In Song of Solomon, it seems like love is what makes people grow up, both giving and receiving love. That is why some characters, namely Milkman, but also Ruth and Corinthians and Lena, do not seem to have grown up entirely.
Milkman is not "serious", so he is not grown up. He doesn't care about anythin but parties and running around with different girls, and he still lives with his family. It seems like love figures prominently in his life because he doesn't feel love towards anyone, including his parents and Hagar, and he has no direction like Guitar because he doesn't feel a lot of love towards a certain group of people (on a side note, it seems like Guitar's love for his people is what made him grow up--when he got involved in the Seven Days and in civil rights, he began to become more serious and felt he had a purpose in his life). However, he knows that he is not really living his life in a meaningful way--he says "his life was pointless, aimless, and it was true that he didn't concern himself an awful lot about other people. There was nothing he wanted bad enough to risk anything for, to inconvenience himself for"--and he wants to change that, so perhaps he is on the edge of becoming more adult (107).
One character who doesn't seem child-like at first glance but who had some child-like elements about her is Ruth. She loved her father desperately, and was not able to allow him to die, even when he wanted to. She loves Milkman, and is unable to let him live his own life and leave her. In this way she seems immature, because she clings to people who she is supposed to be able to let go eventually. Perhaps this is because she never received love from Macon. Macon is supposed to be her life partner--they are supposed to travel through life together, and even when their parents die and their children grow up they are supposed to have each other. But Ruth doesn't have that. She only receives coldness and hostility from Macon, and maybe the fact that she doesn't receive any love makes her unable to maturely accept that some of those whom she loves must leave her. In a way, this stops her from growing up.
One final interesting example of this is Corinthians. Corinthians was such a minor character that we didn;t really know whether or not she was invested in anythingin her life, or whether or not she loved anything, but since she wnet to college and came back and did nothing, and she never married, we can assume she never felt a great deal of love. She seems somewhat immature before she meets Henry Porter; she works as a maid, but she doesn't want her father to know because she is still afraid of him. She is unable to stand up for herself. After she meets Porter, though, she seems braver. After being at his house for the night, she walks back into the house with her hair loose, not caring if her family sees. She is more confident and content in her life, and thus more grown-up and less adolescent.
This idea is not supported by all of the characters in the novel, but it will be interesting to see whether or not Milkman grows up, and whether, when he does, if it was partially because he grew to love someone or something.
Wednesday, December 11, 2013
Monday, December 9, 2013
Milkman: The Eternal Adolescent
Milkman is an unusual protagonist because nothing in his own life seems to be a result of his own actions. Milkman does not really do things, things just happen to him. In a way, Milkman is a blank canvas where other people can paint their stories, and all of these stories come together to depict Milkman's life. After all, there are very few events. Milkman is born when the man jumps off the roof of No Mercy Hospital, presumably because his mother was so disturbed by the man's suicide that she went into labor (Even Milkman's birth seems to be a result of someone else's actions). There are few other events in which Milkman actually does anything. There is the scene when Freddie finds Ruth nursing Milkman, a scene that obviously made an impression on him, but since he was so small he was a something of a bystander. Milkman meets Pilate, Reba, and Hagar, but since he is with Guitar, he is a bystander in that interaction too. He hit his father, and that does seem to have some significance for him, but even then he doesn't seem to be central to the scene because the back-story between his father and his mother is so much more important.
Backstory makes up most the of the most interesting parts of the book. There is Macon's story about his relationship with Ruth and with Doctor Foster, and even though it is disturbing and may not be entirely true (since Macon probably tweaked it to make himself seem guiltless), it is certainly very interesting. Ruth's version of the story may even be more interesting because you can compare it to Macon's story and look at the discrepancies between them to understand the characters better. And Pilate's story is much more exciting that Milkman's. So, as we asked in class, why does Morrison tell Milkman's story rather than telling the stories of Macon, Ruth, and Pilate as if they were actually happening rather than in the past? That would undoubtably make a great book. But Morrison seems interested not just in the stories, but also in how stories from the past affect the present, and how we are all caught up in an intricate web made up of the relationships of those who came before us.
Like all of us, Milkman is born into other people's worlds, and his character is partially defined by his parent's stories. He is a bystander in his own life as a child, because there are too many undercurrents that everyone else understands but that he does not. That is inevitable for children--they cannot understand their parent's relationships, and they are oblivious of the difficulties that their parents have faced in their relationship. Sometimes someone says something, and they can tell that what they said meant more that the actual meaning of the words, but they can't understand what that meaning is. When Milkman is nursing and Freddie comes in, he knows that something was shameful, but he doesn't really understand. This is a part of life. The interesting thing though, is that even though Milkman is now in his thirties, he never seems to be able to grow out of this. He is unable to take control of his life, and instead continues to act like an adolescent, living with his family, partying, having girlfriends but intention of marriage, and wasting his time working in a job he doesn't really enjoy because that was what was expected of him by his father. He has not created his own stories.
It's difficult to see how this will play out in the second part of the novel. If Morrison decides to make Milkman choose to create his own life, Milkman will not longer be a blank canvas--she will no longer able to show how stories of the past affect people's lives as easily as she has in the first chapters, and there will be less room in the story for the past anyway. But it would be nice to see Milkman take control of his life, to actually do something, and to grow up a little bit.
Backstory makes up most the of the most interesting parts of the book. There is Macon's story about his relationship with Ruth and with Doctor Foster, and even though it is disturbing and may not be entirely true (since Macon probably tweaked it to make himself seem guiltless), it is certainly very interesting. Ruth's version of the story may even be more interesting because you can compare it to Macon's story and look at the discrepancies between them to understand the characters better. And Pilate's story is much more exciting that Milkman's. So, as we asked in class, why does Morrison tell Milkman's story rather than telling the stories of Macon, Ruth, and Pilate as if they were actually happening rather than in the past? That would undoubtably make a great book. But Morrison seems interested not just in the stories, but also in how stories from the past affect the present, and how we are all caught up in an intricate web made up of the relationships of those who came before us.
Like all of us, Milkman is born into other people's worlds, and his character is partially defined by his parent's stories. He is a bystander in his own life as a child, because there are too many undercurrents that everyone else understands but that he does not. That is inevitable for children--they cannot understand their parent's relationships, and they are oblivious of the difficulties that their parents have faced in their relationship. Sometimes someone says something, and they can tell that what they said meant more that the actual meaning of the words, but they can't understand what that meaning is. When Milkman is nursing and Freddie comes in, he knows that something was shameful, but he doesn't really understand. This is a part of life. The interesting thing though, is that even though Milkman is now in his thirties, he never seems to be able to grow out of this. He is unable to take control of his life, and instead continues to act like an adolescent, living with his family, partying, having girlfriends but intention of marriage, and wasting his time working in a job he doesn't really enjoy because that was what was expected of him by his father. He has not created his own stories.
It's difficult to see how this will play out in the second part of the novel. If Morrison decides to make Milkman choose to create his own life, Milkman will not longer be a blank canvas--she will no longer able to show how stories of the past affect people's lives as easily as she has in the first chapters, and there will be less room in the story for the past anyway. But it would be nice to see Milkman take control of his life, to actually do something, and to grow up a little bit.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)