Milkman and Guitar: Closing Thoughts

          When Song of Solomon opens, and we meet Milkman Dead, he's a passive character who is not particularly engaged with anything; not family, friends, history, work, or whatever else his small life holds. The only thing he seems at all attracted to is his best, and only real friend, Guitar. Guitar, the cool older boy who hangs out on the wrong side of town and drinks beer and is everything Milkman's father is not. Guitar and Milkman's personalities are almost opposite at this point. While Milkman is uninterested in anything, even the things that he likes to do, Guitar is passionate and excited. He gets angry when white people kill black people, and sad when he remembers killing a doe while hunting. In general, Guitar was a more affluent character who engaged the readers much more than Milkman, who was no more than his father in a transparent disguise, and was, as Guitar told him, though he didn't listen, "not a serious person". Of course, instead of stopping to evaluate the accusation Milkman was immediately on the defensive, and ended up brushing off the encounter. As the novel continued, however, Guitar was not the only person that Milkman heard from on the subject.
         
         I saw Milkman's personality changing for the first time shortly after he and Guitar were arrested for trying to steal from Pilate. I believe that Milkman and Guitar's inherent personalities swapped over the course of the novel, and that it starts on their way home from the police station. It is here that Milkman first notices that he actually has feelings for some of the people in his life. He actually thinks about what Pilate, whom he had greatly respected, did for him, and he realizes that he actually loves her. (This took him a bit though because apparently he had never felt anything like that before.) Guitar, on the other hand, sees what Pilate did--changing her appearance and entire mannerism--as sneaky and witch-like, and he stares at Pilate hatefully, which Milkman begins to resent, as he knows what it cost her to submit that way. Here I took Milkman's side against Guitar for the first time.

        When he gets home, Milkman is faced by none other than Magdalene called Lena, who he has barely spoken to since he was a little kid that she had to take care of. She just gives him a piece of her mind, about what he has done his whole life, and how he has been acting, and how he has no respect for anyone in the family except his father, who he claims to like the least but is surely turning into. Her comments, unlike Guitar's, Milkman does not just brush away. He follows her advice, and essentially closes the door on his own life to go into the past life of his family. He starts paying attention to them in the form of tracking down their exact history, and sometimes reliving it himself. Those "stories that he had only half-listened to before" are now all that he lives for: a dramatic turning of tables.

        Speaking of a turning of tables, as Milkman becomes more and more compassionate and thoughtful and reflective, Guitar becomes more and more hateful, close-minded, violent, and stubborn. His passion for justice ended up leading him down the wrong path, took him to a place of a crazed rampage on the innocent that he, through the Seven Days, has built up in his mind to be guilty. His overwhelming obsession for Milkman's death has brought him to a similar place as Hagar was earlier, only this time, Milkman is much more equipped emotionally to handle the situation in the right way. Instead of egging him on and goading him like he did Hagar, Milkman stays calm and tries to ration with Guitar. He explains that he now understands what he didn't before: instead of getting defensive about how he wasn't responsible for their actions and didn't deserve them, he understands how he provoked their reactions that that maybe they have a right to try and kill him. He shows tremendous growth as a person, while unfortunately Guitar, who was the more likable for the majority of the novel, shrivels personality-wise and becomes the lesser man. Talk about your turning tables.

Blogging in 20th Cent

At the beginning of the semester, we were assigned to each keep a running blog about the books that we were reading. It was tough, at first, to actually think of things to write about, especially when I thought that these things were supposed to be polished--after all, they were for public viewing. Well, though initially I was a bit bummed to get was I thought was just extra homework, I ended up really loving this thing. I think that there's something about getting my thoughts down in a more tangible way that really helps sort everything I'm thinking about the novel. It makes it a lot easier to contribute to discussions when I actually have opinions and things to say for myself, (usually formed the night before on the blog), as opposed to merely finding myself agreeing with my peers but with nothing to add, which seems to happen a lot when I can't sort anything in my brain out, and I get distracted by my doodles.

As far as paper versus electronic journaling goes, I've never done the paper version, with the exception of a book journal kept in Sophomore English about books we read outside of class. I enjoy the online blog format, though, mostly because my handwriting is illegible and the sound of pencils scratching irks me a lot. But, I must say, there is something else that's nice about the online way: I like having a time where I can just sit down and bang out a couple paragraphs about whatever I'm thinking about--even if they don't make sense, like this one. If I carried around a notebook, I'd probably be more prone to putting out a few sentences whenever I had a free minute, and it's be a lot less coherent. Let's keep up the blogs.

