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.