The Quest of Racial Identity in Song of Solomon

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Chapter I 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 no written 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 larger American society. 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 tales, and superimposition of social isolation accompany one another harmonically in the development of Afro-American novels.
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Bernard W. Bell opines: Afro-Americans quest is to make it possible for a man to be a Negro and an American without having the doors of opportunity closed, and escape isolation. The quest of Afro-American is for life, liberty and wholeness the full development of unity and self and the black community as a biracial, bicultural people as Americans and Afro-American descent. (12) Afro-American writers address history as the central theme and mostly reconnect black characters with their African roots. They feel that it is their duty to honour their ancestors and their cultural heritage. They bring the voice and vision to a long history of struggle with the land, color of black identity, humanity and freedom. Black literary and cultural tradition is of men and women who have undergone and survived the racial holocaust and have become tool for white supremacy. The oral tradition, myth, slavery and its aftermath are the integral parts of Afro-American literature. Afro-American novelists try to understand and reconcile the tension in their consciousness that resulted from color, class, and gender conflicts between white American cultures and the descendent of slaves. The black American writers seek 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 eternal victims of white as a result of slavery and its aftermath. Black people are closer to Africa, their ancestors, values and ethics of a society where community and culture are 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 literary tradition is the tradition of Afro-American folklore. It rests on the foundation for the customs, practices and beliefs of Afro-American race. Afro-American writers are preoccupied with the notion of blacks as marginalized and blacks 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 hierarchy of mainstream discourse. Mainstream hegemonic discourse always undermines blacks presence and heads towards white cultural supremacy. The art of Afro-American writers is not for arts 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 expressivity or performance designed to free minds and bodies of a subjugated people (Baker13). 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 involve themselves in the western-controlled discourse.
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 cultural differences to be repeated, imitated and revised in a tradition of black difference. According to John Oliver Killens: The American literary tradition remains incomplete if black American voice is 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, humanness and democracy. (4) 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 mans 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 and the longing at times a mythical home.
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 Browns Clotelle, or the Colored Heroine (18530. Clotelle is about the abolishment of slavery. In this novel Brown exposes the individual entrenchment of slavery in the United States and focuses on the ownership of slaves in high places as professed by Christians. 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 of black social criticism and the novel. Frank J. Webbs 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 very little distance between the class and racial norms of the author. Harriet E. Wilson is the third black American novelist to publish a novel in the United States rather than in England. Our Nig is based on her life as an indentured servant in New England. It was published in Boston in 1859. Wilsons doubleconsciousness and double vision are apparent in the title, epigraphs, theme and the
protagonist of Our Nig, the title and authors 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 the wife is white and husband is African. Our Nig clearly illustrates the conventions and contributions of both traditions contributed to the development of the early Afro-American novel. Martin Robinson Delany's Blake (1859) was the most radical black novel of the nineteenth century. He was leading spokesman for black independence and self determined. He attacked racist practices within the abolitionist movement itself. To investigate the immigration possibilities for the black people to the independent Republic 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 international plot of general rebellion and solidarity. 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 Waddell Chesnutt is generally considered to be the first major Afro-American
fiction writer (Bell 63). Chesnutts 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. His The Marrow of Tradition (1901), was written during the 1898 elections in Wilmington, North Carolina. The Marrow of Tradition enriches the tradition of the Afro-American novel. It further moves on the road towards social realism. The Colonel Dream (1905) is an attack on peonage and convict lease labor system. 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 (1928), The Ordeal of Mansard (9), Mansard Builds School (1959), and Worlds of Color (1961). Bernard W. Bell examines: More documentary than meditative, more appealing as historical romance than social realism, Du Bios novels reflect his critical view of American society and the stylistic flexibility of the beginnings of naturalism in the AfroAmerican novel. Understanding the economic underpinnings of western racism and imperialism, Du Bois explores the values of American democracy, affirming them in principal while attacking those social institutions and types that perverted them. (Bell 82)
The Negro renaissance, known as Harlem Renaissance or the New Negro movement, 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 Hydes, Arron Duglass, Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith and Duke Ellington. The celebration of race consciousness in the novels of New Negroes is conveyed by the concept of ancestralism. The concept of ancestralism is also apparent in the Negritude movement. 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 exploration of history of American slavery, emancipation, migration and integration. Morrisons 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. Morrisons fiction does not fit well to the single category. It blends the themes of race, class, comingagestories, mythical and realistic genres. 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 historys 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 Americans 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 a 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. Morrisons 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 and the separate cultural traditions constantly. The tension between blacks and whites is exemplified by Guitars hatred of white and his decision to join 'The Seven Days'. Morrison's depiction of 'Dead' family in the novel demonstrates the incompatibility of assumption and demands the life of American communities. Milkman Dead's quest criticizes the faith in self-sufficiency and individual identity. Through Milkman Dead's story Morrison questions the conceptions of individualism and offers destabilized construction of identity.
