Professional Documents
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Raveena
Raveena
Introduction:
Afro-American writing is the effort of Afro-American writers to gain recognition for
black identity. The Afro-American writing of modern period, from civil rights to the
contemporary period, emerges out of the burdens of slavery, racism and the experiences of
the generations of black people as slaves or ex-slaves. The perception of racialism which
prevails the white American hegemonic culture are the constituents of Afro-American
writings. Henry Louis Gates Jr., in Figures in Black, says ‘it is the challenge for the black
writers to refute the claim that blacks had nowritten traditions they were bearers of an inferior
culture’. (26) The Afro-American writers are the guardians of conscience and passionate
observers of the experiences of black people. The central issue of Afro-American writing is
the conscious quest of establishing and redefining blacks’ identity and their status within the
The sense of social exclusion and subjugation of Afro-Americans on the basis of race
and culture and the discrimination based on it are the identifiable features of Afro-American
writing. The folklore, vernacular culture and the role of music in black culture, the legendary
American Without having the doors of opportunity closed, and escapeisolation. The
Unity and self and the black community – as a biracial, bicultural people as
black characters with their African roots. They feel that it is their duty tohonour their
ancestors and their cultural heritage. They bring the voice and vision to along history of
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struggle with the land, color of black identity, humanity and freedom.Black literary and
cultural tradition is of men and women who have undergone andsurvived the racial holocaust
and have become tool for white supremacy. The oral tradition, myth, slavery and its
their consciousness that resulted from color, class, and gender conflicts between
whiteAmerican cultures and the descendent of slaves. The black American writersseek to
bridge the increasing distance between black and white Americans. The pivotal issue of Afro-
American writing lies on the point where blacks are the eternalvictims of white as a result of
slavery and its aftermath. Black people are closer toAfrica, their ancestors, values and ethics
of a society where community and cultureare supreme. Afro-American writing unearths the
truth that the strength of black people lay in a culture outside that of white American and
their self-identity can be achieved only after they connect themselves with their forefathers.
Afro-American writers are preoccupied with the notion of blacks as marginalized and
black’s literature as the non-canonical literature. Their literary career starts with the crisis of
their identity as the respectable American citizens. They strive to subvert the white or black
black’s presence and heads towards white cultural supremacy. The art of Afro-American
writers is not for art’s sake but for liberation, equality and for the recognition of blacks as
American citizens. Black aestheticians’ products are structured in such a way so that the
shackles of slavery and impoverishment would fall away forever. “Art is a product and
producer in an unceasing struggle for black liberation. To be art; the product had to be
(Baker 13).
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Afro-American writers attempt to prove that Afro-American products are equal to
western expressive modes. Afro-American writers try to confront the western art instead of
withdrawing from it. They are compelled to battle against racial difference, political
discrimination and economic exploitation, and the racial equality. The black aestheticians
Afro-American writing is the call to break the boundary established by racism. But
the black writers find themselves in a very difficult situation to come out of racism. Henry
Louis Gates Jr., in Race, Writing and Difference opines: “Black people, we know, have not
been liberated from racism by our own writing. We accepted a false premise by assuming that
racism would be destroyed once white racists convinced that we were human, too”(Gates.12).
In his opinion black writing served not to obliterate the differences of race but to preserve the
excluded from it. Of course, to account for the voice of black American would be
central to create or envisage the black American literary tradition. A serious study of
this perspective points to the various gaps in the American profession of freedom,
The literature of slavery constitutes a rebirth with echoes and refractions which dates back to
the history of slave culture. The literary works which joins revolution to the culture of slavery
are painful and frightening. Afro-American novel discloses the catalogues of man’s
inhumanity to man and woman and also the desperate struggle to survive against stupendous
odds. It secures the most basic rights in a perpetually hostile environment. The Afro-
American writer begins his or her career to exhibit the crisis of identity. The black literary
product deals with the troubled quest for identity liberty and the agony of social alienation
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The tradition of Afro-American novel begins with the narratives of slaves, realism
and romance. The history of Afro-American novel begins with William Wells Brown’s
Clotelle, or the Colored Heroine. Clotelle is about the abolishment of slavery. In this novel
Brown exposes the individual entrenchment of slavery in theUnited States and focuses on the
ownership of slaves in high places as professed byChristians. Through his work, Brown
appeals to the British government to use their influence to hasten the abolition of American
slavery. Clotelle employs realistic details which end melodramatically with the protagonists
and their children find a heaven in another country. Clotelle has always been regarded as a
pivotal book in black letters. Many critics consider this work as a departure point travels in
two directions in nineteenth century black writing. It is the departure point of tradition
Frank J. Webb’s The Garies and Their Friends (1857) is not an direct attack on
slavery. This novel demonstrates the problem of growing up as a free black in the city of
brotherly love and about the tragedy that overcomes an interracial couple who moves
north.The Garies and their Friends contrast the fortunes of two transplanted southern
families. It is more mimetic than historical and more didactic than romantic.The intellectual
and moral tone of the author is consistent with the story. There is verylittle distance between
Harriet E. Wilson is the third black American novelist to publish a novel inthe United
States rather than in England.Our Nig is based on her life as an indentured servant in New
vision are apparent in the title, epigraphs, theme and the protagonist of Our Nig, the title and
author’s pseudonym; By Our Nig is an ironic play on the paternalistic identity imposed on
some black family servants by the master class. Wilson introduces the first interracial
marriage in American fiction which thewife is white and husband is African.Our Nig clearly
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Martin Robinson Delany's Blake (1859) was the most radical black novel of the
nineteenth century. He was leading spokesman for black independence andself –determined.
