Song of Solomon: AN ANALYSIS
...ling the white man nor pays attention to his father’s ghost, who is trying to speak to him. Although he never recovers the gold he sees in Hunter’s Cave, Macon Jr. spends his life trying to find the wealth he believes he has lost. Milkman's mother Ruth is wealthy and refined, but entirely dependent on her husband. Unlike Pilate, Ruth is entirely powerless and unable to change her own life or how others treat her. These two seemingly different women are bound together by raising Milkman together. Their concern for Milkman is more important than any boundaries presented by their different social and economic classes. Milkman distances himself from his Aunt Pilate by allowing the pursuit of wealth to compel him to attempt robbing her. Milkman is just as captivated by gold as his father, Macon Jr. in acting out the prophetic nature of the past. This physical displacement is accompanied by the emotional discord Milkman suffers from the conflict between his remembering the past, and a lack of realization that the future is upon him. However, Milkman does not seek gold for its own sake, but for its use as a tool, an instrument that can win him independence from his parents. Never as attached to the image of gold as Macon Jr., he is able to let go of his search when his efforts seemingly fail. The quest for gold enriches Milkman by putting him on the path of personal discovery. But that path also held extraordinary difficulties and hurtful acts perpetrated by Milkman. Pilate’s daughter, and Milkman’s lover, Hagar devotes herself to Milkman, even though he loses interest and frequently rejects her. Like her biblical namesake, a servant who is thrown out of the house after bearing Abraham’s son , Hagar is used and abandoned by Milkman, to eventually die of heartbreak. Chapter 11 is written as a bildungsroman, a story that describes the maturation of a young hero into an adult. Finding himself in a completely unfamiliar place where his urban life experience is a handicap, where his father’s wealth cannot shield him from harm, Milkman is quickly forced to evaluate his life. He begins to judge himself fairly, finally becoming able to admit his own wrongdoings. The spiritual and metaphorical transformation that Milkman experiences goes hand in hand with his physical rebirth from the jaws of death during Guitar’s attack on him. The wording of the text in the attack scene suggests that Milkman dies and is instantly resurrected: “[he] saw a burst of many-colored lights dancing before his eyes. . . . When the music followed the colored lights, he knew he had just drawn the last sweet air left for him in the world.” Following his resurrection, Milkman is reborn into a life of interacting meaningfully with others. Whereas earlier he had fake compassion and fake understanding of racism, he now feels and expresses truth. The disappearance of Milkman’s undersized leg and the limp that accompanies it, shows that he has been cured of his alienation. More evidence of Milkman’s new identity is in his interaction with Sweet. Unlike his relationship with Hagar, in whic...