Song of Solomon

Men’s repeated abandonment of women in Song of Solomon shows that the novel’s female characters suffer a double burden. Not only are women oppressed by racism, but they must also pay the price for men’s freedom. Guitar tells Milkman that black men are the unacknowledged workhorses of humanity, but the novel’s events imply that black women more correctly fit this description. The scenes that describe women’s abandonment show that in the novel, men bear responsibility only for themselves, but women are responsible for themselves, their families, and their communities. For instance, after suffering through slavery, Solomon flew home to Africa without warning anyone of his departure. But his wife, Ryna, who was also a slave, was forced to remain in Virginia to raise her twenty-one children alone. Also, after Guitar’s father is killed in a factory accident, Guitar’s grandmother has to raise him and his siblings. Although she is elderly and ill, she supports her children financially, intellectually, and emotionally.

Relying on this skewed idea of gender roles, the society in the novel judges men and women differently. While men who fly away from their communities and families are venerated as heroes, women who do the same are judged to be irresponsible. Although Solomon abandoned his family with his flight to Africa, generations later he is remembered as the brave patriarch of the whole community. At the same time, Ryna, who was left to care for a brood of children, is remembered as a woman who went mad because she was too weak to uphold her end of the bargain. Residents of Shalimar have named a scary, dark gulch after Ryna, while they have given Solomon’s name to a scenic mountain peak. The community rewards Solomon’s abandonment of his children but punishes Ryna’s inability to take care of them