He attacked racist practices within the abolitionist movement itself.To investigate the
immigration possibilities for the black people to the independentRepublic of Texas, he took a
long perilous trip down through Mississippi, Louisiana,Texas and Arkansas in 1839. Much of
his trip is fictionalized in Blake. Delany in Blake expands the thematic and structural problem
of the slave narratives from the break-up, flight and reunification of a single family to an
The novel of Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s Iola Leroy or Shadows Uplifted (1892)
stresses the moral duty of black to fight and inspire others against the slavery through their
selfless dedication to social reform and service to their race. It is the first Afro-American
novel to treat the heroism of blacks during and after the civil war. The major characters
reflect the author's deep involvement in the abolitionist, temperance, and women's rights
movements.
Although William Wells Brown published the first black American novel, Charles
Chesnutt’s faith in God, the puritan ethics and white northern liberals fostered his belief that
blacks should prepare themselves for recognition and equality. Chesnutt won the acclaim of
white literary world with the publication of The Conjure Woman, and Other Stories
(1899) and The Wife of His Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line (1899). His first
novel, The House behind the Cedars (1900)is a tragic romance which received highly
favorable reviews. The Marrow of Tradition (1901), was written during the 1898 elections
American novel. It further moves on the road towards social realism. The Colonel’ Dream
A distinguished man of letters and one of the intellectual giants of his age,W.E. B. Du
Bois has published five novels: The Quest of the Silver Fleece (1911), Dark Princess
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(1928), The Ordeal of Mansard , Mansard Builds School (1959), and Worlds of
More documentary than meditative, more appealing as historical romance than social
realism, Du Bio’s novels reflect his critical view of American society and the stylistic
the economic underpinnings of ester racism and imperialism, Du Bois explores the
The Negro renaissance, known as Harlem Renaissance or the New Negromovement, was the
period of the rise of such talents as Clude McKay, Jean Toomer,Countee Cullen, Langston
Hughes, Bill Robinson, Florence Wills, Josephine Baker, Ethel Waters, Paul Robeson,
Roland Hyde’s, Arron Douglass, Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith and Duke Ellington. The
celebration of race consciousness in the novels of New Negroes is conveyed by the concept
Negritude writers refused to continue their difference with the white gods of European
culture. They sought to destroy the myth of white supremacy and decided to resurrect the
beauty of blackness to foster self-pride and to win respect for cultural pluralism and human
equality.
Afro-American writers feel that it is their job to recover the annihilated history. Toni
Morrison also does not remain aloof from this trend of recovering history and family secrets
through adventurous, mythic characters. Her novels are historical novels that deal with the
and integration. Morrison’s fictions draw a reliable picture of Afro-American community and
its culture. The work unearths the reality of the oppression of the white over the blacks and
the myth which gives early history of Afro- American race. Morrison’s fiction does not fit
well to the single category. It blends the themes of race, class, coming–age–stories, mythical
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Toni Morrison is the first Afro-American writer to win Nobel Prize for literature in 1993.
Toni Morrison who profoundly uses fictive narratives to transfigure the old south – the
bedrock of black dehumanization, degradation and sorrow into an archetypal black homeland,
a cultural womb that lays a claim to history’s orphaned, defamed and disclaimed African
children. Morrison uses black agency and power in fables to describe African Americans who
survive, transcend and create environmental hostilities and socially imposed liabilities.
Morrison humanizes black characters in fictions that strive to overcome and excavate
enforced invisibility of the African American’s social reality. Characters in her novels have
intimate affinity with their ancestors who underwent hardships, enslavement and racist
oppression.
Toni Morrison won National Book Critics Circle Award, The American Academy and
Institute of Arts and Letters Award for her work The Song of Solomon in 1977. The Song
of Solomon was the first Afro- American novel to be included in Book-of the-Month-Club.
The Song of Solomon is basically a story about discovering family name and the entire
black heritage of Milkman Dead. Milkman Dead, the central character in the novel has lost
his name and his ancestry .It shows the importance of historical reality of Afro-Americans.
Morrison’s characters often seek to immerse with their African roots. The physical and
cultural shape of African Americans inhabit expanded during the time of emancipation,
migration and integration. They have to negotiate their relationships with their cultural pasts
The tension between blacks and whites is exemplified by Guitar’s hatred of white and
his decision to join 'The Seven Days'. Morrison's depiction of 'Dead' family in the novel
communities. Milkman Dead's quest criticizes the faith in self-sufficiency and individual
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Race is a cultural, political and economic concept not a biological one. Racial identity
is the one in which one person is searching his own identity. Many people around the world
are influenced by more than one culture or race. Many of them will pick one that they can
relate to the best. In Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon the theme of identity is inherent. It
tells the story of Milkman Dead who is on a journey to find out his own identity. At the very
beginning of the novel Milkman derives his own identity from extreme vanity and a
masculine sense of entitlement. However, in his journey, with the help of the aunt, Pilate, he
endures a process which allows him to discard his false ideas about himself and to adopt
healthier attitudes regarding himself and the people around him. His aunt Pilate provides self-
knowledge that Milkman sets to attain. She is the only character who lives her life by an
axiom of truth. The rest of Toni Morrison’s characters live under false pretenses which create
in them.
In Song of Solomon, Milkman is able to overcome the array of lies that surrounds
him to become a truly authentic person. He begins to realize the errors in his false
assumptions about himself and sets out a journey towards authenticity. He begins his journey
as a quest for gold. However, he ends it by uncovering a type of wealth very different from
the kind he originally sought. Though he undertakes a physical journey he sets out on a
spiritual and emotional journey towards self-knowledge. While on his journey Milkman
began to learn about his heritage. He came to know about his great- grandfather Solomon, a
figure of local legend who flew away one day leaving his wife and children behind. At first
Milkman was fascinated about by the idea that his ancestor had the power to fly. Milkman
realize that the power of flight is meaningless and the importance of people around him when
a lady raised a question on his journey. She raises a question“ Who’d he leave
behind?”(Morrison 328). When he finds his true self he begins to value human relationships
Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon isa tale of lies, misinterpretations and false identities.
