Song Of Solomon: Milkman Dead – Respecting And Listening To Women Essay, Research Paper

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.

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