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.