All of its characters true identities remain unknown even to themselves. With the exception
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of Pilate all the characters struggle with identity including the central character Milkman.
With Pilate’s guidance Milkman is able to overcomethalis that surround the falseness with
which he has once represented himself. The novel ends asMilkman reaches self-knowledge
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Chapter II
The Quest of Racial Identity in Song of Solomon:
Toni Morrison is said to be influenced by Ralph Ellison. Charles Johnson says that
literature and the ways in which the Afro-American were fleeted in America, their African
past, their myth and oral tradition and above all their struggle to live and exist as the white
American in America are the tools and materials for Toni Morrison’s literary output. Her
works are the reflection of what she saw and endured when she was a child and student in
America, she heard so many stories from her parents which later reflected in the forms of
mature writing. Her work as an editor in Random House polished her image and ideas as a
prominent writer. Her writing is the product of abundant research and enough study of her
ancestors. Nollie McKay says: “In life and art, the outstanding achievements of writer Toni
Morrison extended enlarge the tradition of the strength, persistence, and accomplishments of
Toni Morrison is a major twentieth century black woman writer. The prominent elements of
her works are black music, black language, and the myths and rituals of black culture. She
has strong connection with the ancestors because they were culture bearers. She feels it is the
You have to take it out and identify those who have preceded you – summoning them,
acknowledging them in just one step in that process of reclamation so that they are
always there as the confirmation and theaffirmation of the life that I personally have not
lived but is the life of that organism to which I belong which is black people in this
and provocate. It is the language black people love to play with the function of the language.
Morrison in her novels badly reveals the silence and undermines the presuppositions,
depends. He legitimizes the oppression of the black people and the poor. She explores the
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complex social circumstances which demes the black identity and freedom in America within
which they live out their lives. Toni Morrison critiques main stream fictions that
Toni Morrison’s first novel The Bluest Eye(1970) contrasts the experience and values of
two black families, Macteers and Breedloves and much these of the Shirley Temple of white
Fisher family. The major focus is on the eleven-year-old girlPacola Breedlove, Macteer
sisters, ten-year-old Frieda and nine-year-old Claudia, the narrator. The ideal experience of
white world and the actual experience of black people is portrayed in the novel. God has
miraculously given her the bluest eyes she prayed for after being raped by her drunken father.
She suffers a miscarriage and being ridiculed by other children and Pacola loses her sanity.
At the end of the story, Pacola is shown as determined to achieve beauty and acceptance by
Morrison’s second novel Sula (1973) is about the theme friendship of two black girls.
Nel Wright follows the pattern of life which the society has laid for her and others follow
Sula Peace and try to create her own pattern to achieve her own self. It is not only about Nel
Wright and Sula Peace but also about the cultures that spawn there. The tale about the
friendship between Nel Wright and Sula Peace is integrally related to the survival of their
community. Toni Morrison’s third novel, Song of Solomon(1977), basically drawn upon the
concern for the quest for identity of a blade family, which is disinherited and has lost its name
is black America. Morrison presents her concern for African Americans and their black
tradition which is disregarded in America. She tries to advocate the existence and freedom
black Americans.
Morrison’s use of African ways of storytelling and oral forms is a way of bridging
gaps between black community’s folk roots and black American literary tradition. Morrison
questions the western conception and ways of interpretation other than those imposed by the
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communities in Song of Solomon is an alternative to mainstream assimilation. Morrison
transforms the Euro-centric cultural discourse through the acceptance of African heritage.
Morrison is seen as the Afro-centric storyteller placing African ideals as the center. She
examines it to expose what has been hidden by dominant discourse in Song of Solomon.
The most important theme in Song of Solomon is not the assimilations of Afro-
American culture and Afro-American descendants into the mainstream culture but the search
for alternative identity and existence. It is not of escaping from slavery andviolence through
supernatural flight of the protagonist but the acceptance of reality and the acceptance of the
condition of the Afro-American life in America. Milkman Dead, the protagonist does not fly
away and escape the challenge of life but he undergoes the various circumstances of finding
the true family history and identity and accepts it as the reality.
Morrison gives the major roles to women in her first two novels,The Bluest Eye and
Sula, whereas she gives major role to male protagonist only in Song of Solomon. Though it has
got the male protagonist, women play the significant roles in finding out the identity of
Milkman Dead throughout his quest. Especially Pilate Dead, Milkman Dead’s aunt, becomes
the major assistance to Milkman. Pilate is magicallyassists milkman’s mother Ruth foster to
restart the sexual relation with Macon Dead after so many years of cold relation and that
She gave me funny things to do. And some greenish-grey grassy looking stuff to
put in his food” Ruth laughed, “I felt like doctor, like a chemist doing some big
important scientific experiment. It worked too. Macon came to me for four days.
He even came home from his office in the middle of the day to be with me. He
looked puzzled but, he came. Then it was over. And two months later I was
pregnant.(125)
Morrison offers the cultural knowledge and Black-American’s African traditions and
heritage. Pilate sings folk-songs of Sugar Man or Solomon’s escape at Milkman’s birth. This
song becomes the key to milkman’s quest and illustrates the function of the African
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American women in passing on stories to future generations. Milkman’s relationship to Pilate
Milkman’s father stands as the middle class black man, whose worry is to acquire
more property and become respected in the white dominated society. He believes in material
possession. He says to Milkman, “own things and let the things you own other things. Then
you will own yourself and other people too” (55). Macon Dead believes that Ownership is the
Guitar Bains tries to response radically to the injuries caused by the white world. He
is the victim of white as his father was sliced in a saw mill. The white owner offer candy to
console his mother and the children. He decides to join the Seven Days, a secret agency
which choose the violent way to take revenge against white. The Seven Day’s action is
depended on the action of whites. The conduct of their lives is determined by the killing of
particular black people by certain white anyhow they are killed. Their motto is to kill the
There is a society. It’s made up of a few men who are willing to take some risks.