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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 Morrisons 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 Morrisons 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 selfknowledge. 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: Whod he leave behind? (Morrison
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328). When he finds his true self he begins to value human relationships over money, power and himself. Toni Morrisons Song of Solomon is a tale of lies, misinterpretations and false identities. All of its characters true identities remain unknown even to themselves. With the exception of Pilate all the characters struggle with identity including the central character Milkman. With Pilates guidance Milkman is able to overcome the lies that surround the falseness with which he has once represented himself. The novel ends as Milkman reaches self-knowledge and finds real meaning in his life.
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The Quest of Racial Identity in Song of Solomon Toni Morrison is said to be influenced by Ralph Ellison. Charles Johnson says that Morrison is a direct descendent of Ralph Ellison in style and sensibility. Afro-America 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 Morrisons 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 black women in America (396). 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 black writers responsibility to discover the history. She says: You have to take it out and identify those who have preceded you resummoning them, acknowledging them in just one step in that process of reclamation so that they are always there as the confirmation and the
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affirmation 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 country. (Davis 413) The language of Morrisons fictions is distinctive, effortless, suggestive, and provocate. It is the language black people love to play with the function of the language. Morrison in her novels bodly reveals the silence and undermines the presuppositions, assumptions, hierarchies and oppositions upon which American hegemonic discourse depends. He legitimizes the oppression of the black people and the poor. She explores the 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 systematically distort the African Americans presence in contribution to the American literature. She claims that whiteness is mute, meaningless, and pointless. Toni Morrisons 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 girl Pacola 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 acquiring blue eyes never succeeds.
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Morrisons 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 Morrisons 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. Morrisons use of African ways of storytelling and oral forms is a way of bridging gaps between black communitys folk roots and black American literary tradition. Morrison questions the western conception and ways of interpretation other than those imposed by the determinant culture. Morrison uses Afro-American culture, values. Characteristics and 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 story teller 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 descendents into the mainstream culture but the search for alternative identity and existence. It is not of escaping from slavery and
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violence 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 Deads aunt, becomes the major assistance to Milkman. Pilate is magically assists milkmans mother Ruthfoster to restart the sexual relation with Macon Dead after so many years of cold relation and that resulted in Milkmans birth. 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-Americans African traditions and heritage. Pilate sings folk-songs of Sugar Man or Solomons escape at Milkmans birth. This song becomes the key to milkmans quest and illustrates the function of the African American women in passing on stories to future generations.
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Milkmans relationship to Pilate turns to major step towards finding his identity and past. Milkmans 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 only means to defend him in the white world. 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 Days 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 and how they are killed. Their motto is to kill the white in a similar way. There is a society. Its made up of a few men who are willing to take some risks. They dont initiate anything; they dont 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 Negro was burnt, they burn; raped and murdered, they rape and murder.. They call themselves the seven days I am one of them now. (154-155)
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Milkman Deads identity is a mass of fragments. The search for gold becomes a reason for family history and African heritage. Milkmans search starts from his grandfathers farm in Pennsylvania; he returns to the world of the slaves made the south. Milkmans trip leads him to an understanding of himself, his family and culture. Milkmans concept of rural life differs extensively when he visits his grandfathers community in Pennsylvania. He hears the stories about his family heritage and realizes the strength of his culture. He has paid little attention to it in the past. Milkmans 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 AfroAmerican culture has significant relevance in Song of Solomon. Milkmans history is not a recorded one, but remembered and recollected by different people. He hears the children singing the Solomons 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, Milkmans 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 mans 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 could
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not have cared less. Agreed to take and pass on to all their issue this heavy name scrawled in perfect thoughtlessness by a drunken Yankee in the union Army (18). Milkman Dead bears his name as Milkman when he is founding socking his mothers milk by Freddies, Hed found the phrax hed 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. Morrisons 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 Solomons song, he finds himself connected to it and thus he finds his real name and heritage, his past family line and his identity. Milkmans 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 could ride it (337). Morrison tries to establish the alternative reality of Afro-Africans existence in America by showing Milkmans acceptance not to escape the present like his ancestors. The American nation of African people is without identity and has white hegemony, Black Manhood and Double jeopardy of women. 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 are
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seen as second class human beings in America. Song of Solomon which is dependant heavily on cultural practices and tradition of black people is the result of whites 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 in perfect thought lessons by a drunken yamkec in the union army. A literal slip of the pen 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 second Macon 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 mattered as Milkman Dead (18). 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 transformed into a bitter hatred of whites. He recounts the terrible accidental death of his father and the employers gesture of motifying the family by offering them candy. The gesture sicken 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.
