Word: morrisonism
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...Honourable Schoolboy, John le Carré∙Kingkill, Thomas Gavin The Professor of Desire, Philip Roth ∙Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison...
...story is not so simple as the story of one man's growth to adulthood would be. Rather, Morrison takes us through the development of several characters, so that the picture that finally emerges is a many-sided, rich vision of life in a midwestern black community...
THROUGH MILKMAN'S EXPLORATION, we meet most of the other characters in Song of Solomon. Partly through his eyes, but partly also through Morrison's own omniscient voice, we see images of the past, a series of individual portraits rather than dry history. Milkman's parents, sisters, and gradparents each take on a life of their own; we are introduced to each gradually, as Morrison peels back the layers of Milkman's present. There is his paternal grandfather, the first Macon Dead--a freeholding farmer who taught his children to love being alive before he was killed by a white...
Milkman's discovery of his own path to freedom is slightly less compelling, but only because in his case Morrison leaves the city community she has drawn so clearly for a hazier south. Milkman has gone off to find the source of his grandfather's strength, and somehow in the process reality turns to metaphor. The change is somehow not quite satisfying; where other characters have been in-comprehensible at first, gradually gaining clarity, Milkman moves from the understandable to the obstruse. When he finally stands up, facing death at the hands of his former friend, he has found...
...Morrison leaves us without resolution of the problems her characters face. Freedom from the urban ghetto, where life is dominated by discrimination and where one can only fight back with wit or violence, means leaving the comprehensible world. Both Pilate and finally Milkman have left the earth: they are off in a world that is inaccessible. Song of Solomon opened with the attempted flight of a lonely insurance salesman, off the roof of No Mercy Hospital; his failure is not a good omen for Milkman's flight. But the attempt, Morrison suggests, is the important thing. Milkman must decide between...