They don’t initiate anything; they don’t even choose. They are an indifferent as
lain but when a Negro child, Negro woman, or Negro man is killed by whites and
nothing is done about it by thus lay and their courts, this society selects a similar
victim at random, and they execute him or her in a similar manner if they can .If
the negro was hanged, They hang; if a Negrowas burnt, they burn; raped and
murdered, they rape and murder.. They call themselves the seven days… I am one
Milkman Dead’s identity is a mass of fragments. The search for gold becomes reason for
family history and African heritage.Milkman’s search starts from his grandfather’s farm in
Pennsylvania; he returns to the world of the slaves made the south. Milkman’s trip leads him
to an understanding of himself, his family and culture. Milkman’s concept of rural life differs
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stories about his family heritage and realizes the strength of his culture. He has paid little
Milkman’s journey to south is a learning experience for him as he coins together the
different stories and love of his family. The role of oral tradition in Afro-American culture
has significant relevance in Song of Solomon. Milkman’s history is not a recorded one, but
remembered and recollected by different people. He hears the children singing the Solomon’s
song in Shalimar, Virginia. He deciphers the children song and finds in it the narrative of his
family. It is a folktale of flying African Solomon, who flies from slavery and return to his
African home. He left behind twenty one children including Jack, Milkman’s grandfather.
The fragments of the past become the coherent family story through which Milkman finds
himself identified. Milkman can achieve identity with Solomon or Shalimar the flying
African.
The identity of Milkman Dead and his family was dislocated in the history by a white
man’s error while registering the name of his grandfather as Macon dead after he becomes a
freeman. “His own parents, in some mood of perverseness or resignation, had agreed to abide
by a naming done to them by somebody who couldnot have cared less. Agreed to take and
pass on to all their issue this heavy name scrawled in perfect thoughtlessness by a drunken
Milkman Dead bears his name as ‘Milkman’ when he is founding socking his mother’s
milk by Freddie’s, “He’d found the phrax he’d been searching for a milkman that what you
got here, miss Rufie. A natural milkman if ever “seen one”.(14-15) Milkman has to reconnect
his family history and his own identity, which is disinherited. Morrison’s female characters
have significant roles in passing the Afro-American Oral tradition. It has the especial
relevance with pilot, Circe and Susan Byrd in the novel. When Milkman hears the Solomon’s
song, he finds himself connected to it and thus he finds his real name and heritage, his past
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Milkman’s grandfather escapes the burdens of slavery and responsibility by leaving twenty-
one children behind him. Milkman accepts the situation as real and inevitable. He learns that
he must look backward in order to look forward and he must remember the past in order to
know the future. “For now he knows what Shalimar knew; if you surrendered the air, you
existence in America by showing Milkman’s acceptance not to escape the present like his
ancestors. The American nation of African people is without identity and has white
Afro-American writing is the outcry against the white hegemony. Most of the Afro-
American writers strive to make their equal position in the white hegemonic society. White
are always considered as the first class citizens where as blacks areseen as second class
human beings in America. Song of Solomon which is dependanheavily on cultural practices and
tradition of black people is the result of white’s suppression on blacks even after they became
free. Milkman Dead discovers his grandparents real name and find out that ancestry is the
way to find out his own identity and for the achievement of manhood. Milkman must
overcome “Dead” in order to live as an independent man. The name Solomon is the reminder
of white wordy control over black people because the name is the result of a white mission.
Agreed to take and pass on to all their issue, this heavy name scrawled
slip of the end handed to his father on a piece of a paper and which to handed
on to his only son, and his son likewise handed on to his; Macon deed who
begin at secondMacon Dead who married to Ruth Foster (dead) and Deyat
Magdalene called here Dead and First Corinthian dead and (when he least
expected it) another Macon Dead, now know to the part of the world that
Even though Guitar Bairs had not seen up north for long, “he had just begun to learn
that he could speak up to white people”.(7) Guitar ingenuous response to the nurse is
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transformed into a bitter hatred of whites. He recounts the terrible accidental death of his
father and the employer’s gesture of modifying the family by offering them candy. The
gesture sickens the boy Guitar and influence his decisions to join the Seven Days in their
commitment to an equivalent vengeance against white, commonly for each black person
killed by a white.
A recent killing is reported in the barbershop where people discuss that work to be of
Winnie Ruth Jude, a white woman who kills and dismembers her victims and periodically
escapes from the state hospital. For the black men, she serves as a sign of lunacy of whites
who can kill for no good reason. “Winnie Ruth a convicted murderer, who axed and
dismembered her victims and stuffed them in trunks, was committed to a state asylum for the
criminally insane and escaped two or three times each year”(99)Guitar hatred of white people
and conviction to equalize the death caused by whites is the conflict of black and white and
the philosophy of whites to seethe blacks as socially other. Guitar says; “There are no
innocent white people, because every one of them is potential nigger killer, if not the actual
and “white people are unnatural. As a race they are unnatural. And it takes a strong effort of
Morrison’s use of the impact of the white hegemonic culture has a special attention in
the novel. Macon Dead’s love of property, his materialistic vision and wishto become a
prestigious red estate owner is the impact of white’s culture. Macon Dead’s quest is the
has seen the white men violently assume control over his father’s farm. He is interested in
land on which houses can be built the house and the gold. He becomes materialistic for
manhood. He hates Pilate because her refusal to exact conventional faminity. He asks her
“why can’t you class like a woman”(28) .He thinks his relation with his sister endangers his
relationship to the white bankers, “He trembled with a thought of the white men in the bank
the men who helped him buy and mortgage houses discovering that lagged bootlegger was
his sister”(28). It becomes important for him to take control over properly and he does not
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want thebankers to discover “That the propertied Negro who handled this business lives
in a big house on Not Doctor Street and had a sister who had a daughter but no husband, and
He wants to take advantage from Ruth’s father and dreams to become a big landlord.
