A Cycle of Love and Violence

For me, the color red represents Toni Morrison’s book, Song of Solomon, as I associate the color with love and violence, two opposite extremes that Morrison intertwines in her novel. Throughout the novel, many of the characters live surrounded by violence due to love or a lack of love. As characters fall in love, sorrow and death seem to quickly follow and few characters find their happily-ever-after. Hagar, a girl obsessed with Milkman, attempts to kill him so no one else can have him. Milkman complains that she “wants me chained to her bed or dead” and views her as a nuisance, failing to understand the depth of her love for him (222). Hagar later dies alone after a nervous breakdown over her unrequited love. Hagar seeks love but uses forcefulness when she fails, while Guitar uses love as an excuse for his cruel nature. He claims love motivate him in order to justify his violence against whites and states that he loves black so much that he will risk his life to kill whites in order to protect blacks (223). Milkman and Guitar soon become enemies as Guitar’s distrust of his friend grows until he vows to kill Milkman for supposedly betraying him. Their once brotherly love causes them to divulge secrets in each other that lead to jealously and suspicions as ambition overcomes their friendship. The novel ends with them fighting and the implication that one of their lives will end with “one of them...killing his brother” (337). Through a novel filled with such despair, Morrison demonstrates why people must look beyond temporary emotions to see reason so that they do not act irrationally and live to regret it.

Too Selfish for Friendship

Song of Solomon, a 1977 novel by Toni Morrison, focuses on the life of Milkman, a boy caught in the middle of racial and familial tensions who focuses solely on himself, thus preventing me from ever wanting to befriend him. I believe hard times determine the strength of a friendship and while Milkman’s relationships flourish during good times, as soon as he might have to make sacrifices, he prioritizes himself over everyone else in his life. However, he shows potential to become a better person through his ethics. For example, I appreciate his honesty when he criticizes his best friend, Guitar, for joining a secret organization that kills innocent white people, yet he remains friends with Guitar and keeps his secret (159). While I admire Milkman’s loyalty to his friend, he seems to maintain the friendship mostly because he enjoys having fun with Guitar and he prioritizes his selfish need for excitement over his moral objections to his friend’s actions. As long as Guitar’s violence does not affect him, Milkman appears fine with befriending a murderer, highlighting his self-absorbed nature. Although I hardly condone Guitar’s racist and violent actions, I admire how he risks his life and sacrifices for a cause he believes in, while Milkman refuses to take act on his convictions, lest he jeopardize his comfortable lifestyle. Morrison sums up Milkman’s attitude as a “mood of lazy righteousness,” directly characterizing him as “lazy” and juxtaposing Milkman’s indolent behavior and the hardworking attitude of the rest of the male characters (120).  Morrison continues to juxtapose the two boys and their outlooks on life and when Guitar and Milkman fantasize about some gold they plan to steal, she highlights Milkman’s dreams of buying planes and cars for himself while Guitar imagines buying nice things for his family (179). Throughout the novel, Milkman concentrates solely on his own desires, even if it requires stepping on others to ensure his happiness. In particular, he seems ungrateful for the women in his life, causing his own sister to describe him as a “pitiful, stupid, selfish, hateful man” for treating his mother and sisters as though they mattered less than him (216). I could never befriend Milkman because I not only strongly disagree with his sexist views, but I also believe friendship requires mutual respect and he would look down on me because of my gender. The disgust his siblings show for him and he shows for his best friend implies that he does not value creating strong, lasting relationships with anyone and would turn on his friends in an instant, leaving him someone who will never experience a true friendship unless he drastically changes.

Looking Beyond the Surface

In Toni Morrison’s 1977 novel, Song of Solomon, the author’s style of withholding information from the reader fascinates me as it forces the reader to connect with the characters and experience their emotions as they do. In the beginning of the novel, Morrison describes how Macon Dead abuses his wife and “kept…his family awkward with fear,” using judgmental diction “awkward” to create a critical tone and indirectly characterize him as cruel (10). The writer then demonstrates Macon’s harsh attitude towards the rest of the town through describing a situation when Macon, an owner of several houses, refuses to help a tenant who has fallen behind on her rent and forces her and her young grandson out of the house and onto the street (21). Morrison uses the anecdote to highlight Macon’s selfish nature in order to create an initial bias against Macon so readers understand why the town dislikes him. In particular, Milkman’s best friend, Guitar, loathes Macon more than others do and as the novel progresses, Morrison reveals that Macon evicted Guitar and his grandmother. As I suddenly realized the earlier anecdote’s significance in creating Guitar’s deep-seated hatred, I sympathized with him because Macon’s actions also enraged me before I learned of his own problems. While the writer initially portrays Macon as the antagonist, she slowly exposes his difficult past that includes his murdered father, his wife’s possibly incestuous relationship with her father, and his wife’s manipulation of him. Macon’s wife relentlessly tries to cause him to lose control and become violent, because she enjoys bringing “her husband to a point…of helplessness” (64). In one sentence, Morrison portrays an abusive husband as a victim, through revealing information about his difficult home life and other characters’ hatred for him. Although Morrison’s writing style sometimes frustrates me with its changing portrayals of characters, it forces me to continually reevaluate the book, as even the smallest details became meaningful as the novel progresses and can completely change how I view characters. The author’s writing style forces people who judge others quickly to keep themselves open to new viewpoints and reassess their opinions of others.