The White Peacock.

I don't really have a lot to say about the white peacock in Song of Solomon, but it always seems to show up at times when Milkman is about to do something crazy or good; as long as it's an action of some magnitude. When it showed up in one section, I wrote in the margins, "Milk about to fly?"

On page 184, Milkman and Guitar are planning the heist at Pilate's house. After Milkman says when he will pick Guitar up, Morrison tells us that the peacock spread its tail. It's not necessarily foreboding, as that has a negative connotation, but it at least signifies that something big is about to happen.

Some sort of bird also shows up later, when Milkman is in Virginia, but I can't find the actual page. It shows up at a time that is right before the hunt, an event which I think we can all agree held some magnitude.

Finally, when we learn the name of Milkman's ancestors, his grandmother in particular, it is Byrd. This has to be another purposeful insertion of flight back into the story, and I think it's very clever on Morrison's part to keep reminding us of Milkman's wish for flight.

A white peacock for your enjoyment. :)

Is Milkman Legit?

One of the questions I asked in our discussion today was whether or not the class thought that Milkman’s epiphanies during chapter eleven would last and continue to have a bearing on him in subsequent chapters, or whether he would let them go as soon as he was out of the woods and the dangerous situation. In some ways I think they’ll stick, and in some ways I don’t.

As Joey pointed out in class, it would be really weird for Milkman to go back to treating everyone terribly and taking advantage of them, now that he has realized how horribly he has been acting. While he has not consciously said that he’ll begin to treat others with more respect and the like, I think this is one epiphany that will continue on. I think it’s doubtful that he’ll go back home and apologize to his family for all the wrongs he’s done, and I think it’s doubtful that they would accept such an apology, but I think he will at least start to treat them better.

When I first read the section right before Guitar shows up in the woods, pages 276, 277 thereabouts, I thought I noticed a slight self-pitying quality to the insights he was spouting. I thought he might be coming to all of these realizations simply because he was alone and lost in the woods, and felt bad for himself. I could see all of these insights coming to a head at, “Dear oh dear, I’ve been so terrible to everyone, what do I do? My life sucks, whine whine whine.” Which, when I read that, seems very critical. But when I first read it, that’s what I thought was going to happen. However, I think I was persuaded otherwise when Guitar tried to kill him, because like I said earlier, he showed maturity and gave himself the kick in the pants he needed.

I think that since he was able to get out of the situation and is now able to talk to guitar like he does in chapter 12, that these realizations will stick with him. He has gained a new perspective that wasn’t just “Wow, I should treat my family better because I almost just died,” but was more along the lines of, “Alright, I gotta get my shit together and actually do something productive, like treating my family better.”

Overall, I think Milkman will be better off because of this encounter with Guitar. The epiphanies are many, and I think they will leave him with a more humble and understanding outlook on life. He’s not going to be the perfect human or even gentleman, but he’ll (hopefully) behave a little better.

The Stranger...wait, didn't we just read that....again???

Song of Solomon doesn’t remind me of The Stranger in many ways, but there was one situation in which it did: Milkman’s passivity towards things in chapters ten, eleven, and twelve started to bug me in just the same way that Meursault’s passivity did. He is so ambivalent towards other characters, and doesn’t seem to realize how his actions affect others. He doesn’t realize how he has insulted the people in Solomon’s bar, but he has, and he gets beaten up because of it. He never asks anyone how they are, but only cares about himself.

The major point of passivity, in my mind, is when Guitar tries to kill him. I talked about this in our discussion today, and it seemed like not a lot of people agreed with me, but when I read the scene in the woods during the hunt, I was so frustrated that he only felt sad that it was Guitar who was going to kill him. I understand that he had had a while to get used to it, and that when you go back and read other key points in dialogues between him and Guitar there are some hints that Guitar is capable of killing Milkman, however, I would still have been shocked had I been Milkman.

If it were me in his place, I would have been terrified, to start with, and then I would have wanted to know exactly why Guitar was trying to kill me. I probably would have panicked, but it’s a good thing that Milkman showed maturity, as Joey said in class. Since he grows up a little bit in this moment where he’s about to die, he is able to relax, and that is how he gets out of the bad situation relatively unscathed and, at the very least, alive.

I’m not exactly sure of my point in this post, but it’s just my observation that his only emotion upon learning that he was going to die was sadness. I suppose, in a way, this led to his “rebirth” since, now that he’s still alive, he’s able to confront Guitar and fix all of the things that he has definitely screwed up with everyone he has ever met.

