Liminality (from the Latin word līmen, meaning 'a ...
WILFRED D. SAMUELS
LIMINALITY AND THE SEARCH FOR SELF IN SONG OF SOLOMON
ABSTRACT
In this article, Wilfred D. Samuels discusses the protagonist’s ultimate quest for identity in the novel Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison. He describes the rite of passage that Milkman undergoes into manhood and outlines the significance of “historical and cultural self” in order to have an authentic existence. Furthermore, Samuel notes the use of the secondary characters in the novel who “serve as mentors” the “experience” each brings with “lessons he must learn, accept, or reject.” Finally, he discusses the meaning of flight as a central metaphor for freedom found in Morrison’s novel. He concludes that through “self knowledge and self love” like Pilate, Milkman was able to figuratively take flight signifying his ultimate freedom.
Key Concepts:
Liminality is a psychological, neurological, or metaphysical subjective, conscious state of being on the "threshold" of or between two different existential planes. It is a state ,which, according to the journal, is seen as a period of structural impoverishment and symbolic enrichment that can lead to new perspectives.
Self Actualization - the motive to realize all of one's potentialities
Key Quotes From Novel:
1.“Gold,” he whispered …Life, safety, and luxury fanned out before him like the tailspread of a peacock, and as he stood there trying to distinguish each delicious color, he saw the dusty boots of his father standing just on the other side of the shallow pit.
Significance/Symbolism: In his early years, Macon Dead II was a simple, innocent and warm-hearted farm boy, but after his father was murdered because of a land settlement disputes and the loss of their sole fortune, Lincoln’s Heaven, Macon turns to a life of materialism and greed. The loss of Lincoln’s Heaven in his life took with it the spiritual, natural and kindhearted side of Dead. This quotation demonstrates the transition of Macon’s character using symbolic images such as “gold” and the “tailspread peacock” which signified life, safety and most importantly luxury in contrast to his father’s “dusty boots” and “the shallow pit.”
2.“Too much tail. All that jewelry weighs him down. Like vanity. Can’t nobody fly with all that shit… Wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down.”
Significance/Symbolism: The tail represents the materialistic objects and beliefs that are holding Milkman back from taking flight. The comparison is being made between the peacock’s inability to fly because of its luxurios tail and Milkman’s inability to fly because of his father’s beliefs that have been enshrined into his son. Milkman ultimately realizes that his must give up his worldly possessions and adopt a communal and spiritual dogma if he ever hopes to take flight.
3.Solomon done fly, Solomon done gone
Solomon cut across the sky, Solomon gone home.
Significance/ Symbolism: In Milkman’s journey for self-actualization, he comes to learn that he is the heir of Solomon, a black man who escaped slavery and obtained freedom. After finally unraveling the mysteries of his past and the roots of his heritage along with learning the importance of names and self identity, Milkman is able to take flight like his ancestor before him.
4.“Without ever leaving the ground, she could fly… For now he knew what Shalimar knew: If you surrender to the air, you’d ride it.”
Significance/Symbolism: This quotation represents the epiphany which Milkman has as he finally realizes how to take flight. These are the last sentence in the novel in which Milkman is able to recognize that his aunt, through her celebration of her identity and her constant strive for self actualization, was able to metaphorically fly without ever leaving the ground. Although she has just died, he understands that her memory lives on forever through the preservation of her name which she kept in a box attached to her ear for so many years. “When you know your name, you should hang on to it, for unless its noted down and remembered, it will die when you do.” This acknowledges the importance of names within the novel and even though her father named Pilate after the murderer of Jesus, her name symbolizes more of a “pilot” and guide as she leads Milkman through his own journey and helps him in his search for the “grail of identity”.
5.“If your life means so little to you that you can just give it away, hand it to him, then why should it mean any more to him? He can’t value you more than you value yourself.”
Significance/ Symbolism: Once again the theme of “self” versus “other” is apparent in other aspects of the novel including in relationships between Milkman and Hagar. In this quotation, Guitar explains the importance of valuing yourself over all others to Hagar, who at the time loved Milkman more than herself. Guitar goes on to explain that no man could value her more than she valued herself and therefore, if she wanted Milkman to love her, she would have to make herself her number one priority.
Key Quotes from Journal:
1. “...authentic existence emerges from self-affirmation, from making choices that lead to self ownership, rather than from a life of being for others. The ultimate choices are Milkmans to make, much as they are Pecolas, Sula’s and Shadracks’s.”
