Song of Solomon
Hate and love(relationships)
Naming
Racism or Race(black vs white)
Fathers
side notes
Milkman and Hagar
Macon and Ruth
"thank God I ain’t never had one of them graveyard loves.”
Flight
Outside source
"It means, if the dog pees on the carpet, I hate it for you, Too bad for you"(Down here)
Outside source- by personifying a dog, you start to think about how a dog lives, their life revolves around the owner The owner gives them food and a home. While the owner is away the dog is alone and when he/she comes home the dog gets very excited, but many owners just brush that aside because they need to do other things. The life of a dog is very boring, so the poem is showing that by peeing they are getting your attention and that negative attention is better than being ignored. The connection to the Milkman/s mother is that the owner is like the mother, the dog sees the owner as a person who feeds him, so it 'loves' them in return.
Kind of like how Hagar was trying to kill Milkman, she wanted his love and attention, and she couldn't settle with being ignored, so she went to a more negative approach.
"Like a lighthouse keeper drawn to his window to gaze once again at the sea, or a prisoner automatically searching out the sun as he steps in the yard for his hour of exercise"(11).
She is in a horrible relationship with Macon Dead and is trapped in a life where she has to fake everything, her smile, her food(which is never good enough). She becomes a sort of zombie and needed assurance of the real world something outside her life, a life without freedom a life of being attacked constantly by he husband, not necessarily physically, that was the water mark.
"She had had the baby anyway, and although it did nothing to close the break between herself and Macon, there he was, her single triumph"(133
sons help renew love, force the parents to interact and learn more about each other as they teach their child. This can also be seen with the Dew Breaker. But with the Dew Breaker is worked, in Song of Solomon, it wasn't enough. Song Of Solomon is showing how woman craves for love, but men are the ones that cause pain and don't give love. This Shows in this relationship and in Milkman's and Hagar relationship, thus showing that Milkman and his father are the same
Milkman and Ruth
"He had never loved his mother, but had always known that she had loved him. And that had always seemed right to him, the way it should be. Her confirmed, eternal love of him, love that he didn’t even have to earn or deserve, seemed to him natural" (79).
We don't think of our mother as an individual, more like the person that took care of us the person that feeds us, nurtured us. We are like domestic animals, we are nurtured and fed and in return, we express "love", while the owner is the one actually expressing love by caring for the pet and giving it attention.The other way around, Ruth only loved Milkman because he was her son and she had a duty towards him, but does she really know him or like him for his characteristics. If they meet randomly on a bus or somewhere would they become friends or enemies? #
"Totally taken over by her anaconda love, she had no self left, no fears, no wants, no intelligence that was her own"(137).
"Some of my days were hungry ones...Reba. She don't mean food"(48,49)
I think that she is lacking love or a companion or maybe she is hungry for freedom. She could be hungry for many things, but it could be anything maybe we'll find out later.
Porter
"Gimme hate, Lord,” he whimpered. “I’ll take hate any day. But don’t give me love. I can’t take no more love, Lord. I can’t carry it"(26).
"But Milkman had no need to see her face; he had already fallen in love with her behind"(43)
love at first sight. Such a widespread idea, seen so often to end happily. Maybe the author is showing that there is no such thing as love at first sight by making Milkman's and Hagar relationship fail. Maybe they will get back together again, but it seems that love in this book never lasts long.
"She was the third beer. Not the first one, which the throat receives with almost tearful gratitude; nor the second, that confirms and extends the pleasure of the first. But the third, the one you drink because it’s there, because it can’t hurt, and because what difference does it make?"(91).
degradation of women, Milkman use to love Hagar, but now their relationship is severed because Milkman has grown bored of her. At first, she was a challenge because she was older, which made him attracted to her, Now he says her as the lower class and someone beneath him that he obviously would not marry and that other girls don't even see as a threat.
Guitar
"No love? No love? Didn’t you hear me? What I’m doing ain’t about hating white people. It’s about loving us. About loving you. My whole life is love”(159).
His love is causing pain, just like Hagar's is, but her love his causing herself pain not others.
"Anna Djvorak don’t even know your name! She called you Dr. Foster’s daughter! I bet you one hundred dollars she still don’t know your name! You by yourself ain’t nobody. You your daddy’s daughter!"(67) #
"“He’s Macon Dead’s boy, ain’t he?
So what.
So get him outta here.
He can’t help who his daddy is.”(57)
Who your father is affects the sons or daughters image just as it is vice versa. #
"The numbness that had settled on him when he saw the man he loved and admired fall off the fence"(50). #
This is not the relationship that he has with his own son, I feel like Milkman would be rejoice.
