Song of Solomon

Macon is traumatized when, at age 16, he witnesses his father murdered by White neighbors who wanted his father’s farm. He fears being alone in the world, penniless, trying to survive with his sister Pilate. When he finds the gold in the cave, he feels they now have safety and a future, and he is enraged when Pilate refuses to let him take the gold. He leaves her and forges ahead, seeking any material advantage, to build a life full of possessions that cannot be taken from him.

When he reunites with his sister around the time of Milkman’s birth, Macon refuses to forgive her. But his anger is also fueled by Pilate’s unconventional ways. He fears her poverty and unusual appearance will reflect badly on the respectable lifestyle and status he has set up for himself. And yet when he sees her house and the domestic life she has created in her home with her daughter and granddaughter, he is overcome with nostalgia.

His desire for respectability, money, and power has hardened him into a bitter, greedy man, disliked and feared by most in the community. His children suffer under his overbearing harshness. But when he softens as he remembers the past, the loving boy he used to be and whom Pilate still remembers emerges, to Milkman’s great surprise. Macon enjoys telling Milkman about the past, which further softens his heart with nostalgia as he remembers the love he had for his family, especially his baby sister Pilate.

Pilate’s lack of a naval ostracizes her from a world that fears her difference. But there are other forces at work that have cut her off from others. Witnessing her father’s death and then separating from her brother soon after cut her off from the only family she had. She lived in various communities, wandering for 20 years before settling down once Hagar was born. She soon tires of how people reject her and decides to live completely on her own terms, rejecting the falseness and hypocrisy that she has seen during her travels.

Her lack of convention is distasteful to her brother; he can’t understand why she lives the way she does. But Milkman thinks differently. Pilate’s ability to decide what is true and what is false in life makes her the ideal mentor for the confused and alienated Milkman, who finally feels love when he visits her house, a house so different from the one he grew up in. He also admires her strength and power, seen when she threatens a man who abused Reba. She also has an aptitude for transformation, seen in the police department when she seems to shift into a diminutive, submissive woman to save Milkman and Guitar. Milkman is shocked to see her so small because she is normally nothing like his mother and sisters, confined in their quiet submissive lives.

Her greatest strength is her ability to love. She creates a loving home for her family, which attracts Milkman, Guitar, and even Macon, though Macon hides outside the house so no one can see him. While she has little in comparison to her brother, in a way, she is much richer, surrounded by the love and companionship of her daughter and granddaughter. When her granddaughter dies, her grief and cries for mercy are powerful.

After Pilate is killed by Guitar, Milkman realizes the truth: “Now he knew why he loved her so. Without ever leaving the ground, she could fly” (336). But her flight is not a flight away from others, abandoning those left behind. Hers is a flight of love. In fact, her dying words are that she wished she had known more people so she could have loved more people.

Guitar appears in Chapter 1 as a young child recently arrived from the South. Guitar moves to the North because his father was killed in a work accident and his mother was unable to care for him, so he was sent to his grandmother. Guitar later witnesses his grandmother talking to her landlord, Macon Dead Jr., telling him that she needs help making her rent, but Macon threatens to evict her if she can’t come up with the money.

Guitar sees the poverty and injustice in the world from a young age, and he wants to help make a difference. He bristles at Milkman’s lack of seriousness and urges Milkman to be more involved. A few years older than Milkman, he serves as a type of mentor figure or older brother to Milkman, who has few male role models.

But Guitar eventually joins the Seven Days, a group dedicated to avenging the murders of innocent Black people by assassinating random White people. Guitar comes to believe that his work is necessary, fearing that without the Seven Days, the Black population will dwindle because of White people murdering Black people with impunity. Guitar sees all White people as complicit in the murder of Black people, so he does not question his need to kill White people since he believes all White people are guilty.

But Guitar’s membership in this group devours his humanity, including his relationship with Milkman. The lifelong racism Guitar has experienced has transformed him, ironically, into the type of person he hates: Someone who kills others simply for the color of their skin. When four girls are killed in the Birmingham church bombing, it is Guitar’s job to avenge their deaths. His need for money for explosives sets into motion his desire for Milkman’s gold, and when he mistakenly believes Milkman kept the gold for himself, Guitar refuses to listen to the real story, intent on killing Milkman for his supposed treachery even though he once claimed he would never kill Black people. Despite his love for Milkman, Guitar has become a hunter who cannot give up his prey, even killing the loving, generous Pilate by mistake when she gets in his way.

At the start of the book, the poorly dressed Pilate is juxtaposed against the richly dressed Ruth. But we soon learn that it is not Pilate who lacks anything but Ruth. Her rich attire and material comforts disguise an inner life full of turmoil. She believes that no one has ever cared for her except for her father, and after his death, she believes she has no one. Her husband verbally and physically abuses her, and she is powerless to stop it, remaining quiet and submissive. When Pilate comes to town, she sees how Ruth suffers and helps Ruth cope with her cold husband, giving her a potion to seduce her husband into having sex with her again. Once Ruth is pregnant, Pilate gives her strength against her husband’s harsh attempts at ending her pregnancy.

Ruth relies on Pilate’s strength because she has no faith in her own strength. She believes that her only accomplishment in life was ensuring Milkman’s birth. But when she learns of Hagar’s attempts on Milkman’s life, she fiercely moves to protect Milkman, defending him even though she has never once defended herself. She sees her worth solely in relation to her father and her son. Her son’s death, like her father’s death, would make her own life worthless.

Like her mother, First Corinthians leads a confined life. She is spoiled with material wealth, enjoyed an expensive education, and goes on lavish vacations. As a girl, she delights in her material advantage and expresses disdain for others, showing disgust at the idea of living next to a Southside bar owner. She seems to have completely absorbed her father’s condescending ideas.

But as an adult she cannot find a suitable match for a husband, and when she finally tries to enter the workforce, she cannot find a suitable job. Her lack of choices makes her realize that she must transform her thinking about her future. Rather than continue to live with the narrow, haughty ideas of her childhood, she opens her eyes to the broader possibilities of love. When she is confronted with two possible futures—following the constrained life in her father’s house or allowing herself to blossom with love—the choice becomes clear. She embraces Henry Porter, the same Porter scorned by her father for his social class. She knows it’s the only way to escape her current constraints.

Like Corinthians, Lena also leads a confined life, but she seems resigned to her fate. She does not seek a job or a relationship, not even in her 40s. She remains dedicated to her childhood task of creating artificial roses.

But when she sees her sister suffer when her relationship with Porter is forced to end, she finds her voice and confronts her brother. She incisively points out how her and her sister’s lives have been dedicated to Milkman’s well-being and putting his needs first. She has never spoken against him, restraining her resentment with impenetrable silence. But seeing her father and brother take away her sister’s happiness moves her to express herself without restraint, disregarding the rules imposed by the men in her house.