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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 blackmen, 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 see the 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 the will to overcome in unnatural enemy (155-156). Morrisons use of the impact of the white hegemonic culture has a special attention in the novel. Macon Deads love of property, his materialistic vision and wish to become a prestigious red estate owner is the impact of whites culture. Macon Deads quest is the consequence of materialism. He comes to understand the values of land especially after he has seen the white men violently assume control over his fathers 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 cant 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 want the
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bankers 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 that daughter had a daughter but no husband. (20). He wants to take advantage from Ruths 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 youll own yourself and other people to (55). Macon Deads 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, which leads to men like Macon Dead and Guitar to violence (71). 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 blacks existence in American. The position of women in Morrison novels is doubly difficult. Black women in Morrisons 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 whites doll baby. They are defined other and made to be looked as other in the society. Linden peach says, Morrison shows the book
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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) Morrison in Song of Solomon presents her women character suppressed and 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. Ruth foster, a daughter of the towns 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). Milkmans 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. Milkmans 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). Milkmans 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 a
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daughter and granddaughters even her own brother hates her for some unknown reason and tries to stay away from her. Circe, the maid and midwife, who helps Milkman to find out his identity, plays the same role as in Homers Odyssey. As Homers Circe finds his way to Ithaca, Morrisons Circe provides crucial information that reconnects Milkman with his family history. In this way Morrisons connects Milkmans past and present. The story runs in the course to direct ones family history in order to trace the hidden past and reconnect the family with the patriarchal line of milkman dead. Morrisons depiction of black women is for the suffering, brutality and living reality of American society where black women have to suffer more than anybody else, which is the experience of Morrison herself. 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 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.
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Bernard w .Bell says. The Afro-American literacy consciousness was developed in America in 19th century 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 feel that they recall that oral tradition and remain true to their bore fathers as Ton Morrison says that she feels strong connection to ancestors. (McKay 398) 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). Milkmans life follows a pattern of the classic hero from his miraculous birth and his guest to final reunion with 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 moments of coming to grips with slavery as an allegory of liberation (Gates and Appiah 316). Milkmans story has relevance with the lcarus myth since it ties with folk tales of blacks flying back to home land. Morrison in context of flying myth in Song of Solomon says, if it mean lcarus 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 my life flying was one of all gifts (Lecliar 372).
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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. Morrisons 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 fathers 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 one of personal quest and egocentric. It is to test individualist potential. 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 wasnt 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 bighouse (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 suitable but as real.
