Friday, 30 June 2023

Going Back to Roots: Song of Solomon

 Going Back to Roots

Dr Manisha Patil 

In the conventional American ‘Bildungsroman’ (initiation story), the protagonist moves from a rural to an urban area, from South to North, from community to individualism. Song of Solomon, on the other hand, shows the journey of Milkman from urban North to rural South, from individualism to communal sense. In the words of Catherine Lee, ‘For the authors of these slave narratives [Frederick Douglass’s Narrative and Harriet Jacob’s Incident in the life of a Slave Girl, in which the protagonist moves from an oppressive, enslaving, agrarian South to an enabling, industrial North] leaving behind family, friends and even names was often essential for escape. For the African American community in the twentieth century, however, Morrison suggests that the isolating individualism that erases the memory of the south destroys spiritual and moral identity.’ Lee further explains her point in the following words:

Milkman is indeed naïve about himself, his family and his community, but the very nature of the knowledge he acquires makes Song of Solomon as a different kind of initiation story. The initiate’s knowledge is typically defined as a loss of innocence of recognition of restriction. Milkman begins however, at the point of restriction that comes from separation, from the hyper individualization that grows out of the American culture of competition, capitalism and racism. Like the traditional American initiate, he must recognise his own capacity for evil but the knowledge of his family’s past and his place in a community that evolved from that past enables Milkman to ascend rather than conventionally, to ‘fall through knowledge’ (Fiedler 22). His journey into an African American South strips him of superficial external moorings and submerges him in the communal and spiritual culture of his larger family. With his initiation, Milkman moves from a passive, irresponsible ignorance to an active authentic and liberating participation in the corporate life of black community.4

In Part II, Milkman goes to South in search of the gold. Though the search for gold itself is corrupt, his journey is rewarding at the spiritual level. From Danville to Shalimar, he visits all the places where Macon, Pilate or his other ancestors had lived and collects the fragments of their past to solve the puzzle of their lives and to recover the holistic history of his family. First of all, at Danville, Milkman meets Reverend Cooper who greets him with, “I know your people!” These simple words give him the sense of belongingness for the first time in his life. During the next four days, the other old survivors tell him the story of his grandfather’s life, family and death. During their conversations, he discovers a totally different man, his father was. He was not ‘that stern, greedy, unloving man’ but a loving and generous son and brother. Again, for the first time in his life Milkman envisions his father’s dream of Lincoln’s Heaven and longs for the relationship that his father and grandfather shared. Macon Dead I’s farm symbolized the richness and possibility of the community. It was a ray of hope not only for Macon’s family but for the whole of African American community who saw in it the path of their liberation. But the murder of Macon Dead I, murdered that hope as well. Consequently, when the people at Danville hear about the success of Macon II, their hope is rekindled. However, Morrison shows that even at such a moment, uppermost in Milkman’s mind is the thought of gold. This is an oblique way to show that the drive to own property which meant liberation to Macon I has been perverted into selfishness and endless acquisition by Macon II and the same is perpetuated to the extreme by Macon III (Milkman). Now it is the responsibility of Milkman to rejuvenate the original vision of Lincoln’s Heaven where material prosperity co-existed with communal harmony.

From Reverend Cooper’s house, Milkman goes to Circe, the ancient wise woman who served as the midwife to Milkman’s grandmother Sing and also protected and looked after Macon II and Pilate after their father’s murder. She is the one who tells Milkman the account of Old Macon’s murder and the fact that his body was dumped in the very cave in which the gold was discovered. She is the ‘living relic of the past’5 who serves as a link between historic amnesia and present memory. She reveals the real names of Old Macon as Jake and his wife as Sing. (In her dreams, Pilate saw her father calling out the name ‘Sing’, but as Pilate did not know the name of her mother, she mistook his words as an order to sing a song) and that they came from Charlemagne, a corruption of Shalimar. (The name ‘Charlemagne’ falsifies the history by removing trace of original Afro-centric ‘Solomon’ completely and instead superimposing the Euro-centric ‘Charlemagne’). She also guides Milkman towards the Butler House and the Cave and thus moves him one more step near his lost roots. Milkman’s trips through the woods to the Butler House and the Cave start the process of shedding his old, inauthentic self. ‘To find the house he must make “a mile long walks over moist leaves”, dodging branches of overhead trees. To find the cave, he has to go deeper into the woods, crossing and falling into a creek then climbing the rocky hill side. His watch and cigarettes, those emblems of distraction and city life are smashed and soaked: his thin-soled shoes are of little help. Once inside the cave, he has only his hands, feet and instincts to guide him. His lighter sputters only long enough to show that the gold is gone. In this confrontation with a nature much wilder than the “tended woods” he knew back home, Milkman finds that some genuine feeling begins to emerge, experienced as a ravenous hunger unlike any he has known before.’6 

