Song of Solomon

1
Song of Solomon

• Chapters 6-10

2
Flight

• Image of the Peacock money/gold
• Cant nobody fly with all that shit (179).
• Milkman soils his expensive clothes and loses his
  suitcase

3
Flight

• Milkman enjoys the luxury and exhilaration of the
  plane ride
• He is tired after the grounded bus ride

4
Identity

• Corinthians calls herself an amanuensis to
  protect her identity
• Sing becomes not a command but an identity

5
Identity

• The gold becomes Milkmans obsession
• He smells, hears, and sees money as an apotheosis
• Ownership of money/gold becomes ownership of a
  name/identity

6
Identity

• Milkman trades the search for treasure for a
  search for identity
• His father grasped after a bit of filling (63)
  from the white mans pie, but his grandfather
  took hold and grabbed something more significant

7
Identity

• With the Seven Days, Guitar becomes Sunday
• Death becomes an act of love and preservation for
  the black race
• Despises Pilates submission to whites

8
Identity

• Guitar is a natural-born hunter (85).
• He must kill little girls yet he protects the
  does Ruth and Hagar

9
Coming of Age

• Milkman declares I want to be on my own (163)
• His identity is purely as Macons son
• He pleads a year of independence to find his own
  identity (sound familiar?)
• Pilate and Lena inspire shame in him

10
Fathers and Sons

• Macon buries his own father
• Pilate and Macon see visions of him
• Macons fathers body returns to the cave

11
Fathers and Sons

• Milkman is regaled with legends of his
  grandfather (Macon Dead/Jake)
• Milkman embellishes the legends of his own father
• Marriage to the best black woman
• Attempt to purchase the Erie-Lackawana

12
Singing and Songs

• The stories become the songs Reverend Cooper
  and the old black men preserve the oral tradition
• Milkman glows with pride for his exceptional
  family history

13
Female Roles

• Circe is a midwife who delivered every black
  child
• She is apparently an immortal witch with power
  over beasts

14
Female Roles

• Pilate is so connected to the earth that she
  cries indoors
• She possesses sorceress capabilities of
  shape-shifting into a diminutive Aunt Jemima

15
Female Roles

• Corinthians represents the over-educated black
  woman
• Doomed to sterility, unfit for eighty percent of
  the useful work of the world (189), she is a
  doll baby (196).

16
Female Roles

• Milkmans sisters are defined as either virgins
  or whores
• Corinthians swaps her pride for a fulfilling
  sexual awakening
• Magdalena merely staves off insanity