But when he fails to do. So he mistreats his wife and becomes indifferent to her. He insist his
son Milkman Dead to possess the property to be a man, a dignified man is the society.
Milkman can only verify his identity through the accumulative of property. “Own things, and
let the things you own other things. The you’ll own yourself and other people to”(55). Macon
Dead’s drive for property influences Milkman Dead to steal the seek of gold, which they
think Pilate has been carrying. Carolyn Denard says “who they are measured by what they
have, the material resources they can bring in the process manhood become all important,
Milkman undertakes a quest for gold because of his work with the Seven days. The
Seven Days have chosen violence as a way to avenge on white in order to establish black’s
existence in American. The position of women in Morrison novels is doubly difficult. Black
women in Morrison’s novels discover that they are neither white nor male, and all freedom
and triumph are forbidden to them. Womanhood like blackness is another problem in
American society. They are defined by the looks “they are made to feel must real when
seen”(peach31). They are black women in society whose female ideals is a white’s doll baby.
They are defined other and made to be looked as other in the society. Linden peach says,
“Morrison shows the book taking on monstrous propositions as the humiliated black male
allies himself with the third by making the black women the object of his displaced fary”(32).
eliminated. Ruth Dead stared for a closeness and affection that can never be found in Macon
Dead. Milkman never regarded her as a person, a separate, individual, with a life apart from
allowing or inter terms with her own(137). Ruth is humiliated and exploited and exploited by
men.
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Ruth foster, a daughter of the town’s most successful black doctor and wife of one of
its most successful businessman lived as a child in a “great big house that pressed [her] into a
small package”[124] . She resembles the most suppressed woman who finds her own house
like a prison. She is never permitted to do anything on her own will. Macon Dead would
always “parade [them]like virgins through Babylon, then humiliate like whores in
Babylon”(216).
Milkman’s selection with hagai is not a sevens but he takes Hager just as several
partners which he breaks off at Christmas. Hagar cannot bear and attempts to kill him but can
never do so. She dies ultimately. Milkman’s sisters Magdalene and First Corinthian are
always terrified by their father Macon dead and they are never permitted to take decision in
their lives.Even Milkman behaves them with discard. He has never taken condition of their
liver; “he has lived with the family as if they were the strangers. Lena tells him that milkman
her been peeing in the family all over his life”(214). Milkman’s aunt Pilate Dead acts as a
helper to him to find the family history. Pilate Dead is socially outcaste woman who has born
without navel. She suffers a lot of torment in the course of her life and do not have a husband
but adaughter and granddaughters even her own brother hates her for some unknown reason
Circe, the maid and midwife, who helps Milkman to find out his identity, plays the
same role as in Homer’s Odyssey. As Homer’s Circe finds his way to Ithaca, Morrison’s
Circe provides crucial information that reconnects Milkman with his family history. In this
way Morrison’s connects Milkman’s past and present. The story runs in the course to direct
one’s family history in order to trace the hidden past and reconnect the family with the
patriarchal line of milkman dead. Morrison’s depiction of black women is for the suffering,
brutality and living reality of American society where black women have to suffer more than
One of the major tools for Afro-American writers is the use of Myth and invention of
playful verbal twists, Black English. Vernacular relay as strong identify marker which
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constitutes a strong oral tradition in their literacy work. Myths are both created and recreated
to escape from the white American society which denies the presence of blacks and their
freedom. Black writers create myths to gratify their streams of being free and equal in
America. Myth, legend and rituals are cultural codes for communally sanctioned attitudes,
beliefs and behavior. They are ideally suited for novelists in search of appropriate signs and
forms to reconstruct the socialized are ambivalence for the shifting, conflicting emotions of
love and hate. Social oppression of Black American life and society foster shame and pride.
19thcentury after two hundred year of oppression and violence. The afro American
writers’ major literary resources, then, became the stories of their father and
forefathers in oral forms. These stores transformed from one generation of people
to the next, which include their experiences of torments and brutality as slaves
which they were unable to escape. The black writer feels that they recall that oral
tradition and remain true to their bore fathers as Ton Morrison says that she feels
Song of Solomon is based on several myths of flying. It opens with mythic light of Robert
smith, an insurance agent who marks a miraculous birth of Milkman Dead. “The next day a
colored baby was born inside mercy for the first time. Mr. Smiths blue silk wings must have
left their mark”(9). Milkman’s life follows pattern of the classic hero from his miraculous
birth and his guest to final unionwide the ancestor. The mythic journey emphasizes the
eventual assimilation of the hero into history. Milkman great grandfather flew away to Africa
leaving his children behind him”. He is the myth of “flying African”. Morrison transforms the
Appiah316).
Milkman’s story has relevance with the Icarus myth since it ties with folk tales of
blacks flying back to home land. Morrison in context of flying myth inSong of Solomonsays,
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“if it meansIcarus to some readers, fine, I want to take credit of that but my meaning is
specific; if is about black people who could fly. My hate was always part of the folklore of
The story of Daedalus flying away and trying to take away his son, Shalimar or
Solomon tried to take away his son but he drops unable to protect him because he is a baby.
This version emphasizes that the fall is the result of a situation beyond his control and father
desire to get freedom on one hand and family on the other hand. Morrison’s analyses and
reconstruction of myth is important. In the lcarus tale freedom is available to the characters.