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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 cultures legacies. When Macon Dead attempts to tell his son what a man is to, he offers the story of his daddys Pennsylvanian farm, Lincolns 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 blacks codes of conducts and conceptions of good life. Milkmans 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 Solomons song. . To decipher the words he wants to write them down first but lacking paper and penal, he is forced to memorize them: He would just have to listen and memorize it. He closed his eyes and concentrated while the children, inexhaustible in their willingness to repeat a rhythmic, rhyming action game, performed the round over and over again. And milkman memorized all of what they sang. (303). Just before Pilate death Milkman shows his full participation in the AfroAmerican oral tradition. He sings the song of Solomon, adopting it appropriately for her, Sugargirl dont leave me here cotton ball to choke me sugargirl dont leave me
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here Buckras 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. Morrisons 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. Toni Morrison in Afro-American presence in American Literature says, Silences are being broken, lost things have been found and at least two generations of scholars are disentangling 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 (bloom 206) Morrisons attempt in her literary works is to reverse the western notion of identity of blacks as inferior and advocate the importance of Afro-Americans culture
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and heritage. Milkman Deads quest never gives the alternative solution to the lost family name and its African roots in Song of Solomon. The identity of Milkmans 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 cut off. Milkman is almost without identity. Milkmans birth was not wanted by his father and he forces his mother to abort but with the help of Pilate Milkman came into the world. 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 wouldnt and Pilate helped me stand him off. I wouldnt have been strong enough without her. She saved my life. And yours. Macon she saved yours too (125-26) Milkman becomes the battleground for Macon and Ruth and later on he becomes the means for his mothers gratification. Milkman does not have his own self; His deformity was mostly in his mind (62). He is totally excluded from his family and becomes the tool for others. He feels that he is used by everybody for his or her satisfaction. Milkmans friend Gultar 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, aint that a shame? (154). He is not interested in personal history. His relationship to his past is less intricate that milkmans 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 Gultar devotes his whole life
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placing himself. In opposition to whites-evening up the numbers- and so creates for himself and oppositionally defined identity (Smith 109). 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 (85) 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 fell (333). Song of Solomon implies 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 whites 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 heros birth at No Mercy hospital is itself and allegorical representation of the personal. Political and historical complexities of the construction of identity Mr. smiths flight from Mercy to other side of lake Superior (3) 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-Americans alleged civilization-the rationale for slavery (Lubiano 100). Morrisons epigraph to the novel read, for father may soar and the children may know their names (334) but it is finally also the names of ancestral mothers which hear witness. Pilates name is selected by the family custom of placing a finger
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on the first word in an opened Bible. Even the young Milkman knows that Pilates box contains the magic knowledge of all names. Pilate knows. Its in that dumb-ass box hanging from her ear. Her own name and everybody else (89). 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 (229) and tells him the story of his grandfathers murder and of Circes caring for Pilate and Macon in the days to follow. Circe, Milkmans second helper in the south tells Milkman how to find the cave where Macon thinks gold still lies. But she also provides information about milkmans 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 towns name is Charlemagne. She also knows that old Macons body has been dumped in the very cave in which gold was discovered. Must have been hunters cave Hunters sued it to rest up in there sometimes Eat Smoke Sleep that where they dumped old Macons body (244). And later milkman with realize that it is her fathers bones that Pilate has
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found when she has returned to the cave. Finally she reveals his grandfathers real name is Jake. Jake I believe. Jake, what? She shrugged, a Shirley Temple, little-girl- helpers shrug Jake was all she told me (248).
Milkmans trip through the woods to the butlers house and to the cave is part of his initiation. 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 desire to taste something good. Real hunger (353). 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 Solomons Country store in Shalimar. Milkman hears the local children singing a kind a ring-around-the rosy or little sally walker game (204). 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 Rynas Gulch, and Calvin tells him about the old legend that a woman named Ryna is crying in there (274). The Ryna who has been abandoned by his great-grandfather. Solomon. Its Solomon shes crying for, not the baby (304), Milkman begins to gain access to the mysteries
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of his ancestry. The Solomons songs which he hears become very important for him which synthesizes the different fragments of stories he has got in different places. In childrens 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 one children with Milkmans grandfather Jake. Milkman recognizes the version of Sugarman done fly away (5). He has heard Pilate singing that song all her life. He realizes Susan Byrd is his grandmothers 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 Milkmans grandfather who changed his name to Macon Dead. By leaving his ancestors 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 fathers bones, That was you father you found. You have been carrying you father bones- all this time (33). 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 (337). Guitar is still his brother and if Guitar needs his life Milkman can give it. The novel ends with Milkmans words, 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
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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. (337). 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 Milkmans life 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. Its just that this marvelous epiphany has taken place (419).