"Macon kept each member of his family awkward with fear"(10).
Fear seems to be a constant theme in this book; this sort of father is a more dominate figure rather than a caring loving one, a father can be both, but Macon Dead isn't
"whether or not the little insurance agent's conviction that he could fly contributed to the place of her delivery, it certainly contributed to its time"(5).
Contributing to his daughters life after his death, so an argument could be how much of one's life is influenced by a father, for a example what if your father decides to not tell you about your heritage(hiding your past) making you not whole, or in a positive percpective what if he teachs you how to live and survive in a world where you are set for failure.
"a grudging feeling of pride in his son—so the son felt his own contradictions. There was the pain and shame of seeing his father crumple before any man—even himself."(68)
"I’m still living at home, working for you—not because I sweated for the job, but because I’m your son"(163)
The situation your born into and how much fathers influence ours lives #
"Macon, he would be different. Prosperous, conventional, more like the things and people Hagar seemed to admire. In addition, Pilate wanted to make peace between them."(151)
Things that associate with whites, she I basically saying that she wants to make peace with Whites because that what Macon represents now. This attempt fails, which directly relates to then and now becasue we are still trying to make peace whites and blacks.
"White people are unnatural. As a race they are unnatural. And it takes a strong effort of the will to overcome"(157).
"What I'm saying is, under certain conditions they would all do it. And under the same circumstances we would not"(157).
Chapter 6 as a whole- Is the good allowed to use the tools of the bad(Is it a handicap)
- How do you get justice in an injustice society? Is there such thing as an innocent person. If a person thrives at the oppression of others, they are still gaining power by not doing anything and allowing this oppression to happen.
maybe get a quote about the killing instead
“I don’t know. It makes me think of dead people. And white people. And I start to puke..Since my father got sliced up in a sawmill and his boss came by and gave us kids some candy. Divinity. A big sack of divinity.”(61).
search up divinity and his connection to death and whites is that whites cause death.
"He touched the arm of a man in a cap who was trying to get past him. “Why is everybody on this side of the street?” he asked him.
“Watch it, buddy,” the man snapped, and moved on with the crowd.
Milkman walked on, still headed toward Southside, never once wondering why he himself did not cross over to the other side of the street, where no one was walking at all"(78).
Everyone is going to protest for the death of Emmett Till, he is oblivious to what is going on. Also, connects to how Milkman doesn't get out of everyone's way and goes to the other sidewalk, but instead becomes an obstacle for everyone else and trying to pull them back.
click to edit
he is oblivious, but whos fault is this obliviousness- is it because it's the norm to not see past the 'mom' and know what their hopes and dreams are or their goals.
Outside source
"There are innumerable versions of the legend which contain the constants of special knowledge and many which speak of Africa as the destination of flight.5 In the light of the legends, one may theorize that Mr. Smith is too far removed from his heritage, that he has lost the secret-sign, word, timing-which would have allowed him to go home on his own power. He is unprepared for flight. Gradually, Milkman will, in the course of the novel, have to learn the secret-something internalized and clearly more potent than externals such as Smith's cloth wings"(To ride the Air).
This connects to People could Fly, and the author sincerely believed that people use to be able to fly. (take that into account because maybe its more literal than symbolic)
"Yet, we must assume that he lacked something which Milkman later acquires and which enables flight"(To ride the Air).
He is missing heritage, which is his past and the knowledge of his family, which would allow him the ability to fly(literally or symbolically?)
Flight is only succeeded when you know what you truly want and where you came from; learn to let go of physical things and to connect with the people around you. (just a thought)
"The racial problems that consumed Guitar were the most boring of all. He wondered what they would do if they didn’t have black and white problems to talk about"(107).
contemplating his life and how boring it is. He doesn't feel connected to society, he connect to anyone or anything. He tries to connect to Guitar, but Guitar is too occupied with other things and keeping secrets from Milkman
Connects with Milkman and his lack of connection to society and now he is starting to feel that he has lost the only person that he can actually connect to. He is kind of like Pilate, an ugly duckling, someone who sticks out or can't fit in. Everyone rejects her, while Milkman rejects everyone else or just undriven to connect with others. #
"All of a sudden you’re police. You’ve been wearing a halo a lot lately. You got a white robe too?”(153).
The irony of Guitar's killings. He thinks he is an angel saving or avenging others, while he actually just representing the thing he is fighting against. white robe= kkk
"It was like flying blind, and not knowing where he was going-just where he had been-troubled him.(32).
