Bamboo: Essays and Criticism

Toni Morrison (Review of Song of Solomon)

Normally the pretensions of an American novel bear a direct proportion to the number of pages printed. The simple formula being: the thicker the volume the more serious the message contained. What is both striking and gratifying about Song of Solomon is the absence of transatlantic largesse and hyperbole in a novel that clearly sets out to be significant.

Toni Morrison’s well-structured story concerns itself with two generations of a black American family from the 1930s to the 1960s. Macon Dead is a wealthy Chicago landlord eager for bourgeois respectability. But like most façades of middle-class content this one hides the usual catalogue of fear and frustration. Macon’s unorthodox sister Pilate and her own Bohemian household of illegitimate daughter and grandchild stand as a permanent rebuke to Macon’s ambitions. Macon’s son Milkman hovers uncertainly between the two families, attracted by the life in one and the comforts of the other. Milkman’s dilemma is essentially that of the modern black American confronted by the brutal historical circumstances of his presence in the USA and at the same time drawn to the powerful consumer allure of contemporary society. As some kind of a way out he decides to attempt to trace his lineage and the search for his roots becomes — as in Alex Hailey’s book — a quest for his own identity and self-respect.

In a Southern town called Shalimar he discovers the clues to his ancestry in a song the children sing about his great-grandfather Solomon, a near-mythical figure who is reputed to have flown back to Africa. The fulfilment of his search, the new knowledge of the unity and special nature of his heritage coincides with the development of Milkman’s hitherto complacent character and a conformation of values — embodied in his aunt Pilate — he had thought dated and whimsical.

In Song of Solomon Toni Morrison consciously invokes a comparison with The Great Gatsby when she adapts the famous guest-list episode from Jay Gatsby’s party. In the names of the guests Fitzgerald encapsulates an entire society and Toni Morrison uses the device for the same purpose here. At the climax of the novel Milkman sees that the bizarre and colourful names of the black people he knows have real meaning too and bear witness to the past. In fact the lesson of The Great Gatsby can be seen everywhere in this novel. There is the same economy, the same discipline and the same potent manipulation of symbol where Solomon’s magical flight becomes — like the green light at the end of Daisy’s pier — an abiding and passionate metaphor for all kinds of human aspiration.

1979