Essay/Term paper: Song of solomon: milkman dead - respecting and listening to women

Essay, term paper, research paper:  World Literature

Song of Solomon: Milkman Dead - Respecting and Listening to Women


In Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon, Milkman Dead becomes a man by
learning to respect and to listen to women. In the first part of the novel, he
emulates his father, by being deaf to women's wisdom and women's needs, and
casually disrespecting the women he should most respect. He chooses to stray
from his father's example and leaves town to obtain his inheritance and to
become a self-defined man. From Circe, a witch figure, he is inspired to be
reciprocal, and through his struggle for equality with men and then with women,
he begins to find his inheritance, which is knowing what it is to fly, not gold.
At the end, he acts with kindness and reciprocity with Pilate, learning from her
wisdom and accepting his responsibilities to women at last. By accepting his
true inheritance from women, he becomes a man, who loves and respects women, who
knows he can fly but also knows his responsibilties.
In the first part of the novel, Milkman is his father's son, a child
taught to ignore the wisdom of women. Even when he is 31, he still needs "both
his father and his aunt to get him off" the scrapes he gets into. Milkman
considers himself Macon, Jr., calling himself by that name, and believing that
he cannot act independently (120). The first lesson his father teaches him is
that ownership is everything, and that women's knowledge (specifically, Pilate's
knowledge) is not useful "in this world" (55). He is blind to the Pilate's
wisdom. When Pilate tell Reba's lover that women's love is to be respected, he
learns nothing (94).
In the same episode, he begins his incestuous affair with Hagar, leaving
her 14 years later when his desire for her wanes. Milkman's experience with
Hagar is analogous to his experience with his mother, and serves to "[stretch]
his carefree boyhood out for thrifty-one years" (98). Hagar calls him into a
room, unbuttons her blouse and smiles (92), just as his mother did (13).
Milkman's desire for his mother's milk disappears before she stops milking him,
and when Freddie discovers the situation and notes the inappropriateness, she is
left without this comfort. Similarly, Milkman ends the affair with Hagar when he
loses the desire for her and recognizes that this affair with his cousin is not
socially approved, leaving Hagar coldly and consciously, with money and a letter
of gratitude. He is as deaf to the needs of women and as imperiously self-
righteous as his father, who abandons his wife when he believes she loves her
father too much.
Macon teaches his son well the art of "pissing" on women. As Pilate
attempts to awaken Macon to the inappropriateness of taking a dead man's gold
and to their father's ghostly message, he urinates, enjoying the idea of "life,
safety, and luxury" resulting from the gold (170). In his unnatural act, taking
a man's life, he has become deaf to his past and to Pilate. Though Milkman
urinates on his sister by accident, his act has the same implications as his
father's. By inertia, he assumes his father's attitude toward women, placing
them in the periphery of his mind, though they are the center and the source of
his life. Pilate and Ruth saved him from his father's attempts at abortion, and
his female relatives have done all of the work of raising him. He spies on his
mother, he feels the same "lazy righteousness" as that which leads him to
disrespect Hagar's claim to her rights in their relationship (120). He attempts
to steal from Pilate, his aunt, in order to follow his father's instructions and
to obtain the inheritance he feels will make him a man. At the end of part 1,
his sister Magalene attempts to awaken his sensibilities to this through her
diatribe on the effects of his blindness to his sisters' autonomy and their
contributions to his well-being (215). He follows her advice, and leaves, not
only her room, but the town and the identity he has been molded into by his
father.
Milkman leaves to get the gold which he believes is his inheritance,
feeling that this will allow him freedom from his family, which he equates with
the freedom to at last become a man. He tells Guitar, "I don't want to be my old
man's office boy no more" (221-2). His fruitless attempt to gain his inheritance
as his father advises him, by stealing from Pilate, inspires him to try his own
way of finding his inheritance, and therefore, his manhood. He quickly learns
that to obtain this inheritance, he must listen to women as he never has before.

