Song of Solomon 799having blue eyes to illustrate the psychological dam-
age wrought by white beauty standards upon young
black girls.
Psychological trauma is the genesis of Cholly’s
violent personality. Abandoned by his parents as
an infant, Cholly grows up with few models for
appropriate parenting. Yet more important to his
warped psychological development is a terrifying
encounter with armed white hunters when he is
a teenager. Cholly is engaged in his first sexual
experience with a neighbor girl in the woods when
the two hunters happen upon them. The men order
Cholly to continue having sex with Darlene and
to “make it good,” reinforcing their power by omi-
nously shifting their guns and running their lights
over the couple’s half-clothed bodies.” Unable to
refuse, Cholly and Darlene are transformed into a
sexual spectacle for the voyeuristic gratitude of the
hunters. Cholly lowers his pants and feigns inter-
course, for he has been rendered impotent by fear.
His concurrent anger he directs upon Darlene: “He
hated her. He almost wished he could do it—hard,
long, and painfully, he hated her so much.” Cholly
is unable to vent his frustration except upon the girl
beneath him. For Cholly, sex is no longer an avenue
for enjoyment, but a way to express anger and vio-
lence and to demonstrate power over another per-
son. The metaphorical rape of Cholly by the white
men—their stripping of his self-respect and agency
through sexual humiliation—allows the reader to
understand his warped understanding of sex. His
subsequent rape of Pecola results from his feelings
of anger, guilt, and revulsion toward his child, all
emotions he associates with sex.
The other two young black girls in the novel,
Frieda and Claudia MacTeer, also suffer physical
and psychological violence. In another example of
the home as unsafe space, Frieda is sexually molested
by the family’s boarder, Mr. Henry. Frieda also joins
the adult adoration of the “cu-ute” Shirley Temple,
valorizing those blonde curls and blue eyes as supe-
rior to her own brown hair and eyes. The younger
Claudia has not yet been brainwashed into believing
whiteness is superior and destroys the white baby
dolls she is given as Christmas gifts. Her observa-
tion is biting: “Adults, older girls, shops, maga-
zines, newspapers, window signs—all the world had
agreed that a blue-eyed, yellow-haired, pink-skinned
doll was what every girl child treasured.” Ultimately,
however, Claudia is one of the many townspeople
who passively witness Pecola’s insanity and friend-
lessness after the death of her baby. The ultimate
violence, Morrison intimates, is when the commu-
nity turns upon one of its own: “when the land kills
of its own volition, we acquiesce and say the victim
had no right to live.” The Bluest Eye beautifully
documents the destructive effects of individual and
societal violence.
Robin E. FieldmorriSon, Toni Song of Solomon
(1977)
Toni Morrison’s celebrated novel, Song of Solomon, is
the story of Macon Dead, who seeks to make good
in a world dominated by racial prejudice, and his son,
Milkman Dead, whose quest for his real self and his
struggle to discover his roots carries the burden of
a major thematic strand of the novel. Guitar, Milk-
man’s erstwhile best friend, tries to kill Milkman
more than once after incorrectly suspecting he has
been cheated of hidden gold. Ruth, Macon Dead’s
wife, Pilate, Macon’s sister, her daughter Reba and
her granddaughter Hagar are other characters who
dominate the narrative. Their personal, familial, and
social interactions are set against the backdrop of
a world dominated by race and gender prejudice
and a social fabric marred by a variegated pattern of
violence.
Hagar falls desperately in love with Milkman
and is unable to cope with his rejection. Morrison’s
insights into distorted love and its consequences are
most intuitively apprehended and made credible and
accessible to the reader.
Toni Morrison’s work gives us a unique under-
standing of life and living in an African-American
context. Also, as a remarkably skillful and percep-
tive author, she rises above her immediate con-
cerns. Through the vividly delineated local color,
she analyzes the universal and perennial human
predicament. The ultimate impact of her work,
especially Song of Solomon, is one of joy, hope and
triumph of the human spirit.
Gulshan Taneja