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Chapter III Conclusion The Afro-American writing is a series of attempts by Afro-Americans to attain a 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 Americans identity. The AfricanAmerican 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 black American identity and marginalized black American voice. The Afro-American literature is for black peoples 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 peoples 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 tradition
35
and black American rural tradition. It becomes the medium where they feel themselves identified. 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 always become the objects in the American history. The struggle of black American writers is to make black people as the real subjects of their country. 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 tradition. African-Americans identity revolves around the Look. Blackness is defined always by the eyes of whites. Black Americans identity is framed in relation to whiteness. The dilemma of self-identity for many black writers is inseparable from the racialized American society, which denies and violates blacks recognizable identity. 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-
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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 AfricanAmerican 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 its aftermath. Morrison subverts the hierarchy by saying there is no question of being white superior and black inferior. She exposes the silence and undermines the presuppositions, assumptions, hierarchies, and opposition on which western hegemonic discourse depends. She brings in her writing African culture and tradition in the center by saying that whiteness is impossible and mute in its absence. Morrison prefers to be contextualized in American literature that ceases to repress AfricanAmerican presence. The history of African-American novels begins with William Wells Browns novel Clotelle. Clotelle is considered as the pivotal book in the history of AfricanAmerican novels. It focuses on the abolition of slavery in the United States. Brown employs realistic details of African-American life in Clotelle. Harriet Wilsons Our Nig exposes the racial identity of the author. The novel is autobiographical in nature. Our Nig presents the horrific conditions of black life in America. Wilson shows the exploitation of blacks by the whites. Another novelist of nineteenth century Martin Robinson Delany is considered as the radical spokesman for the black independence.
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His own experience in different places for the investigation of immigration possibilities for free blacks is fictionalized in his novel Blake. W. 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 Cullen and Langston Hughes. They sensed the race consciousness in their writings by the concept of ancestralism, a feeling of connection with ones ancestors, ones descendents. Richard Wright suggests that black writers of eighteenth and nineteenth century created the literature to impress white and get more comfortable place in the racial world. Wrights Native Son, one of best sellers, is a construction of a racial world shaped by blacks sensitivity. Another significant figure in African-American novel, Ralph Ellisons Invisible Man marks the African-Americans 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-Americans racial world, the world of human suffering and dreadful situation of people of color in their writings. They trace the complicated lives of blacks in the white terrorism and the horror stories of
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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 novel The Color Purple in the 1980s. It is about the crucial aspects of race and the experiences of 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 novels The Bluest Eye and Sula are about the female suppression and their double jeopardy in the white American society whereas her third novel Song of Solomon presents a quest for ones 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 supremacy. Morrisons depiction of Dead family in the novel demonstrates the incompatibility of received assumptions and demands the life back in African-American communities. The depiction of women is for the living oral tradition of African-American culture and for the suffering. The ongoing reality of whites brutality is presented through Guitar Bains 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 Solomons 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 dominated
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society. 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 Milkmans search for racial identity, Morrison gives an alternative notion of an individual and thereby explores the respective communitys self image.
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Bibliography
A. Primary Source Morrison Toni. Song of Solomon. New York: Penguin Books, 1987
B. Secondary Sources Arafat, Afia. Decolonizing Space: Toni Morrisons Song of Solomon, Tar Baby and Love. The Indo-American Review.vol.16, 1993:195-201. Bell, Bernard W. The Afro-American Novel and Its Tradition. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1989. Gates, Henry Louise, Jr. Figures in Black: Words, Signs and the Racial Self. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989. Henry Louise, Jr. and K.A. Appiah, eds. Toni Morrison: Critical Perspectives Past and Present. New York: Amistad, 1993. Kannamal, S. Man-Woman Dichotomy Untenable: A Post-Structuralist Reading of Toni Morrisons Novels. Indian Journal of American Studies, 1993: 99-104. Krishnan, S. Racial Memory Drenched in Blood. Indian Review of Books,1994: 3-4 Lander, Susan. Song of Solomon. The New Yorker, 1977. 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: Amistad, 1993. Price, Renolds. Song of Solomon (1977), The New York Book Review, 1977.
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Puri, Usha. The Narrative Technique and Oral Tradition in Toni Morrisons Song of Solomon.. The Literary Half- Yearly vol. 38.2, 1997: 115-122. Smith, Valerie. Song of Solomon: Continuities of Community, The New York Book Review, September 11, 1977. Smith, Valerie ed. New Essays on Song of Solomon. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1995. Sumana, K. The Novels of Toni Morrison: A Study in Race, Gender, and Class. London: Sangam Books, 1998. Upot, Sherin. Cultural Politics in Toni Morrisons Song of Solomon, Indian Journal of American Studies, summer 1993: 75-80.

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