Circe is the first woman who he listens to and treats with reciprocity.
At first glance, he is overcome by the idea that she is a witch (241). Women who
kept alive the knowledge of their ancestors were considered witches in the
patriarchal, Christian culture. Circe has been the midwife in most of the
townspeople's births, and is so ancient that she is believed to be dead. She is
knowledgeable, and he learns that must take her seriously to find his
inheritance. Circe tells Milkman, "You don't listen to people" (247), and he
begins to truly listen to her and treat her as an equal. She informs him of the
last known location of his grandfather's bones, of his grandmother's name, and
of where in Virginia the family originated (243-5). Milkman has his first urge
for reciprocity with her, and she tells him that he has unwittingly already
returned the favor with his company and his news of Macon and Pilate (248).
Milkman must learn to treat other men as equals before he can treat
women as equals. For a boy brought up in an atmosphere of blind bourgeois
elitism, the road to equal relationships is difficult. He attempts to repay a
man for a ride and a coke, only to realize that this is offensive to the man's
dignity (255). He learns real kindness when he helps an old man with a crate who
gives him information (256). However, in Shalimar, the home of his ancestors, he
must relearn the significance of others' dignity. He receives a cold reception
because of his careless showiness, and must then pass initiation rituals to be
allowed equal status in the town. Through his gradual lessons in reciprocal
relationships with men, he is prepared for equality with women. With Sweet, he
gives as well as receives loving gestures, learning at last that others, no
matter sex or status, deserve his sacrifices (285).
The initiations include a hunt that leaves Milkman alone to ponder his
life. Challenged to join the men in a hunt in which he has nothing but himself
on which he can rely, he begins taking his identity and his relationships
seriously. He realizes that humans are responsible for each other, that his
family's dependence on him is natural At last he discovers that Hagar's
homicidal urge is justifiable: "if a stranger could try to kill him, surely
Hagar, who knew him and whom he'd thrown away like a wad of chewing gum after
the flavor was gone ‹ she had a right to kill him too" (276-7). Milkman learns
what it means to be human when he is left with only that: "out here ... all a
man had was what he was born with, or has learned to use" (277). Finding his own
identity, he realizes the right others have to demand responsibility from him.
At last, he can receive the knowledge of his ancestors through
discussions with a woman who at first seems shallow and lacking in knowledge,
and through the songs of children. Susan Byrd appears to be full of empty gossip
(292), but by listening to her and then to the children's game, he learns that
she does have a story to share (302). He returns to her and learns the real
story (320-4). He learns men can fly, and begins to understand the
responsibilties that come with this knoweledge. This is the inheritance that
makes him a man.
How do this makes him a man? At last, he can return to Pilate some of
the history she has bequeathed him. He can give her peace by adding to her
history of herself. Her beloved granddaughter has been sacrificed to him, and
this is the only way he can make amends. Pilate does not only release him
because she is overcome by this new understanding of her past, but because he
has learned to be a man. He accepts the box of Hagar's hair, a reminder that
"you can't fly off and leave a body" as he abandoned Hagar (334). With this act,
he ritualistically accepts his inheritiance of responsibilty for others,
specifically the women in his life. As Pilate dies, he sings for her, an act of
kindness, signifying a new paradigm in his relationships with women. She tells
him,"I wish I'd a knowed more people. I would of loved 'em all" (336),
reinforcing the significance of kindness and responsibility. He realizes that
she can fly, but that she also embraces responsibility for others: "Without ever
leaving the ground, she could fly" (336). He learns from her the meaning of true
freedom, which includes responsiblity.
Macon Dead, a partriach, leaves his son an inheritance of imperious
indifference to women's knowledge and needs. Milkman realizes that he is not yet
a man, and tries, first through his father's and then through his own way, to
find the missing inheritance that will set him free. To get the inheritance, he
must listen to women, which necessitates relationships of reciprocity with men
and with women. His inheritance, knowledge of his ancestors, helps him to create
a relationship of reciporical kindness with the matriach of his family, who
gives him another inheritance, the burden of responsibility to others. In Toni
Morrison's novel, Song of Solomon, Milkman becomes a man by choosing to respect
and learn from women.