They can fly but fail because they want an impossible kind of freedom. Icarus attempt to
break free of the earth overestimating his non potential. He neglects his father’s guidance and
his wings are melted by masculine symbol, the sun. He falls back into the sea, which is
described as the feminine symbol of change and rebirth. Thus the Icarian mythic pattern is
It is a flight in a double sense: a flight from authority and flight towards freedom. It is
also a flight which ends the situation of the black American whose want to become totally
free which is impossible.They must accept their interior position. Shalimar is free to return to
Africa. But his freedom has a particular context. He has wife and twenty one children. “He
wasn’t only the son. They were twenty others. But he was the only one Solomon tried to take
with him. May be that what it means? He lifted him but dropped near the perch of the
baghouse”(323). He wounds others because everyone cannot understand what he does. The
conflict is between freedom and social responsibility. Milkman resolved that conflict when he
leaps flying towards his brother to find freedom. He does not accept the situations as right or
African-American cultural memories and their meaning are passed down orally
through the generation. This is how the children of south, who may never have been to the
south, are made familiar in the culture’s legacies. When Macon Dead attempts to tell his son
what a man is to, he offers the story of his daddy’s Pennsylvanian farm, “Lincoln’s
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Heaven”.(51) Milkman was born and brought up in the north. He realizes the lessons of
grandmother to his father to work hard, to love and respect family and to be responsible
steward of nature was the black’s codes of conducts and conceptions of good life.
Milkman’s success is couched in verbal terms. Words are not only key to his
individual, familial, communal and racial integration but words are oral rather than written.
While pursuing gold and power, Milkman happens to hear many stories about his ancestors in
the south. The historical significances attached in the stories become important for Milkman
to find out his ancestors. He hears the testimony of Reverend Cooper and the fragments of the
past provider by Circle and Susan Byrd and finally listens to the children singing Solomon’s
song. . To decipher the words he wants to write them down first but lacking paper and penal,
“He would just have to listen and memorize it. He closed his eyes and
arrhythmic, rhyming action game, performed the round over and over again. And
Just before Pilate death Milkman shows his full participation in the Afro-American oral
tradition. He sings the song of Solomon, adopting it appropriately for her, “Sugargirl don’t
leave me here cotton ball to choke me sugargirl don’t leave mehere Buckra’s arms to yoke
me”.(336) The African American issues of place, past, identity and culture are inseparable
from the oral tradition. It includes the oral stories, songs, jokes, proverbs and other cultural
products that have not been written down. Most Afro-Americans migrated to north to escape
their slave past and domination and gave up their southern rural ways to adjust in a new
place. They brought the southern oral tradition with them. Morrison’s depiction of middle
class black family ‘Dead’ in song of Solomon, has very important link with oral tradition and
it becomes the major gateway to reveal the buried past of Dead family.
broken, lost things have been found and at least two generations of scholars are disentangling
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received knowledge from the apparatus of control most notably those who are engaged in
investigation of American slave narratives, and the delineation of the Afro- American literary
tradition.(Bloom 208).The inferior identity of blacks in American society has forced the black
writers to maintain and to show their presence in America. Their literary products have
to refute the western views on Afro-American literature that as Morrison says; There is no
Afro- American (or third world) art, it exists but is inferior and is superior when it measures
up to the “universal” criteria of western art .He also says that it is not so much ‘art” as one-
rich are – that requires a western or Eurocentric smith to refine it from its “neutral” state into
an aesthetically complex term Morrison’s attempt in her literary works is to reverse the
western notion of identity of blacks as inferior and advocate the importance of Afro-
American’s cultureand heritage. Milkman Dead’s quest never gives the alternative solution to
the lost family name and its African roots inSong of Solomon.
The identity of Milkman’s family has been lost and they acquired the title ‘Dead’ by
an American soldier. They are compelled to accept this name as “Dead” because their family
line has been cutoff. Milkman is almost without identity. Milkman’s birth was not wanted by
his father and he forces his mother to abort but with the help of Pilate milkman came into
theworld. “I was pregnant. When he found out about it he immediately suspected plate and he
told me to get rid of the baby. But I wouldn’t and Pilate helped me stand him off. I
wouldn’t have been strong enough without her. She saved my life. And yours. Macon she
saved yours too” Milkman becomes the battleground for Macon and Ruth and later on
he becomes the means for his mother’s gratification. Milkman does not have his own self;
“His deformity was mostly in his mind”. He is totally excluded from his family and becomes
He feels that he is used by everybody for his or her satisfaction. Milkman’s friend
Guitar Bains constructs an identity for himself that focuses on racial politics, “I suppose you
know that white people kill black people for time to time. And folks shake their heads and
say, Eh, eh, eh, isn’t that a shame?”. He is not interested in personal history. His relationship
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to his past is less intricate that milkman’s relationship to his own past. He uses his past in the
south in terms of struggle. Wahneema Lubiano in “The postmodernist Rag. Political identity and
vernacular in Song of Solomon”says that “Guitar devotes his whole lifeplacing himself. In
opposition to whites-evening up the numbers- and so creates for himself and appositionally
defined identity”. Guitar is known as a hunter. He remembers his childhood only in term
of hunting. One of his few memories of the south is his memory of killing an old doe.
He says, “I was a natural-born hunter,. I saw it was doe. Not a young one; she was
old, but she was still a doe. I felt... Bad” He becomes against hunting at the end of the text
when he kills another old doe, Pilate. “She stood up then. And it seemed to milkman that he
heard the shot after she fellSong of Solomonimplies the unresolved problems of identity
caused by the construction of self, cultural and political identity under the influence of
oppression. The naming of Not Doctor Street and No mercy Hospital is the rejection of
white’s suppression by the blacks and their alternative identity. The locations like Not
Doctor Street and No Mercy Hospital where black people were denied admittance are forms
of counter negation of the white world that delimits the black one.
