Flight In Song Of Solomon

The theme of flight streaks across nearly every page in Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison. Song of Solomon follows a bildungsroman style showing a boy’s voyage from childhood to a man while finding his family’s origins. A bildungsroman is a style of literature which follows the spiritual growth or coming of age for an individual. In Song of Solomon this individual’s legal name is Macon III but everyone in the novel calls him Milkman. Milkman turns out to a descendant of the fabled Solomon, who was an African-American who could, indeed, fly. This relation, unbeknownst to Milkman for most of the novel, bestows upon him the ability to fly. During his voyage to discover his heritage, Milkman takes a leg of the trip by air, in an airplane. This flight
will transport him to Pittsburgh, the closest he can get to the first partition of finding his heritage by flying. Morrison paints a beautiful mosaic of the flight with Milkman’s consciousness blending with the sky itself while demonstrating the use of flight as a means of escape.
Located on page 220 the passage starts with, “The airplane ride exhilarated him…” (Morrison 220) and ends with, “…he knew he had to leave quickly," (220). This passage exemplifies the definition that Morrison creates of flight within the novel. The way in which Morrison portrays Milkman’s fascination shows the dire importance of the theme of flight itself. The tone that Morrison uses to describe the journey is incomparable, “High above the clouds, heavy yet light, caught in the stillness of speed…”(220). This excerpt shows two points; first, the beauty of flight within the book as well as putting into words the thoughts of Morrison in regard to flight. The eloquent depiction of the plane shows Morrison’s regard for the beauty of flight within the novel, “…sitting in intricate metal become a glistening
bird…”(220). The word choice within this excerpt produces a vivid cinematic image of a graceful bird soaring across the sky, which shows how high of regard flight is kept within the novel. Morrison uses this description of flight to sculpt the theme into a more specific connotation. This connotation could link flight to death and the murders that take place within the novel. The connection to flight when someone dies substantiates this claim. When death occurs it is a common belief that the soul leaves the body and travels upward, this connects to the portion, “high above the clouds,” within the excerpt. This connection links the oxymoron, “heavy yet light,” to the mental burden that is put upon a murderer after they kill someone, this burden has no physical weight but weighs very forcefully upon the mind of the perpetrator. This determines the link between Robert Smith and flight. Robert Smith could not fly because the ‘weight’ of his murders as a member of The Seven Days prevented him from doing so. The motif of flight also isolates.
Isolation reveals itself slightly further into the passage.
Milkman’s urge to isolate himself, “…Milkman wanted to do this by himself, with no input from anybody. This time he wanted to go solo,”(220) provides him the only route to flight. Milkman leaves everyone behind so that he can fly. Isolation connects to flight other times throughout the novel as well. For instance, when Robert Smith jumps to his death, trying to fly, he goes alone. At the end of the novel when Milkman jumps, he is solitary. Furthermore, in the folk song about Solomon, Solomon flies away leaving everyone to suffer, isolating himself. This trend of isolation can lend its existence to the search for pure freedom. Pure freedom is one person, by themselves doing what they want to do and to escape from their problems. Each of these people in the novel are all escaping from something: Robert Smith tries to escape the burden of the people he has killed, Milkman escapes Guitar, Solomon flies to escape his slavery, and Milkman flying to Pittsburgh to escape his family and friends. An example of flight as a means of escape can be found near the end of the passage, “In the air, away from real life, he felt free, but on the ground, when he talked to Guitar just before he left, the wings of all those other people’s nightmares flapped in his face and constrained him.”(220) Milkman abandons his friends and family because he thinks that they are all crazy. Milkman isolates himself from: despondent Hagar, his greedy
father, his deranged mother, infuriated Magdalene, and a depressed Corinthians. Milkman caused Hagar’s issues as well as Magdalene and Corinthians, so Milkman is running from problems he caused.