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.