The hero’s birth at No Mercy hospital is itself and allegorical representation of the
personal. Political and historical complexities of the construction of identity Mr. smith’s
flight from Mercy to “other side of lake Superior” symbolizes that blacks find it difficult to
exist in American society and have to escape “the other side” of lake superior is Canada,
the place for which escaping slaves leaving the mercy of Euro-American’s alleged
civilization-the rationale for slavery Morrison’s epigraph to the novel read, ‘for father may
soar and the children may know their names’ but it is finally also the names of ancestral
mothers which hear witness. Pilate’s name is selected by the family custom of placing a
finger on the first word in an opened Bible. Even the young Milkman knows that Pilate’s box
contains the magic knowledge of all names. “Pilate knows. It’s in that dumb-ass box hanging
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Her own name and everybody else” . Pilate carries her name with her just as she
carries a rock from every state in which she has lived to provide continuity in random and
dispossessed existence. Milkman begins his journey to south to retrieve the gold that his
father and Pilate has found years ago in a cave in Pennsylvania. Macon believes that Pilate
stole gold from him. A set of teachers and helpers introduces the South to him. Here the quest
for gold becomes the quest for identify in Danville Pennsylvania. Milkman meets reverend
Cooper who provides important information about his ancestry. He gives Milkman a sense
that he is included in a larger Dead family. He greets Milkman with “I know you people”
and tells him the story of his grandfather’s murder and of Circe’s caring for Pilate and Macon
in the days to follow. Circe, Milkman’s second helper in the south tells Milkman how to find
But she also provides information about milkman’s ancestors that he will later use the
Solomon song sung by the children in Shalimar Circle and tells him in that about
grandmother. An Indian named Sing came with his grandfather to Pennsylvania from
Virginia and she tells him the town’s nameis Charlemagne. She also knows that old Macon’s
body has been dumped in the very cave in which gold was discovered. “Must have been
hunter’s cave Hunters sued it to rest up in there sometimes Eat Smoke Sleep that where they
dumped old Macon’s body”. And later milkman with realize that it is her father’s bones that
Pilate hasfound when she has returned to the cave. Finally, she reveals his grandfather’s real
name is Jake. “Jake I believe. “Jake, what? “She shrugged, a Shirley Temple, little-girl-
helpers shrug “Jake was all she told me”. Milkman’s trip through the woods to the butler’s
Going into the Pennsylvania woods Milkman is oblivious to the universe of wood like
he has been oblivious to the emotions and experiences of the people around him. To find the
cave he has to go deeper into the woods and climb rock hillside. In the confrontation with
nature Milkman finds that some genuine feeling begins to emerge. “Milkman began to shake
with hunger. Heal hunger, nit the less then top-full feeing he was accustomed to, the nervous
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desire to taste something good. Real hunger”. Milkman still has much to learn when he
reaches Shalimar. He began to take southern hospitality for granted. He has the feel at home
in the south especially when his car breaks down in front of Solomon’s Country store in
Shalimar. Milkman hears the local children singing “a kind a ring-around-the rosy or little
sally walker game”. This is the Solomon song which Milkman later realizes the key to the
mastery of his ancestry. In the hunt Milkman hear the wailing from Ryan’s Gulch, and Calvin
tells him about the old legend that “a woman named Ryna is crying in there” .
The Ryan who has been abandoned by his great-grandfather. Solomon. “ItsSolomon
she’s crying for, not the baby”, Milkman begins to gain access to the mysteriesof his
ancestry. The Solomon’s songs which he hears become very important for him which
synthesizes the different fragments of stories he has got in different places. In children’s song
he deciphers the power of his great- grandfather, Solomon who has flown and flew back to
Africa leaving behind his wife Ryna and twenty onechildren with Milkman’s grandfather
Jake. Milkman recognizes the version of Sugarman done fly away” . He has heard Pilate
singing that song all her life. He ealizesSusan Byrd is his grandmother’s niece. She confirms
and tells Milkman the secret of Solomon. He was flying to African and he tried to carry his
young child Jake with him but has to let him fall. Jake was Milkman’s grandfather who
changed his name to Macon Dead. By leaving his ancestor’s name Milkman has learned who
he is. Here Milkman completes the quest for finding out his identity which was buried into
the past. At last Milkman and Pilate return to the cave in Pennsylvania so that Pilate can
properly bury what she now knows is her father’s bones, “ That was you father you found.
You have been carrying you father bones- all this time” . Guitar track them down and
believes that Milkman has found the gold and betrayed him by cutting him out of his share.
As Milkman and Pilate stand at the cave, Guitar shots Pilate with a bullet which is meant for
Milkman. Milkman stands up fully expecting to be killed instantly and calls to Guitar
shouting “over here brother man! Can you see me? Here I am” . Guitar is still his “brother”
and if Guitar needs his life Milkman can give it. The novel ends with Milkman’s words,
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Without wiping away the tears, taking a deep breath, or even bending his knees-he leaped. As
fleet and bright as a lodestar he wheeled toward Guitar and it did not matter with one of them
would give up his ghost in the killing arms of his brother. For now he knew what Shalimar
know if you surrendered to the air, you could ride it.Milkman recovers his dislocated identity
by recognizing himself and his connection to his family and the whole Afro-American race.
He gets relieved from the pain of being nameless and ignored by the whites’ American
hegemonic society. Morrison, in an interview with Christina Davis says, “the quality of
Milkman’slife has improved so much and he is complete and capable that the length of it is
irrelevant really. It is not about dying or not dying. It’s just that this marvelous epiphanyhas
taken place”.
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Chapter IIIConclusion
specific recognizable identity and gain certain kind of respect in the larger American society.
When the blacks in earlier era of their experience in America began to feel that they must
come out of the burdens of slavery, racial discrimination, political exclusion and economic
exploitation. They began to explore and record in their literary products their dream of being
free and respectable American citizens. Black American writers frequently felt and continue
to feel that it is their responsibility to deconstruct and reverse the black American’s identity.
The African-American writers try to understand and reconcile the tensions in their
consciousness that resulted from color, class and gender conflicts between white American
culture and the descendants of slaves in America. The major theme of African-American
literature from the very beginning to the contemporary period is structured in the loss of
The Afro-American literature is for black people’s selfhood, security and power.
