2 - Structuring patterns Flashcards
Beginning and open endings
Morrison draws inspiration on jazz and its never-ending rhythm: “Classical music satisfies and closes. Jazz always keeps you on the edge. There is no final chord. There may be a long chord, but no final chord. And it agitates you.”
⇒ The experience as a reader is impacted by such a perspective: readers have to accept a disrupted chronology and an absence of rational closure.
No rationality, no linearity but episode can have this jazz-dimension.
Narrative structure : a tale of initiation
The text follows the structure of a Bildungsroman from the birth of Macon to his 36th birthday and his final flight ⇒ However, Morrison subverts the linearity of the tale of initiation.
=> We understand how Milkman becomes + adult and extracts himself.
→ The first part follows a pattern of radiation ⇒ Milkman is at the periphery of the initial chapters and his subjectivity gradually develops as he mingles with the other characters.
→ The second part follows the scheme of a fairytale : going South is retrieving a mythic past where children still sing the Song of Solomon, where he truly connects with others. The progression is more linear in the second part, events happen in a chronological order.
Myth as a structuring pattern
No historical narrative but a mnemonic process: knowledge comes from recollections, so non-linear rhythm of the narrative. → Example of Milkman’s birth which is alluded to several times, but the chaotic composition of the opening scene adds uncertainty. It is only later that we realise that the year 1931 and the Mercy Hospital evoke Milkman’s birth.
The quest of the hero/heroic quest is the backbone of the novel: Song of Solomon reads like an initiation story developing according to the following steps: A miraculous birth ⇒ Youth, which is a period of alienation ⇒ The Quest ⇒ A confrontation ⇒ Reintegration.
Morrison offers a fusion of Afro-American, Judeo-Christian and Greco-Roman myths and tales, blending history, facts and the supernatural.
Milkman’s burden : his childhood years
Period of alienation : resentment against his parents, and his problematic relationships with either Guitar or Hagar and his family: → Sense of unbelonging.
→Wants to escape because it will mean experiencing the same present as his parents
Many examples of internal monologue show his boredom, his indecision, and lack of purpose in life. Milkman is unable to decide what he wants for his life: “But it lacked coherence, a coming together of the features into a total self. It was all very tentative, the way he looked, like a man peeping around a corner of someplace”
→ He is like shards of a mirror on the floor : identity est éparpillée.
→ He knows he must do sth but he doesn’t want to make a decision. He lacks free-will.
The pattern of the quest
- The first quest leads Milkman on the wrong track : his initial quest is gold and money but he is mostly misled by Guitar’s greed.
- Consequently, Guitar and Milkman follow different tracks.
- The second quest becomes a search for his family’s past → Milkman reemerges as the mythic hero.
- Circe’s revelations set Milkman south to Virginia where he abandons the search for the missing gold to regain his self-esteem.
- His quest takes him from Virginia to Pennsylvania to Michigan. He is both hunting for his great-grandfather and the oral tradition transmitted to the inhabitants of Shalimar. It is a journey to self-discovery.
→ trace his family & understand this song of solomon that keeps echoing his family
Descent to the underworld in Part 2 (catabasis)
→ Catabase = descente aux enfers : ex : Orphée va aux enfers pour ramener Eurydice.
- The opening chapter of Part 2 features the encounter with Circe, an obvious echo to Odysseus’ guide who leads him to the underworld or Hades in Greek mythology → This encounter suddenly changes the quest which is no longer for gold but for his past.
→ She is ageless : she has worked for Butlers and has survived them all : Milkman even wonders if she is dead or not and if he is meeting a ghost
- Inside the cavern, Milkman experiences loss and confusion but also new awareness and maturity, it is a TRASNFORMATIVE EXPERIENCE # Macon’s entrance into the cave in the first part of the novel dominated by greed.
- Circe sends him on the path to maturity: Milkman becomes aware that he belongs to a community.
- His encounter with Circe allows him to gather information about his family, about the name of his grandfather Macon Dead (n°1) whose real name was Jake and his wife, Sing, an Indian woman.
