123 School Work

Song of Solomon

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  Tiffany Bota
  February 15, 2003
  College Composition 106
  Dr. Black
  MWF
  3:00 3:50 pm
  
  
  
  
  Reflections on "The South in Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon: Initiation, Healing, and Home"
  
  
       
  The critical review of Song of Solomon that I choose to discuss is an article from Studies in Literary Imagination, written by Catherine Carr Lee, entitled "The South in Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon: Initiation, Healing, and Home".
  
  Throughout her review, Lee effectively incorporates many of the ideas that she believes Morrison sought to impart to her readers. One of the more compelling points that Lee makes in her review is that the power of Morrison's novel "lies not only in its recovery and representation of African American experiences in the mid twentieth century but also in Morrison's insistence on the necessity of healing her broken, alienated protagonist, Milkman Dead" (pg. 109). It is hard not to agree with Lee, especially when she expounds on this point of view further by stating the essence of Milkman Dead's maturation and healing is his "recognition that the cultural past of the African American South continues to create his twentieth century present in ways that are not constraining but liberating" (pg 109).
  
  
  
  Again, one tends to agree with Lee's assertion that Milkman's alienation stems from his refusal to take responsibility for his actions. Lee gives several examples of this character trait in her review. The critic points out Milkman's prolonged exploitation of his cousin and lover Hagar when he refers to her as "the third beer the one you drink because it's there" (Morrison 91).Lee goes on to explain how Milkman's "failure to accept commitment is evident in the "dream" he relates to Guitar" (111), in which plants in the garden grow rapidly over his mother, finally strangling her...