"only birds and airplanes could fly"(9).
"Too much tail. All that jewelry weighs it down. Like vanity. Can’t nobody fly with all that shit. Wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down”(179). #
Freedom, Success or Running away or towards something
lack of heritage- the lack of heritage makes one unguided
"In a way she was jealous of death. Inside all that grief she felt when the doctor died, there had been a bit of pique too, as though he had chosen a more interesting subject than life—a more provocative companion than she was—and had deliberately followed death when it beckoned"(64)
Did he choose God or Jesus? Is death flight, maybe the escape of the horrible world that they live in. Even when you are in a position of power like the doctor, you want to be treated equally.
"So I told the man did he want me to hold on to him so he couldn’t fall. He looked at me with the most grateful look in the world"(41).
also, connects to flight because of him falling down, She held on to him just how the old man would hold on to the slaves and fly them away in People could fly, however, she could not save him because she can't fly.
Pilate talks about not having a navel (143-147). It brings up the idea that even when you get close to someone when they find out there is something different or unique that you have and they don't; their feeling about you immediately change, they see you as a different person. Like today talking about maybe being a Trump supporter, someone could be friends with you before they know you are a Trump supporter, but after they find out, they might leave you or start to dislike. It's so common and widespread that he's a bad person that others put their feelings on him immediately to the people that support him, even if they were friends with that person. This is a sort of different idea though because they are more connecting it to being associated to God and religion because everyone else that has a mother has a navel, but Pilate never had a mother and she was born after her mother died, so all her ties to her mother left after cord disappeared and navel never appeared
made her feel unhuman- also it relates to race and the racism because the color of a person skin is to of their control, just like having a belly button, and its such a small physical difference but is taken so seriously by society #
"When he was at his most helpless, he made it. Ain’t nothin goin to kill him but his own ignorance, and won’t no woman ever kill him. What’s likelier is that it’ll be a woman save his life”(140).
This definitely connects to life and death, but it more importantly connects to men's ignorance and the role of women in men's lives. Woman save men, but how?
“Well, if a man don’t have a chance, then he has to take a chance!”(183).
It seems more like a quote about if a man doesn't have something then they take it by force. maybe that can tie into something else
What makes a man a man, is it losing you virginity; "Milkman was twenty-two then and since he had been fucking for six years, some of them with the same woman, he’d begun to see his mother in a new light"(64).
Now that he has grown up his vision for his mother changes; "she was no longer the person who worried him about galoshes and colds and food, who stood in the way of most of the little pleasures he could take at home because they all involved some form of dirt, noise, or disarray. Now he saw her as a frail woman content to do tiny things; to grow and cultivate small life that would not hurt her if it died: rhododendron, goldfish, dahlias, geraniums, imperial tulips"(64). #
Its as if they switch places of power, after she had watched for him and cared for him, but he grew up only to see her as someone lower than himself
"Her son had never been a person to her, a separate real person. He had always been a passion"(132).
"He was a man who saw another man hit a helpless person. And he had interfered. Wasn’t that the history of the world? Isn’t that what men did? Protected the frail and confronted the King of the Mountain? And the fact that the frail was his mother and the King of the Mountain his father made it more poignant, but did not change the essential facts"(75).
You have a kid wanting them to achieve all the things that you weren't able to achieve. They are all of your passions, their success becomes yours.
"she saw her son’s imminent death as the annihilation of the last occasion she had been made love to(134).
another thing that Milkman represents to her, same situation that she had with her father, who was the last one that "cared" for her. Milkman is a representation of something else; to her a symbol of the end of being loved by anyone.
"The man who saw a little baby snake on the ground? Well, the man saw this baby snake bleeding and hurt. Lying there in the dirt. And the man felt sorry for it and picked it up and put it in his basket and took it home. And he fed it and took care of it till it was big and strong. Fed it the same thing he ate. Then one day, the snake turned on him and bit him. Stuck his poison tongue right in the man’s heart. And while he was laying there dying, he turned to the snake and asked him, ‘What’d you do that for?’ He said, ‘Didn’t I take good care of you? Didn’t I save your life?’ The snake said, ‘Yes.’ ‘Then what’d you do it for? What’d you kill me for?’ Know what the snake said? Said, ‘But you knew I was a snake, didn’t you?"(54,55)
The snake is actually men and how they feed off women and how women take care of them while they don't do anything (milkman) Making there life surround around yours and having them serve you like a King.