→ Include native american dimension with the same Sing that echoes song of solomon
Milkman’s trials and reintegration in the community
→ The first trial is the fight in the store of Shalimar, Virginia, where he has to prove the young men he is one of them. He is defeated but shows courage and is invited by the old men of the village to a night hunt. Chap 11
→ The second trial is the hunt with rules set by the old men: a next level of difficulties because he is inexperienced: “evading things, sliding through, over, and around difficulties” (271).
→ Note Milkman’s symbolic transformation: → He experiences a metamorphosis being put to the test in a hostile environment. It is the price to pay in order to transform into a new personality.
The hunting scene as a rite of initiation
Milkman becomes conscious of the great power of nature and gets rid of all the artifices of urban life. He behaves in a primitive way, becoming full aware of his environment and his relation to others, be they men or animal:
*Milkman seems born again: now integrated into the community, sense of belonging as he skins animals with the men, a sign of acceptance. He is then given the heart, which is compared to an egg: symbol of birth or rebirth in the case of Milkman. Back to a prelapsarian language (characteristic of the time before the Fall of Man in the Bible). Transformative experience that forces him to open his heart.
*Note the physical transformation of Milkman after the hunting scene. He no longer suffers from his limp: → This transformation if highly metaphorical and suggests Milkman has regained his balance and no longer is impaired physically.
The flight / fight
Final contest with Guitar, his brother enemy. Milkman offers him his own life
⇒ The matured Milkman has learned the secret of flying from his ancestors. Death no longer matter to him and flying becomes highly desirable. Contrary to the initial flight in the incipit which ends up with death, the final flight suggests a discovery of the self.
⇒ Morrison gives a new acceptance to this final flight which has no suicidal dimension but rather reads like a final liberation.
“’You want my life? You want my life? ‘Life life life life’ the rocks echo… You need it! Here. “
From heaviness to lightness
- symbolism of the peacock Guitar and Milkman observe. The animal suggests the difficulty and impossibility to fly. The peacock is a powerful metaphor of Milkman’s initial incapacity to fly because of many obstacles
⇒ Double reading here because the description of the peacock perfectly matches the situation of Milkman who will go from heaviness to lightness.
*By the end of the novel, Milkman literally becomes lighter, having nothing in his pockets, just like the women in Shalimar who carry « no pocketbook, no change purse, no wallet, no keys, no comb, no handkerchief » (259) → He himself strips to the barest essentials
⇒ In order to finally fly, Milkman must get rid of everything that is material in order to connect with his self and the community. The material dimension gives way to a spiritual one.
The motifs of the flight - examples
- Milkman explains the meaning of Solomon’s flight: “He didn’t need no airplane. He just took off, got fed up. All the way up. No more cottons! No more bales! No more orders! No more shit! He flew baby. Lifted his beautiful black ass and flew on home.” 332
⇒ + about agency & individual freedom - Morrison creates an Afro-American history of a slave, Solomon, who flew away from Virginia to Africa.
- Obvious reference to Icarus or Dedalus because the flight can be read as escape however it must be nuanced for Icarus’ myth is mostly about hubris (pride). Subversion of the initial myth because here it is rather about individual freedom, about the ability of flying off from history and the community.
- Undecidability of the final scene : a new beginning? a return to the past ? A form of escape?
The novel’s porous structure : real and magic
- Magic and myths reveal the porosity between the certain and the uncertain, the past and the present, the real and imagination. They offer alternative access to knowledge.
- Pilate introduces a quality of “enchantment into the novel.” → Pilate s’est presque auto engendrée, elle est née sans nombril. Navel = connecting with your mather or on someone.
- Pilate forces characters and readers to accept what is unrealistic:
Citation sur Pilate Valerie Smith
Pilate introduces a quality of “enchantment into the novel. The circumstances of her birth make her a character of supernatural proportions. She delivered herself at birth and was born without a navel. Her smooth stomach isolates her from society. Moreover, her physical condition symbolizes her lack of dependence on others.”. Valerie Smith
La structure en une phrase ?
La structure n’est pas une absence de structure mais repose sur cette porosité à travers le mythe, les rites d’initiation, les épreuves.