Dynamic opinions in Song of Solomon

         Throughout reading this novel, my views on various characters have changed rather drastically. When first beginning, I was totally unsure about Pilate; I thought that she would be portrayed as the slightly mad Aunt throughout the book, and that her brother's family, the Deads, would be the normal ones. Looking back, it's hard to think that I ever thought that I could characterize anyone in this novel as "normal" just because that is not a specific enough adjective. Perhaps "troubled" would be a better word, in some cases. Because everyone in this novel, like everyone else, each has their own troubles. Pilate's got a daughter who subjects herself to cruel men, and a granddaughter who is trying to steal the life of the man she loves away from his mother. The issues in the Dead family, however, are even more complicated, because there are conflicting stories from the witnesses.

         For instance, in the case of Ruth's relationship with her father, Macon's version of the story totally contradicts the take that Ruth discloses to Milkman sometime later. This was one of the most interesting dynamic within the dead family for me, because there is no way for the reader to discover the absolute truth: they have to pick one character to trust and accept that version of the situation. When first hearing Macon's version, it didn't even occur to me that his point of view might not be reliable, and, foolishly, I manipulated what I knew so far about Ruth and her relationships to fit this scenario. I thought she was a bit of a freak, but then felt kind of ashamed for being closed-minded. Upon hearing Ruth's point of view, I found that hers is much more believable, because it reduces the extremity of the situation, if that makes sense. Finding a woman naked in bed with her dead father is much more thrilling than finding her grieving over the only part of him she still recognized, and for that reason I think that while I wanted Macon's version to be the truth, as it was more exciting, I found more faith in Ruth.

         A similar situation appeared as I read Magdalene called Lena's outburst at Milkman. She accused him of "pissing on the family" by not loving them or even going through the nicety of pretending he did by helping out. I was always a little indifferent towards Milkman, (now I'm wondering if I have any individual thoughts at all or if Morrison is just shaping them all for me). Because his lack of responsibility and care of his household members was never really brought up; they never really nagged him about it, I never noticed. I realized that he didn't love them in the "normal" way, but not that he was so naive about his role in the family. Lena's rant brought everything out, and I found myself agreeing with everything she said. Milkman is an irresponsible little party-goer who is unappreciative of his family. He doesn't even see that he is the only member of the family who is not separated from their community by their wealth; he can fit in with Railroad Tommy's crowd and Guitar, as well as over at Pilate's, while Lena, Corinthians, and Ruth have no one to talk to or care about them, because of their white dresses and stockings provided by their class and the overlord, Macon II. Reading her point of view, I got just as angry at him. Of course, I wouldn't be surprised if Morrison stuck in a tidbit from Milkman's POV on Lena to make me take his side.

Ideas for defending paper thesis

In my paper, I make a claim that The Metamorphosis is actually not Gregor's dream, as clearly stated by the author, but the dream of his family, the Samsas. However, a contradiction was pointed out to me: How can the story be a dream of the Samsas' when Gregor has a different view of his personality than his family? The story is from Gregor's point of view after all. Both he and his family view him as a valuable asset to the family monetarily in the beginning of the novel, and both feel that he was never needed at the end, but he at points differs from their opinion of him, because he feels under-appreciated and is therefore resentful.
I want to point out that there is no discrepancy with how the two "units" (his family and himself) view him, meaning that his family could potentially be the dreamers, because he has no thoughts of his own in this regard.
 However, his resentment for his family is his own. What I want to suggest here is that Gregor's negative feelings towards his family due to their under-appreciation of him are actually a projection of their guilt onto his character. The reader never actually gets into the head of Gregor Samsa, but rather the subconscious of his family, which could be seen as better; deeper into one subconscious (because I am presenting the family as one collective unit) is better than shallow in another.

So, if I present the family  as one collective unit, it does simplify the whole multiple dreamers issue, but how did they get there? Argue philosophy of a higher dream world in which the subconsciouses connect. They meet in the dream world. They feel the guilt "as one".
Then again, this "dream" may be only that: a "dream". Not a dream, but an enmeshment of the dream world within reality.

Small Addition to Yesterday's Class Discussion

There was one point yesterday, during our class discussion, in which there was an argument: is Antoinette insane or not? Is Rochester insane at the end of Part 2 or not? There were differences of opinion, but generally people argued that both were concretely one or the other. What I wanted to say was that you cannot define someone so absolutely. Insanity is not black and white, it is a spectrum, and both Antoinette and Rochester show signs of insanity but neither can be wholly classified as insane: that is too much of a generalization.