Their art speaks the need and aspirations of black American people. The African-American
writers are the passionate observers of black people’s struggle for freedom, race violence,
and all kinds of oppression and marginalization, which they use as their major tools for their
literary products. Their use of myth, invention of playful verbal twists shows the powerful
resources of Black English Vernacular as strong identity marker, which constitutes a strong
oral traditionand black American rural tradition. It becomes the medium where they feel
themselvesidentified.
The African-American writers eschew the burdens of white oppression and torments
of slavery and its aftermath. The output of African-American writing discloses the desperate
struggle of black people to survive and secure the most basic rights and freedom in a hostile
environment. The black literary product is about the troubled quest of black American
identity and liberty, the agony of social exclusion and a longing for a respect as a free human
being. Whites can act and blacks can only react in the American society. The blacks have
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always become the objects in the Americanhistory. The struggle of black American writers is
They reconnect themselves with their folk-roots, rural past and oral tradition by which
they measure themselves as people having rich cultural tradition. The slave culture, myth, the
pain and pathos of black people in America are the vital parts of African-American literary
always by the eyes of whites. Black American’s identity is framed in relation to whiteness.
The dilemma of self-identity for many black writers is inseparable from the racialized
The African-American literature transforms what has been significantly absent in the
narrative of American cultural history – the exploitation and denial of black cultural identity.
Toni Morrison is widely read throughout the world. Morrison creates what she calls ‘village
literature’. She owes much to her ancestors and feels that African-American writers have to
honor them. She strongly opposes the mainstream notion of African-American having
inferior position and existence and seeks to find the alternative identity of blacks in America.
She is not the exception of African-American trend of writing, which is heavily depended on
the vernacular culture, oral tradition, myth, folklore and the depiction of African-Americans
experience under the suppression and violence of white American superiority in the slavery
and aftermath.Morrison subverts the hierarchy by saying there is no question of being hit
superior and black inferior. She exposes the silence and undermines the presuppositions,
She brings in her writing African culture and tradition in the center by saying that
American literature that ceases to repress African-American presence. The history of African-
American novels begins with William Wells Brown’s novelClotelleis considered as the pivotal
book in the history of African-American novels. It focuses on the abolition of slavery in the
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United States. Brown employs realistic details of African-American life inClotelle.Harriet
The novel is autobiographical in nature. OurNig presents the horrific conditions of black
life in America. Wilson shows the exploitation of blacks by the whites. Another novelist of
nineteenth century Martin RobinsonDelanyis considered as the radical spokesman for the
immigration possibilities for free blacks is fictionalized in his novel Blake. E. B. Du Bois, a
distinguished man of letters, explores the values of American democracy, human rights and
attacks the social institutions, which perverted them, in his five novels. These novels explore
the heroic struggle of black Americans during the turbulent years when they were fighting for
their full rights in America. In the history of African-American novels Harlem Renaissance
remains the most productive period. It is the period of the rise of Claude McKay, Countee
They sensed the race consciousness in their writings by the concept of ancestralism, a
black writers of eighteenth and nineteenth century created the literature to impress white and
get more comfortable place in the racial world. Wright’s Native Son, one of best sellers, is a
metaphor for their identity invisible in America and they have to rebel against the restraints to
find freedom. Novelists John A. Williams, John Oliver Killens and Gayl Jones also cannot
come out of the periphery of the African-American’s racial world, the world of human
They trace the complicated lives of blacks in the white terrorism and the horror stories
of oppressions. Alice Walker, one of the most significant black American novelists, marks
the special position in the history of African-American novels with her Pulitzer Prize winning
novelThe Color Purplein the 1980s. It is about the crucial aspects of race and the experiences of
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blacks in America. Toni Morrison, the most successful novelist of the present time, strongly
feels the sense of her ancestors’ contribution and pays honor to them. Her writing is
the product of her abundant reading and understanding of black culture, black tradition and
black heritage. Her first two novelsThe Bluest EyeandSulaare about the female suppression and
their double jeopardy in the white American society whereas her third novel Song of
Solomon presents a quest for one’s identity in the lost history, which was dislocated. The
protagonist, Milkman Dead, has to suffer the pain of not having his real name. Milkman
symbolizes the black people in America who are leading the inferior life in the white cultural
communities.
The depiction of women is for the living oral tradition of African-American culture
and for the suffering. The ongoing reality of white’s brutality is presented through Guitar
Bain’s hatred and radicalism of the Seven Days. The importance of oral tradition remains
alive though the fragmented stories of ‘Dead’ family told by different people to Milkman
Dead during his quest. The Solomon’s song remains the key point for Milkman to find out his
family history, his identity and family link. Milkman Dead unlike his ancestor, who escaped
from reality and responsibility, finds his real name and accepts it as real in American white
dominatedsociety.
With his family link with Solomon, his great grandfather, Jake, his grandfather, Ryna,
his great grandmother, Milkman gets relieved from the pain of being nameless, entirely
ignored and treated as invisible. Through Milkman’s search for racial identity, Morrison
gives an alternative notion of an individual and thereby explores the respective community’s
self-image.
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BibliographyA . P r i m a r y S o u r c e
B.Secondary Sources
Bell, Bernard W.
The Afro-American Novel and Its Tradition. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1989.
Figures in Black: Words, Signs and the “Racial”Self. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989.
,1994
McKay, Nellie Y. “An Interview with Toni Morrison” in Toni Morrison: Critical
Perspectives Past and Present”.Ed. Henry Louise Gates, Jr. and K.A. Appiah. New York:
Puri, Usha. “The Narrative Technique and Oral Tradition in Toni Morrison’s Song
The New York Book Review, September 11, 1977.Smith, Valerie ed. New Essays on Song of
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Sumana, K.
The Novels of Toni Morrison: A Study in Race, Gender, and Class.London: Sangam Books, 1998.
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