Essay on Flight in Song of Solomon -- Song Solomon essays

The Importance of Flight in straining of Solomon Flight is a major theme in Toni Morrisons Song of Solomon. Flight echoes throughout the story as a reward, as a hoped-for skill, as an escape, and as proof of intrinsic worth however, by the end this is not so clear a proposition(Lubiano 96). Song of Solomon ends with flight but in such a way that the act allows for denary interpretations suicide real flight and then a wheeling attack on his br another(prenominal) or real flight and then some benignant of encounter with the (possibly) killing arms of his brother. That Guitar places his rifle on the ground does not make him any less deadly - his smile and the dropping of the gun both precede the language of killing arms - and his my man - my main man is an echo of the same irony that allowed Guitar to call Milkman his friend even after his precedent attempt at killing him (Middleton 298). And Guitars arms argon killing, not just because they want to answer the challenge posed by M ilkmans move toward him, but because they are the arms that have killed, that killed white people, that can kill anyone who isnt black, or anyone Guitar can convince himself isnt black like Pilate. In other words, Guitar can make an other of anyone who crosses the boundaries of the definitions he constructs for the group that he purports to love black people. What Guitar has constructed in his life is a category of political ciphers that does not allow for the existence of the idiosyncratic Pilate or for the existence of the individualistically apolitical Milkman. Milkmans journey forward to flight is a journey into his past his future is behind him. The texts refutation of the idea of a upstanding untroubled self is thus crystallized in the ... ... it is Pilate who represents not only embodied history but the praxis that comes with recognizing historys effects, the willingness to theorize about possibilities in the count of history, and the ability to make concrete alternatives to personal and public inequities. Remaining on the ground of history, then, is a labor of love. Works Cited Middleton, David. Toni Morrisons Fiction Contemporary Criticism. New York Garland, 1997. Morrison, Toni. Song of Solomon. New York Penguin Books, 1987. Lubiano, Wahneema. The Postmodernist Rag Political Identity and the Vernacular in Song of Solomon, in Toni Morrisons Song of Solomon, in New Essays on Song of Solomon, ed. Valerie Smith, Cambridge University pickle 1995, 93-116, 111-113 Peterson, Nancy J. Toni Morrison Critical and Theoretical Approaches. Baltimore Johns Hopkins UP, 1997.