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.
1 comment:
It's worth noting that our position as readers, with regard to these contested affairs from the past, is the same as Milkman's--they're just stories to him, too, where he needs to sort through the reliability of the narrators, and the various degrees of self-justification and 20/20 hindsight, and so on. Like him (maybe even moreso, since he's not too inclined to think on this stuff), we need to figure out what it "means," too. It's not only a question of "what did Ruth actually do?" but "what does it mean for our picture of her to think of her in this way?"
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