802 Morrison, Toni
violence in Song of Solomon
In the pattern of life and living that Toni Morrison
weaves for her characters, violence appears as an
unmistakable, insistent, and deliberately plotted
component. Violence that marks the life of the
characters in Song of Solomon is sometimes the
result of a failure of self-restraint or of explosive
emotional outbursts. Domestic violence in Song
of Solomon falls in this category. The nature of the
relationship that Macon Dead and his unloved wife
Ruth share provides ample examples of this kind
of violence.
Characters in Song of Solomon resort to extreme
physical and emotional reaction in response to deep
trauma. Hagar, who falls desperately in love with
Milkman, is unable to cope with his rejection and,
traumatized, hunts for him with a “Carlson skinning
knife”: “ . . . Totally taken over by her anaconda love,
she had no self left, no fears, no wants, no intelli-
gence that was her own” (137). Ruth Dead addresses
herself to Hagar: “‘You are trying to kill him. . . .
If you so much as bend a hair on his head, so help
me Jesus, I will tear your throat out.’ ” Guitar’s reac-
tion to Milkman’s betrayal in refusing to share the
hidden gold leads to a ruthless manhunt in which
he tries to kill Milkman more than once. Pilate
threatens her daughter’s current lover with a knife,
“positioned . . . at the edge of his heart,” when he
beats her up.
There is street violence between Milkman and
other Negroes in Shalimar town. In another dimen-
sion to the violence that casts a shadow over the
lives of African Americans, there is the emotional
violence that characters suffer in the context of racial
discrimination when they are ill treated, or worse,
when the humiliating treatment meted out to the
blacks by the whites is assumed to be appropriate.
Escalating the violence, both groups prey on each
other. Macon Dead, Sr., is shot dead in front of his
children. Every time a black American is killed, the
members of the Seven Day Group kill a white man
in the same manner.
The stories of killers fill the narrative. Winnie
Ruth’s doings are the talk of the town and staple
gossip at the local barbershop where men regularly
get together. The murder of Emmett Till receives
much attention in the novel in order to remind the
reader of the real history of racial violence in Amer-
ica. Milkman is supposed to have killed a white
man in the cave. Pilate keeps a skeleton, eventually
confirmed as that of her father, in a sack most of her
life as her “inheritance.”
It is significant that violence of all and any kind
in Song of Solomon performs a deeply symbolic
function in the total context of the novel, however
essential it may appear to be to the basic narrative.
By itself, the domestic violence in the Dead house-
hold seems to hold little significance to the char-
acters, but it allows the reader to perceive a pattern
of all-pervasive aggression that envelops the novel.
The physical bloodshed resulting from racial hatred
is orchestrated as a chorus-like, ritualistic and con-
gruent occurrence, such as the reciprocal killings
of the whites by the Seven Day Group. Milkman’s
clash with others in Shalimar town comes across
more as a rite of passage than the angry outburst
of young men having a go at each other. Morrison
holds her prose in firm control and registers just the
right nuance.
Violence is presented as the norm rather than
as an exception in the variegated collage of human
existence. An all-pervasive current of ferocity con-
nects humanity to a state of raw, wild, and seemingly
a pre-civilized existence. The violence and brutality
that govern the life and times of black America
reveal the nature and significance of black American
experience. But this also allows Morrison to connect
the postwar black American experience to human
existence at its most elemental level, thus focusing
on universal dimensions of humanity, much like
Robinson CRusoe, loRd oF the Flies, and Ayn
Rand’s antheM, all of which show humanity shorn
of the icings of civilization.
It is ironic that the African-American desire to
achieve social equality is equated with the African-
American ambition to achieve material gains, as
Macon Dead’s economic upward mobility, or the
narrator’s references to money, hidden gold, and
poverty, is plainly designed to show. But Morrison’s
insights into deeper human urges raise her artistic
endeavor to a finer level. Morrison’s reliance on the
myth as her essential artistic tool helps her achieve
this goal. The essential core of Song of Solomon, in its
deeper penetrations, therefore, projects a universal