The past coming back to haunt

A common approach for a novelist to try and introduce their characters is to put the reader in a position in which they can hear the characters own thoughts. This generally considered to be the most effective way to develop a character I believe, and certainly the most widespread. It's true there's something very personal about listening in on a persons thoughts as they live--you get to feel like you really know them. It's a skill that Virginia Woolf perfected. She's described as "carving caves out behind her characters", and she does this by sticking us in their heads and listening to the impressions and thoughts they make of their own lives. If you look at this as the epitome of the character study driven modernist movement, which almost completely disregards the notion of plot, then you might look at Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon as the antithesis to this model.

I don't mean to say that  I think that Song of Solomon isn't a character study, quite the opposite. I think though that she incorporates plot into her work in a way that we see lacking from almost every other novel we've read thus far (Wide Sargasso Sea was fairly plot driven I suppose). In addition to that there's much less self contemplation by the characters in  Morrison's work than in Woolf's. I suppose I'm using Mrs. Dalloway as the staple modernist novel, which may or may not be entirely fair, but I do think it's a great example of a character study that disregards plot as a literary device. Morrison's goes an entirely new route here where instead of letting each character explain themselves we get the story told from other characters.

When Mr. Mitchell asked us if we considered this to really be a story about Milkman my answer was, "well yes and no." Most of the dialogue in the novel comes from different characters than Milkman himself. It feels like we spend most of the novel listening to people in Milkman's life tell their own stories. For example the last half of chapter 5 is Pilate recounting her own story to Ruth. This is pretty typical for many of the chapters actually. It's not the case however, that we never get anything from Milkman's point of view, most of the classic plot development that happens is when we're with him. It's the other parts of the novel when we're not with that I find most interesting. Those are the times when we get the extensive and exciting backstories on the other characters. As was pointed out in class Pilate is an infinitely more interesting character in her own right than Milkman, yet supposedly this is a story about him and not her. It's definitely true though, that Milkman's story is made so much more interesting by getting the backdrop on the other people who make up his life. This is what I mean when I say I think Morrison uses plot in a way no one else so far has. She doesn't necessarily make a huge amount happen in terms of time passing (the novel seems to almost not progress at all time wise) but that she draws hugely on the idea of the past coming forward to effect his life now. It repeatedly seems as though these stories he hears might as well have been plot devices because with each knew revelation they thoroughly refocus the way in which we view the cast of characters. I think that through these stories and the history surrounding him, Morrison turns Milkman from a boring character into a fairly interesting and complex one, and she does it without really hearing from him all that much. 

Names

Names, names, names. For those of you who were not in African American Lit last year it seems to me as though Toni Morrison has got a bit of a thing going for out of the ordinary names. I doubt I'll ever meet a woman named Pilate, or anyone with the last name Dead for that matter. Yet here these characters are. The interesting thing is though, it seems as though names almost don't matter in the novel. Now, I know that's not really an accurate statement, but just consider how characters get their names--many of them seem to get them almost accidentally. Take Pilate for instance. She got her name simply from her father flipping to a random page in the Bible and selecting a name. Or there's Macon Dead Sr., he got his name accidentally from a drunken clerk. Both of these people seem to have gotten their names almost entirely arbitrarily, yet these names seem to me too original, and the book too finely crafted, for that to truly be the case.

Another pertinent example, however different, could be Milkman and his dubious name. Due to circumstances entirely out of his control he's been branded with a name that as Macon Dead puts it has some "filthy connection" to Ruth (17). It even thwarts the efforts of Macon Dead Jr. to pass down his own name, which he is quite proud of. Instead of being known by his father's name, a name that to his father suggests pride and hard work, he is instead stuck with a name that is a constant reminder of his families strange past. It's a past which he is described often trying to run, or fly, away from. It's a name that suggests a major theme for Milkman, that he's been coddled by his parents his entire life. Not only was he milked to an usually old age, he's now been living in his parent's house well into his thirties.

As I said earlier it does seem as though the manner in which many of characters get their names seems accidental and almost meaningless, but I think they actually serve as reminders, and even in some ways prophecies for who these people are. Macon Jr.'s name relates him strongly to his father and the pride he felt towards his father for having worked so hard for everything he owned. That same hardworking quality is the most defining aspect of his personality even as a 70 year old man. For Milkman it's much less flattering. It was a name given to him not by his parents, but by the general public to reflect on his mothers overly affectionate actions towards him. And now he seems unable to escape from that same strange family history and his own dependence on his parents. For Milkman his name acts not only as a constant indicator of his past, but an indicator of the lifestyle he seems incapable of escaping.