Please Come With Any Questions You'd Like Answers To. We Can ask Circe for Guidance and Direction.
Pay particular attention to motifs, patterns of alienation, AND this:
When we began Song of Soloman we viewed and accepted the idea that before leaving their homeland Africans could fly, but had to leave their wings behind when they were forced on the Slave Ships. Other Legends have it that they were seduced by salt, and that salt weighed them down and effectively grounded them.
Dr. Giselle Anatole (University of Kansas) notes:
"The film Daughters of the Dust (1992), directed by Julie Dash, and set in the South Carolina Sea Islands, also deals with the notion of magical escape from the horrific conditions of slavery. The recently arrived Africans, members of the Igbo nation, walk back over the water to Africa. Paule Marshall’s novel Praisesong for the Widow (New York: Plume, 1983) similarly employs this myth. For more information, see the New Georgia Encyclopedia entry on Ebos Landing.
Some people read those stories as symbolic in the way that flight, or walking back over the water, represents escape. In other words, flying away just signifies running away. Other people read the flight as a metaphor for death. According to this interpretation, death, and especially suicide, is a viable means of escape. Rather than suffer the indignities and pain and torture of slavery, some people would kill themselves. The Igbo were one of the groups of people who were not likely to be captured by slavers in Africa, because they had the reputation of killing themselves rather than be taken into captivity. Killing themselves on the ships and once they arrived in the Americas resulted in profit loss. So they weren't taken. They refused to bow down.
These stories help us to comprehend the ending of Song of Solomon, which I think is the most problematic part of the text for people—especially for Western readers who want to read narratives in terms of the real. What really happened? Does Milkman really fly? Does he commit suicide?"
“You want my life?” Milkman was not shouting now. “You need it? Here.” Without wiping away the tears, taking a deep breath, or even bending his knees—he leaped. As fleet and bright as a lodestar he wheeled towards Guitar and it did not matter which one of them would give up his ghost in the killing arms of his brother. For now he knew what Shalimar knew: if you surrendered to the air, you could ride it (337).
What is Morrison doing at the end? Do you think he committed suicide? According to some perspectives, suicide is a cowardly death.
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