Mr. Rochester

The way that Rochester sees Antoinette is very different from the impression that I got from her. I saw her as basically an average little girl leading a difficult life, or at least that was what I took from her narration. But, as soon as Rochester took over and I saw Antoinette from his point of view,  I saw her as  slightly crazed and psychologically a bit messed up. She obviously needs to feel safe, and needs Rochester's love and attention to feel happy. She is drawn by these needs to act in ways that do not become her usual personality, such as slapping Amelie, who loses respect for her, and then poisoning Rochester. He witnesses each of these, and ends up liking her even less. He acknowledges her beauty, but now he also recognizes that she, while doing her best not to, has developed a similar mental illness as her mother.

I think that this recognition is what drove him to sleep with Amelie, because she is just as beautiful as Antoinette, but in a very different way, and this attracts Rochester. Not only did they sleep together, but Antoinette heard, and neither of them seemed to regret it. I get the feeling that she is only going to commit similar acts as she did before, probably even worse, and be slowly driven to insanity. Rochester acts very selfishly here, and I must say, my opinion of him did not improve when i read this.

When I first met Rochester, I thought he was an agreeable person, and, like Antoinette, in an unfortunate situation because he is being used by his family to increase their wealth. It was plain to the readers that he did not love Antoinette, but he played her, in the sense that he made her agree to marry him when he knew he didn't love her, and pretended to love her until she loved him back. I don't understand why he felt the need to suddenly stop talking to her or pay her any attention at all. Perhaps if he had kept up his little charade she never would have felt the need to ask Christophine for a love potion and end up unintentionally poisoning him, which was the top of the downward spiral of their marriage. I also feel that when he realized that he had been poisoned (I have no idea how) he overreacted a lot. A chain of events led to this: first, when he got to Jamaica he knew that something was being kept from him, which made him paranoid. Thus, when Daniel Boyd's letter arrived, he thought that he had figured out what the great mystery was. Because he was under the impression that Antoinette was going mad just like her mother, her slipping him drugs seemed like the beginning. Therefore, I suppose he immediately jumped to conclusions, assuming that she was trying to make him sick, without even stopping to consider the possibility that she only wanted him to love her, as Christophine said.

Towards the end of Part II, it seemed to me that it was Rochester who was veering towards madness rather than Antoinette. He was acting like a raving paranoid, no longer narrating the events that occurred, but rather his own train of thought. He comments passionately that he "hates this place" and Antoinette alike, because she is the "mad girl" with "blank lovely eyes". Just his voice gives off an air of insanity, that Antoinette's never did until Part III.

I can understand why Rochester did what he did, but I don't relate to it at all. Perhaps the readers are biased towards Antoinette because we know her back story, but anyway I found Rochester to be a selfish coward who locked his wife up because he was unable to take care of her. I have no respect for him.

Annette and Antoinette

Annette seems to play a critical role in Antoinette life. But, I really don't think that this role is altogether positive. Antoinette knows that her mother prefers Pierre to Antoinette, because she makes it painfully obvious, and I think that this knowledge is only hurting her self-worth. This feeling of rejection from her mother just completes her feeling that she doesn't really belong anywhere. She does not seem to be too bothered by this initially, but she realizes that she is not English, because that life is so alien to her, and she identifies with Christophine, whose group she cannot belong to because of their differences of skin color. Christophine is a black woman from Martinique- an automatic outsider, while Antoinette is her white charge, but she's not fully white because she has black relatives, and while she may be a born white colonist in the Caribbean: by definition a Creole, and yet while she identifies with the Creoles ("none of them understand us [the Creoles]", she never is a place where she can be associated with any of them. She spends her time with Tia, who is black. Her mother, who is also a Creole, almost ostracizes her, hardly ever paying her a lick of attention, except to ask why she id wearing Tia's dress, not that she remembers who Tia is. She never learns to be a part of a specific group until she is sent to the convent by Mr. Mason.

The feeling that her mother did not love her that way she should have, or that she belonged nowhere, could have led to the mental problems she is now encountering later in life. She has mood swings, and ends up slapping Amelie, the hired girl, after she made an insignificant but rude comment. We the readers don't know how she met her husband, but my take on it is that she was essentially sold off, because it was hinted that this was an arranged marriage, and this would, if anything, only increase her feelings of worthlessness. She knows that her husband does not love her. He does not treat he in the loving easy that he should, and she is getting sick of it. Part of what contributed was the absentness of her mother when she was a child.