette. The first time we see her emotions get the best of her is at Annette's funeral. Her initial impression on me was not a very good one. It bothered me that it seemed like everything she did for Antoinette was really to please Annette. I was of the opinion that Christophine had little personal attatchment to Antoinette. In this battle with Rochester (153-161), Christophine defends Antoinette passionately and she seems like the most sound character in the novel. She is in her right mind and conducts herself accordingly. During his time in Jamaica, Rochester has made no attempt at learning about the country and in regards to Antoinette, no attempt to bond and learn about her past. For some reason, the only person he believes about her past is that man who claims to be her half brother. Antoinette tries to enlighten him about her past the night before but he spends the conversation interupting and judging. I like Christophine in this scene because it just seems like she is fed up with all of Rochester's crap and she is going to tell him exact what kind of awful person he is and what he should do. I don't like Rochester and I liked seeing him being called out on what he did to Antoinette, who was somewhat unstable throughout the whole novel.
I don't know if I'm quite done with this post but I've said mostly what I wanted to say. I like Christophine and think that she is the most stable and strongest of the characters we've met.

Changing up the narrator

The initially vague and disorienting changes of narrator in Wide Sargasso Sea have an interesting effect on the book and how its read. At first, I didn't like leaving Antoinette, our first narrator, because I didn't want to leave the character I was beginning to side with and viewed as the protagonist. I thought it put a bump in the flow of the novel just as I was settling in and getting oriented after the somewhat confusing start. Still, even with my concerns, I continued to enjoy the novel so I decided that it wasn't all that bad and began trying to figure out why Rhys would choose to switch narrators as she does. I have come up with a few reasons. First of all, getting an outside opinion of Antoinette helps develop a picture of her more completely in a reader's mind. During the first part, the reader only hears from Antoinette speaking about her isolated unhappy little world. She tells us about herself on the inside but having the narrator change and hearing about Antoinette from someone who is shoved into her little world and forced to try to connect with her gives us a better idea of what Antoinette appears to be on the outside. It also helps the reader get to know Rochester, who, to many, seems like a villain in this story. If the whole novel was told from her perspective, Rochester could seem like this terrible man who came, uninvited, into her life and who didn't even try to make their relationship work. When Rochester narrates, we get his side of the story and we learn that his home life was extremely unhappy and as a result, he continues trying to please his father in his adult life. We also see how Rochester thinks of his relationship with Antoinette and how he sometimes tries to comfort her or regrets not loving her and it makes him and his position much more sympathetic. The third and most subtle effect the changes of narrator have is that they sort of mimic the confusion, disorientation, and sense of not belonging that Antoinette feels. Throughout her life she struggles with finding her social position in the community she lives in and passes through a variety of different living arrangements as a result. I guess it is kind of a stretch but going from narrator to narrator keeps us a little confused about who we should side with just like Antoinette. And If, in fact, the two narrator are supposed to mirror Antoinette's awkward position between black culture and white, and Rochester is clearly the white culture side, does that mean in that Antoinette would be representative of black culture? and if so, what does this say about the side Antoinette chooses, or wants to choose, to identify with? and Why would she identify with the black culture more that white? They both seem to hate her. But why wouldn't she?

It seems that my last idea left me with more questions than it answered... but its still an interesting idea.