The novel begins with this evocative and sensuous winter scene. Also present as the insurance salesman attempts to fly is Milkman’s aunt, his father’s sister, Pilate Dead, who tells Ruth that Milkman is about to be born. Milkman is born shortly after Robert Smith’s jump. After his birth, Ruth’s son Macon is more popularly known as Milkman. Ruth is pregnant with her last child and only son, Macon Dead, who will be named after her husband, Macon Dead. Mesmerized by the scene, the girls drop the red velvet rose petals they spend their days making. Ruth has her daughters First Corinthians and Magdalene, called Lena, at her side. The daughter of the doctor who used to live on the street, Ruth Dead, is present at Robert Smith’s leap from Mercy Hospital. The community defies authority by calling the place Not Doctor Street. The town authorities want the street to be called by its official name, Mains Avenue, and not Doctor Street. The town calls a particular street Doctor Street because the only black doctor in town used to live there. In addition to introducing the story of Robert Smith, the first chapter demonstrates the subversive agency of the town’s African-American community. Although the townspeople come to watch, no one intervenes in advance to stop Smith from his public demise. The note asks for forgiveness and states Smith’s love for the entire community. The man posts a note on the door of his home two days before he plans to leap off the roof of the hospital on blue silk wings he has constructed for himself.

Song of Solomon begins with the story of the suicide of Robert Smith, the town’s African-American life insurance agent. Morrison credits the success o f Song of Solomon with her selfidentification as a writer.

Song of Solomon won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1977. Through the process of learning about his history, Milkman matures, learns responsibility, transcends his own selfishness, and creates a meaningful existence for himself embedded in an embrace of his family history.

Milkman, the primary character in Song of Solomon, is a self-absorbed, petulant, and rootless man who begins a self-interested quest for financial gain and ends up discovering the story of his family. The story requires the reader to participate in order to piece together the seemingly incompatible elements of the story to make a sensible and meaningful whole. Song of Solomon draws on diverse mythological traditions, particularly biblical, Greco-Roman, and African to create a uniquely African-American narrative. In fact, Song of Solomon is the first of Morrison’s novels to have a male as a primary protagonist. Unlike her first two novels, Song of Solomon centrally is the saga of a young man. Like Morrison’s first two novels, The Bluest Eye and Sula, Song of Solomon (1977) is a coming of age story. Analysis of Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomonīy NASRULLAH MAMBROL on Janu

Sula toni morrison sparknotes