The Ghost of Milkman Past

           The past is an important part of Song of Solomon, and there are many ways of viewing it. It is also expressed in many ways, such as naming (see previous post), and setting. Everyone is tied to the past in some way, some because they don’t want to let it go, and some because it won’t let them go. Either way, the past is always present…

            I’m going to talk about the effect of setting on the past first: When Milkman is at home, the past hangs over him in a huge shameful cloud. He hates it; it’s what has given his nickname, it’s why his family can’t be normal, and it’s why there are so many secrets. He can’t seem to escape it no matter how hard he tries, and in this way, it becomes baggage to him. He feels claustrophobic and uncomfortable, and the past is something he desperately wants to forget.

However, when Milkman goes to Pennsylvania and Virginia, the past is good to him. It becomes a narrative that he wants to be a part of and traverse as Pilate and his father did. It becomes something he can be proud of, not as something that he himself accomplished, but as something that someone else accomplished. It causes him to admire the people in the past for what they did, and Milkman becomes a little more aware of his surroundings because of this admiration. He is excited to learn that he has “people” and that they were so revered in this part of the country. He is welcomed by the past in Pennsylvania, and he learns that it is something not to feel shameful about, but something to embrace. Even when he goes to Virginia, and is initially taken aback at his reception (not super welcoming), he feels more connected to the people there than he did at home.

The characters treat the past differently, which is clear through even the very beginning of the book. Ruth wishes the past had never left; this is evident in her wish to keep Milkman a baby (leading to his unfortunate nicknaming) and the attachment that she still feels towards her father. The past is not filled with shame for her, but with longing, and it is because of her longing that Milkman feels shame about her past. Macon Dead II seems to have mixed feelings about the past, at least in the portrayal of him that we get. He admired his father so much, as we find out in Pennsylvania, and I think that he is what he is today because of what his father was. In this way, he appreciates the past. At the same time, he is angry at what he thinks Pilate did to him, and at their falling out. He is also ashamed of Pilate and the way that she lives, and is therefore resentful of his past for including her in it.

Pilate seems to be the only character who accepts the past for what it is: something that happened and is now over. You can’t change the past, so what is the point of wishing you could or resenting it? She’s willing to talk about the past and explain things to Milkman, but she wouldn’t delve deeply into it for selfish, nostalgic reasons and wish that things had happened differently. This is probably a pretty healthy view to take, and it is at least the healthiest in the book. The characters all view the past differently, and that influences and is expressed through their personalities, interactions with others, and worldviews.

Names...clever title, I know.

            The role of names is a huge one in Song of Solomon. During one class discussion, someone mentioned how almost everything has two different names. Beginning with the most important street in the book, Mains Avenue, which was known as Doctor Street, and is now known as Not Doctor Street, encapsulates this multi-naming very well. All of the different names tell a story about the time and context in which they were named. This goes for the other multi-layered names in the book too.

            Milkman’s real name is Macon Dead III, and his name signifies a huge event in his life: being found while Ruth was nursing him. Everyone knows him by this, yet only a few people know why he's actually called Milkman. But since he’s been stuck with this name, he’s stuck with the past. This is a huge theme in this book, but that’s a topic for another post. Milkman seems glad to have this name in some ways, because it helps to differentiate him from Macon Dead II, but at the same time, I’m sure he’d rather not be called Milkman… Milkman’s sisters also have two names each, although they are not quite as important. Magdalene is Magdalene called Lena or just Lena, and First Corinthians is just Corinthians. Ruth doesn’t really have another name, unless you count “Dr. Foster’s Daughter” which you might want to, considering how much a part of her identity her father was…

            Not only do we find the names in the book important, but the characters do as well. Pilate’s name is so important to her that she puts the piece of paper through which her father has named her and puts it into an earring that she’s worn for at least sixty years. It seems to me that Pilate doesn’t read much symbolism into her name, but that it’s just important to her to always remember it. Perhaps simply as a memento from her father. Milkman, on the other hand, frequently uses his name in a symbolic way. “My name’s Macon. I’m already dead.” He recognizes the…is it humor..? in this naming, and finds that it applies to many situations in his life. Almost everyone in his life has tried to murder him at one point, the only exception being Pilate, and having the word dead his name is pretty important. In the section we’ve just read, chapters ten, eleven, and twelve, we see a transformation in Milkman, where he realizes that he’s basically been dead for his whole life. He seems the pun in this, and when Guitar is trying to kill him, he is basically reborn at a point where he could have been dead the next second.