Significance/ Symbolism: This passage defines what it means to exist and find ones true self. This passage concludes that Morrison believes that to find oneself, one must confirm to themself. They must acknowledge their existence and make their own choices to determine who they are. The word “self ownership” is used to describe that one has control over their own life and is not told what to do or how to act, which could potentially change who they are. In the end, when one makes their own decisions will be able to find themself. This concept is demonstrated in Morrisons novel The Song of Solomon.
2.“The poignancy of Ruth’s sitting empty, alone and lonely talking to her fathers grave verifies, once again, Morrisons effort to demonstrate the consequences of inauthentic existence characterized by a life that is falsely and selfishly lived for “the other”.
Significance/ Symbolism: From this passage, we learn that Ruth is, what Wilfred D Samuels calls, in inauthentic existence. In the article, Samuels concludes this because she is living her life for her dead father. Because she did not grow up with her mother and had an awkwardly close relationship with her father, the consequences of these instances have caused her to act the way she does. Her relationship with Milkman is awkward aswell as she has lived her life with her own father that way. Because she lost her mother at an early age she was unaware of how a mother should act towards her children. This describes Ruth as, opposite to Milkman, in inauthentic existence as she is living life in memory and for her dead father.
3.“Macon believes that money is freedom...the only real freedom there is...The source of this insensitivity and callousness lies in Macons past. Like Ruth, Macon blossomed during and early childhood that was quite ideal. He too was nurtured by a father who lived him and he too had a mother who died when he was young. The love he received was not fashioned solely in a world of materialism and conspicuous consumption however, as in the case of Ruth...The deads, Macon Sr., his son, Macon 2 and his daughter, Pilate, were landowners. In fact Macon Sr. Was killed while protecting his land in a dispute over a question of ownership. One might safely conclude however that the material value of the land was unbeknownst to Macon Sr., much less to his son Macon 2 at the time of his fathers brutal murder. In fact, the murder provided the youth with a significant moment of truth. He apparently learned that land had a financial value as well as a spiritual, natural, value. This event was also to be the source of Macons own harshness and brutality in the future. Despite the absence of economic profits, it is apparent that Macon 2 had benefited from the profits of “economy” in the Thoreauvian sense, offered by Lincolns Heaven, he had harvested a higher and more ethereal relationship with his father and from the oneness his father apparently shared with the soil... the commodity he recalls is not only the material but the process and result of natures ministry. It is not merely economic profit but the joy the land and his father’s philosophy of the economy of a simple life that bring macon a brief moment of happiness and wholeness...Macon was robbed of his material birthright as rightful heir to Lincolns Heaven, however ehen his father was brutally killed the land illegally taken, and he, along with Pilate expelled.
Significance/ Symbolism: This passage demonstrates the inauthentic existence of Macon 2. This passage concludes that because of incidents which happened in Macon’s past, and the fact that he wants to live up to what was supposed to be his, he acts a certain way. This incident left Macon with the thought of having this material things and forgetting the “love of the soil” that he used to have with his father. This incident also left him bitter and thus, causes Macon to act the way he does as a character. Unlike an authentic character who makes his own decisions, Macon’s decisions are made because of his father and the way he feels his father would want him to act.
4.“Pilate, milkmans aunt provides him with the ultimate example of authentic existence. From birth her life has been a continuum of self actualization. Although her mother died before giving birth, to Pilate, the baby “inched its way headfirst out dragging her own cord and her own afterbirth behind her”. Signifying propensity toward self determination, Pilate is without a navel...More important, it symbolizes her independent and untrammelled spirit; she is not anchored to anyone or anything...Unlike her brother Macon Sr. and his wife Ruth, who are driven by external motivations and materialism, Pilate lives a life epitomizing ethereality. Unlike Macon she remains committed to the higher laws a spiritual life that she discovered as a child on Lincolns Heaven loving what Thoreau calls the “wild not less than the good.” Her life continues the Waldon Pond existence she had known at Lincolns Heaven, physically and spiritually for she lives in a cabin, a narrow single story house...”
Significance/ Symbolism: This passage demonstrates how Pilate IS an authentic character, what Milkman is trying to be. She can help him become this authentic character. Her whole life she has had nothing holding her down as she did not have any ties with anyone. She is authentic as she makes her own decisions and doesn’t have specific people in her life controlling her. She is a good role model for Milkman as she can help him find himself.
Questions:
How does the search for self play out and effect characters such as First Corinthians and Magdelena?
Does the settings chosen for Milkman’s rite of passage, Detroit, Danville and Shalimar, have any specific significance?
What was the significance of the use of the peacock in both the lives of Macon Dead II and Milkman Dead?
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