This connects to the old man that Macon killed , "His mouth moved and he mumbled something that sounded like “What for?”(170).
This could connect to racial inequality because the slaves didn't do anything to the whites to get such horrible treatment from them. #
"Mercy wouldn't take colored then"(71).
Maybe this means more than just a hospital couldn't take colored
"Mercy, yes mercy is at the end of grief"( On Visiting the site of a Slave massacre in Opelousas).
maybe a connection, maybe this is a stretch (come back later)
"Even while he was screaming he wondered why he was suddenly so defensive—so possessive about his name. He had always hated that name, all of it, and until he and Guitar became friends, he had hated his nickname too. But in Guitar’s mouth, it sounded clever, grown up. Now he was behaving with this strange woman as though having the name was a matter of deep personal pride, as though she had tried to expel him from a very special group, in which he not only belonged, but had exclusive rights"(38).
Names connect to identity, it connects you to your family and heritage. The past of your family is passed on to you through your name
"Scraping the previous owner's name off was hardly worth the trouble since he couldn't scrape it form anybody's mind"(17).
They all remember the owner and the kids after will call the shop Sonny's Shop, so his name becomes a legacy. "They say that the children of the ones who could not fly told their children. And now, me, I have told it to you"(People could fly). They pass down the name just like they pass down the memory of flight. This then connects to Macon's mother because neither he or Pilate knew her name, causing the reader to ultimately dehumanize her. She is more of an idea, the mother, and that's all. A name is something essential to an individual and makes them human.
"Mama liked it. Liked the name. Said it was new and would wipe out the past. Wipe it all out.”(54)
Wiping out the name causes a person's heritage and past to be forgotten, even if this past is one of oppression and adversity, it is a part of that person. A person is made by two things: from their experiences and their heritage(their past family and their name)
"I don't know her name. After she died Papa wouldn't let anybody say it"(43).
"It was a matter that concerned him a good deal, for the giving of names in his family was always surrounded by what he believed to be monumental foolishness "(15)
Physical things make people corrupt and greedy (gold) and cause them to not achieve 'flight; (in this situation I don't know what flight symbolizes for, if it does symbolize something)
allusions
"When Hansel and Gretel stood in the forest and saw the house in the clearing before them, the little hairs at the nape of their necks must have shivered. Their knees must have felt so weak that blinding hunger alone could have propelled them forward. No one was there to warn or hold them; their parents, chastened and grieving, were far away. So they ran as fast as they could to the house where a woman older than death lived, and they ignored the shivering nape hair and the softness in their knees. A grown man can also be energized by hunger, and any weakness in his knees or irregularity in his heartbeat will disappear if he thinks his hunger is about to be assuaged. Especially if the object of his craving is not gingerbread or chewy gumdrops, but gold.(219)."
"The airplane ride exhilarated him, encouraged illusion and a feeling of invulnerability. High above the clouds, heavy yet light, caught in the stillness of speed (“Cruise,” the pilot said), sitting in intricate metal become glistening bird, it was not possible to believe he had ever made a mistake, or could"(220).
"In the air, away from real life, he felt free, but on the ground, when he talked to Guitar just before he left, the wings of all those other people’s nightmares flapped in his face and constrained him"(220).
Guitar's father died by being cut in half. Showing division in races. Also fathers connect to our heritage, which then connect to out past which then connects to Guitar's ability to become free from his anger. b
heritage and lineage
"who were dumb enough to believe that if they killed one man his whole line died"(236)
oral tradition
"He earned the rewards he got here. None of the pleasantness was directed at him because of his father, as it was back home, or his grandfather’s memory, as it was in Danville. And now, sitting behind a steering wheel, he felt even better. He was his own director—relieving himself when he wanted to, stopping for cold beer when he was thirsty, and even in a seventy-five-dollar car the sense of power was strong"(260).
when you become independent, you become free. Kida like when a teenager gets a car, they become more independent, os they feel freer.
. "Oh, man! He didn’t need no airplane. He just took off; got fed up. All the way up! No more cotton! No more bales! No more orders! No more shit! He flew, baby. Lifted his beautiful black ass up in the sky and flew on home. Can you dig it? Jesus God, that must have been something to see. And you know what else? He tried to take his baby boy with him. My grandfather. Wow! Woooee! Guitar! You hear that? Guitar, my great-granddaddy could flyyyyyy and the whole damn town is named after him. Tell him, Sweet. Tell him my great-granddaddy could fly.”(328).
He left everyone when he flew away