            Naming seems to be a way for Morrison to get across aspects of characters, not only by what their names are, but how the characters feel towards their names. I think it’s interesting how the names always relate to the past in some way, and hold some common thread. For the Macon Deads I-III, they all have the same name. And for Pilate, First Corinthians, and Magdalene called Lena, they were chosen at random from the bible. Not to mention, the name Solomon has become very important, although it has only been hinted at thus far in chapter twelve. I’m looking forward to seeing how that name runs its course in the rest of the book.

Bloggin'

I definitely enjoyed doing an online reading journal this semester. Granted, it was easier and more fun to do  during the first quarter, when I had more time to take an interesting idea and actually develop it. Nowadays, I haven't had much of a chance to blog; although I think about doing it a lot, I never actually get around to it. But, instead of my laziness, I'll talk about the things I actually liked and disliked about blogging during 20th Century Novels.

One of the things I loved was being able to write about whatever I wanted; If there was something that I thought was super fascinating during class, but no one else found remotely interesting, I could write about it on my blog and people could choose to read it or not. There were a lot of things that kept me thinking even when I was outside of class, and it was really neat to be able to continue the conversation (at least with myself).

The second thing that was nice about the blogs was that this format is very informal, and I felt comfortable writing about things that I actually thought were important. Or not, as it turned out. I one wrote a blog about Kafka being born on my birthday, which isn't the most life-threatening information, but I thought it was kinda cool. In this setting, I could write about something like that, and I could also used the word "kinda." Also, not only was it nice to have freedom to write informally, it was good practice to write informally. In our lives, we write texts and emails, etc., or we write academic essays. The thing is that there's nothing that's really in-between. There's really no forum for casual writing that still has to be coherent, and a blog is basically that forum.

One thing I didn't like about the blogs was that, towards the end of the semester, I would always forget to do them. Since it wasn't something that I necessarily had to "turn in" or anything like that, and there wasn't a specific "assignment" for this blog on this night, etc., sometimes I would realize that the blog was still an assignment, and that perhaps I should write one of those sometime soon. However, this was also a good thing for a few reasons. One is that one of the things I hate is writing when I have absolutely no inspiration. I find that it comes out very forced and gross-sounding. With the blogs, this still applied if I needed one or two more posts, and still had nothing to write about. But if I did have inspiration, no matter what time of the day, I could just jot the ideas down into a blog and publish it. That was a really great feeling because I felt like I had something so important to say that it would get published immediately. This isn't true, but it's how I felt. :D

All in all, Mr. Mitchell, I would recommend that you continue with the online journals next year. I enjoyed doing them, and there are so many good qualities that they have that encourage writing in a slightly unconventional way. As long as you realize, as you have, that there may be times throughout the school year where people may do more blogs than other times, and that sometimes, it slips peoples minds to complete an assignment within the invisible "cloud" that is the internet (I don't know how much of a thing this is for other people, but I always forget about it because I can't see it), then I think the blogs can continue to be a really great feature of class.

The End of Wide Sargasso Sea

I knew how it was going to end all along; I've read Jane Eyre, but even so, I was still shocked at the ending. I think, in the end, there were multiple people and situations to blame for Antoinette's madness.

The first thing is probably her upbringing. Hearing the expectations of others that she was heading in the same direction as her mother was not an auspicious start, and her mother's behavior towards her was definitely close to abuse. This led to an unstable childhood, sure to produce some problems in the future.

The second of these factors is Rochester, of course. His treatment of her in Jamaica was the beginning of her mental breakdown, but locking her in a cold and dark room in his house in England exacerbated the situation. She's basically a prisoner now, and this drives her even more insane.

I think the third factor is Christophine. While she was trying to help Antoinette and her intentions were good, I think that she was highly manipulative and pressuring. Antoinette doesn't want to follow her advice, but she will be on Christophine's side no matter what, and I believe Christophine takes advantage of this. This is more of a feeling that I get rather than something that I can point to explicit examples from the book about, but she just strikes me as wanting to make sure that Antoinette is on her side and not Rochester's.

Finally, just as in my last blog post, I think that the character's environments play a huge role in their mental states and behaviors. Rochester acts peculiarly when he's in Jamaica, and Antoinette acts strangely in England. They both just feel so out of their element and seemingly have no one to guide them through the new situation. This takes a toll on both of them, and it's a reason that Rochester is able to function back in England, and Antoinette probably would have been able to function back in Jamaica.

All in all, this is a really sad book (even though I knew what was going to happen), and I think that a lot of charcters could have done things differently to produce a happier outcome. However, the book is over, people did that they did, and many people were to blame for many things. Let's just leave it at that.