ROLE OR FUNCTION OF STORYTELLING IN THE SONG OF SOLOMAN
The author of the book Toni Marrison as a black writer, has attracted so much attention as a storyteller. She is a spokeswoman in her fiction for her points of view, including Marxist and Feminist. She is characterized as a fictionist whose work reveals the deep fissures in our comfortable illusion that the world outside the text has some kind of innate coherence apart from that conferred by language. A good number of these elements are modernized or postmodernized, and Morrison’s work sets her out to be a reviser of past traditions in fiction, which has been dominated by male or white upper class. While part of her novels does indeed display revisionist inclinations, much of the criticism about her fiction miss her profoundly traditional view of the relation between literature and culture. ( Mason, Theodore O 564-581)
The legend in the noel of the flying freedom is a path to freedom that starts with Solomon being the main character’s great grandfather. There is the legend depicted in the book about Solomon flying back to freedom in his motherland “Solomon did fly, Solomon has done gone. Solomon cut across the sky, Solomon gone home” (303). While the death of Solomon is unknown, it is usually inferred because he was never seen or to heard from again. He left behind a wife and 21 children, and without a physical presence, a lot of people came to the conclusion that he died. Characters, on the other hand, in the book, believe that Solomon flew to freedom because nobody was found, leading many to believe he indeed flew to his freedom.
Knowing Solomon’s tale, insurance agent, Robert Smith decides he wants to fly to freedom as well. Morrison starts the book off with a note from Smith, “I will…fly away… Please forgive me. I loved you all”. (3) Smith’s note seems to be somewhat of a suicide note. He wants to move on to freedom, but he knows he can’t do this without death, hence the note. Mary Terrell, in her speech to the United Women’s Club in 1906, says, “It is impossible for any…person in the United States…to realize what life would mean to him if his incentive to effort were suddenly snatched away.” Smith, living in a racist nation, didn’t feel the incentive to live any longer. He believed that the horrors of racism and inequality were imprisoning him. So, he chose to fly into freedom. Unlike Solomon, it is stated that Smith did, in fact, die; But Morrison also notes that there was no blood on the body, showing the supernatural and somewhat magical side to his death.
Pilate’s and Milkman’s death were also somewhat magical. Immediately after Pilate’s death, a bird dips down from the flight, gripping her earring and taking off with it, representing her transition into freedom. Once Milkman realizes this, he decides to move into freedom as well. “Without wiping away the tears, taking a deep breath, or even bending his knees – he leaped…For now, he knew what Shalimar knew: If you surrendered to the air, you could ride it” (337). By leaping towards Guitar, who was for sure going to shoot him, Milkman shows his metamorphosis into freedom, by allowing his death.
Toni Morrison uses flying as a way to show a person’s choice to move to freedom. Although this causes death, freedom heavily outweighs the sorrow. Morrison uses the idea of an almost supernatural or magical death to show that these characters didn’t just die; they were reborn into freedom. Once they made a choice to surrender to flight, they were able to ride the air into freedom and enlightenment.
In songs of Solomon, Ton Morrison faces a tale spinner problem making up to date events and characters that are able to share the backgrounds of their characters. Morison’s solution to this issue is not new as she turns to myth to further explain her narrative, but while at it, she does so without changing the novel to a fantasy. Morrisons has the great success of the black person’s use of myth to show an individual’s constant search for belief in myths.
Myths is described as a sacred history, a breakthrough that the supernatural aspect of this is explained human origins and cultural concerns of people man. Humans have always turned to myth to explain narratives that surround the idea of t cultural land perceptual framework. The reliance of scientific facts and historical verification to explain the myths reality. The believe in a genuine myth is largely seen and associated with primitive societies. However, this does not include on us depending on myth for entertainment. Many of us are drawn to mythopesis , depict w gods, heroes, and supernatural conflicts only exist to act as a symbol that try and explain our origins. Myths then act as agents of stability that ties us to our past and our origins.
The song of Solomon provides the title of Toni Morrisonn novel which is variant of well known Gullah fork tale about a group of African born slaves who rose up one day from the field where they are working and flew back to Africa . In the novel the tale becomes both the end of, and a metaphor for, the protagonists’ identity quest. Macon Dead 111, known as Milkman, finds himself when he learns the story of his great –granddaddy Solomon who could fly.
In basing Milkmans identity in quest on a fork tale, Morrison calls attention to one of the central themes ai all her fiction, the relationship between individual identity and community for folklore is by definition the expression of community of common expression of community of common experiences and belief. The use of fork tale of the flying Africans in this quest seems to establish equivalence between milkmans discovery of community and his achievement of identity.
Work cited
Mason, Theodore O. “The Novelist as Conservator: Stories and Comprehension in Toni Morrison’s” Song of Solomon”.” Contemporary Literature 29.4 (1988): 564-581.
enlightenment.
Morrison, Toni. Song of Solomon. New York: Vintage Books, 1977. Print
Terrell, Mary Church. What it Means to be Colored in the Capitol of the United States. October 10, 1906, United Women’s Club. Washington D.C.
Harris, A. Leslie. “Myth as Structure in Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon.” MELUS, vol. 7, no. 3, 1980, pp. 69–76. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/467029. Accessed 25 Apr. 2020.
Blake, Susan L. “Folklore and Community in Song of Solomon.” MELUS, vol. 7, no. 3, 1980, pp. 77–82. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/467030. Accessed 25 Apr. 2020.