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.