Milkman's Character development
Throughout Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon, Milkman undergoes an incredible transformation. He goes from spending 32 years doing nothing noteworthy, to learning some of the most important and fulfilling lessons of his life in just a couple weeks. To understand how this development is possible, however, we have to trace Milkman's past from the point of his birth till the novel’s conclusion.
Milkman’s almost mythic life is set up right from the moment of his birth, with the suicide of the local insurance agent. But, over the course of the coming years, he amounts to being the most ordinary person of anyone he is connected with, facing struggles that leave him trapped in a world he longs to escape. When he is only four years old, the name Milkman is forced on him, something everybody around him knows the explanation of except him, making him an outcast. Furthermore, he is viewed as an outcast because his father, Macon Dead Jr., is one of the wealthiest black men in their community. Macon is also most of these people's landlord and has a bad reputation for being unforgiving when it comes to collecting rent, especially when he has a personal issue with someone.
Not only is Milkman an outsider in his community, but he is also an outcast within his own family. He has no real interaction with his sisters, as they are both older than him by more than a decade, and he pretty much ignores them. His parents are in a secret fight for control over him and hate each other too much to provide the support Milkman needs to develop. Even the job of working for his father is not an attempt to make Milkman more self-sufficient, rather, just his dad trying to separate him from his mom. So with no real calling or anyone other than his only friend Guitar to push him, it is easy to see how Milkman came to be the way he was at the end of part one, a grown man who is still yet to experience what life has to offer.
With Milkman’s life being at such an uninteresting stage- at least in comparison to those around him- it is hard to see any other future for him. Yet, it is at this low in his life that Morrison begins his journey of change. Milkman’s evolution begins with material desire when he tries to steal gold from his aunt. He plans to use this gold to move away from his parents and gain independence. He first tries to steal the missing gold from his aunt and then attempts to track it down when it's revealed she does not have it. But, along the way, his journey starts to become less about gold, and more about discovering his family history.
By the end of his journey, we see a profound change in him. He has become empathetic, and less self-centered. He overcomes the selfishness he has carried around since he was a child. He realizes the error in his ways for the first time in his life. In his final confrontation with Guitar, this change becomes crystal clear. With the final words “If you surrendered to the air, you could ride it”, we see Milkman forfeiting his vanity, and as he is no longer weighed down by it, he is able to fly like his ancestors.
For most of Milkman's life he lacks some sense of purpose. He watches all the people around driven by various emotions and relationships but feels none of that in his own life and he can't even understand the convictions of others. I don't think it's entirely Milkman's fault because since he was little, people have put all kinds of expectations on him, and his family's money meant he never had to exit his bubble of comfort. It was easy for him to stay stagnate. But all of this changes rapidly once he leaves Michigan (literally flying away), has to struggle more than had before in his life, and learns about his family's past. Great post!
ReplyDeleteIt is interesting how, despite his longstanding alliance with the older, cooler, more street-smart and worldly Guitar, Milkman remains, as you say, fundamentally an outsider in his own community. We repeatedly see Guitar bringing him into community spaces like the barbershop, or the pool hall, but he never is part of the circle, always standing around waiting for Guitar to be done so they can walk off together and talk alone (it always makes Milkman seem like a little kid waiting for his parents to be done talking about grown-up stuff so he can ask a question). This "outsider" status is solidified when Guitar takes him into his confidence, telling him the biggest secret in his life, but all this does is make Milkman feel MORE alienated from Guitar, and like more of an outsider--all these guys at the barbershop are part of this secret gang that no one will talk to Milkman about, and it makes him feel even further out of the loop.
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