When Milkman goes to Shalimar, he learns one more important lesson – power of naming and importance of community – which he had devalued in his earlier life. Following his old habit of objectifying people, Milkman fails to ask the names of men in the store and calls them ‘them’. By locking his car, he reveals his mistrust and then by suggesting that he would like to have one of their women, exposes his internalized white attitude. This obviously enrages the men and they attack him. Now he learns the second lesson – neither his money can save him nor his daddy can bail him out of trouble. He is fully responsible for his actions. He has to pay the price for his mistakes and he has to defend himself with whatever is immediately at hand. Even at the age of thirty two, Milkman is still an ignorant, irresponsible and passive adolescent. To mature, he must be initiated in the African American community. The bobcat hunt for which the older men invite him serves this purpose: ‘a male initiation rite at the hands of the elders and wise men of African tribal cultures.’7

During the hunt, Milkman undergoes rapid change. He realizes that Calvin’s lamp prevents his eyes from adjusting to the dark and so he abandons the artificial light and begins to see what the night holds by penetrating the darkness with his naked eyes. Then he is able to hear the wailing from the Ryna’s Gulch – Ryna was his great grandmother who was abandoned by her husband Solomon and so went mad with sorrow. He also listens to the dogs and men signalling each other and realizes that human beings are not separate but part of the nature. As a result, otherizing and objectifying nature (as ‘land’ is objectified in real estate business) and by extension, otherizing and objectifying other people (as Macon and Milkman have done in case of poor men and all women in their life) is not possible. Man can live happily only in harmony with the nature and other people. This realization makes him ready to confront his physical limitations as well as to heal his spiritual brokenness. Because of his limp, he is not able to keep up with other hunters. Physical fatigue overtakes him and he rests under a tree, while resting, he re-evaluates all his life – he accepts his hereto forth alienating self-centeredness and also the future responsibility for sharing both the joys and sorrows of his family and friends. It is at this moment that Guitar attempts to murder him. However, his newly developed sixth sense works him of Guitar’s approach. ‘He tried to listen with his fingertips, to hear what if anything, the earth had to say and it told him quickly that someone was standing behind him and he had just enough time to raise one hand to his neck and catch the wire that fastened around his throat.’ (279) Though Milkman survives physically, metaphorically his old selfish self is dead. With his spiritual rebirth he finds that even his physical limp is gone. He is truly integrated with the community of hunters. They offer him the ‘heart’ of bobcat, metaphorically meaning the ability to empathise with others. With Milkman’s change of heart, his behaviour also changes. Earlier, Milkman had devalued Hagar’s love and had used her as a sexual object. But now his love making with Sweet (even though she is a prostitute) is mutual and redemptive. There is no objectification here, only respectful caring for each other.

He soaped and rubbed her until his skin squeaked and glistered like any she put salve on his face. He washed his hair. She sprinkled talcum on his feet. He straddled her behind and massaged her back. She put witch hazel on his swollen neck. He made up the bed. She gave him gumbo to eat. He washed the dishes. She washed his clothes and hung them out to dry. He scoured her tub. She ironed his shirt and pants. He gave her fifty dollars. She kissed his mouth. He touched her face. She said please come back. He said I’ll see you tonight. (285)

By now, Milkman has consciously accepted the aim of his journey is to discover his roots and not the gold. Now he no longer wants to escape his family but rather to embrace it. So, he goes on and meets a local Indian Woman Susan Byrd, who turns out to be the niece of his grandmother sing. Susan tells him what she knew about sing. Her real name was Singing Bird. Her mother Heddy was a Red Indian who raised a black boy, Jake. Sing and Jake grew up together and later ran away together to get married. Nobody knew where they went. From Susan’s account and by deciphering the ‘Solomon Song’ as Milkman heard children sing, he learns that Solomon belonged to a flying African tribe. He and his wife Ryna had twenty-one children all boys, Jake being the youngest. Then one day all of a sudden, Solomon leapt in the air with baby Jake to fly away to his ancestral home in Africa. He left Ryna behind. So overcome with grief, she cried for days and days and lost her mind. Unfortunately, baby Jake slipped from Solomon’s hand and fell on the ground. Then Heddy took him and raised him up like a son. Milkman also finds that there are real places known as Solomon’s leap and Ryna’s Gulch and their story is immortalized in the children’s song. This is the same song that Pilate used to sing with a slight change – ‘Sugarman’ instead of ‘Solomon’

O Sugarman done fly away

Sugarman done gone

Sugarman cut across the sky

Sugarman gone home…

The names of Solomon, Jake, Ryna and others now make sense. Now Milkman has discovered his ancestry and with it his own identity. Now he views himself as a member of the larger African American community Catherine Lee comments, ‘Gone is his failure to attach to place. Now he has roots in every place that Pilate, his father and his grandparents have lived. He shares that heritage.’8

Dr Manisha Patil 

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