Justice and Character in Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon

Introduction: Characters and Their Grievances

In Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon, a great many characters struggle to find balance in life. From Milkman to Macon Dead II to Guitar to Ruth to Pilate and many others, there is a sense that each character is one part hurting, one part strong, one part reluctant to fly, one part clinging to selfish desires, and one part searching for a way out. Acts of vengeance, revenge, and attempts to correct wrongs appear throughout the novel to show how the characters harbor grievances, how they seek to retaliate against perceived slights, and how they learn to redress mistakes made in the past.

The main characters, Milkman and Pilate, make up the heart of the novel as each reflects its underlying theme—the need to stand tall and fly. Yet Milkman does not really learn to fly until Pilate, the one family member he fully understands, is taken from him: that is when he is finally motivated to leap into action and fly at Guitar, who took her life. This essay shows how characters seek to avenge, take revenge, or correct for crimes and damage done in Morrison's Song of Solomon by implementing their own unique strategies, strategies that emanate from their own personalities and perceptions of reality.

Macon Dead II: Bitterness, Ambition, and Failed Revenge

Starting with Macon Dead II, there is a grudge he holds against Pilate, since she was the one who refused to allow him to take the gold in the cave after he killed the white man. She warned him that taking the gold would get them both in trouble with the law and make him a murderer and thief. He always held it against her, as his ambition was to get ahead in life and move up in the world, and the gold they found in the cave was the perfect opportunity to do so. Nonetheless, he manages to advance on his own through his involvement in real estate, marries the daughter of a doctor, and does well—but he never forgets about the gold. When he hears that Pilate, who practices voodoo, has a heavy bag hanging from the ceiling of her home that is supposed to be her "inheritance," he believes it to be the gold from the cave and assumes she must have gone back to retrieve it. He sends Milkman and Guitar to steal the bag from Pilate. In the act, the two are arrested—but it turns out the bag is filled only with human bones, her father's. Macon Dead II tried to get back at Pilate for talking him out of getting rich early in life, but his scheme fails.

Macon also has another reason to be angry with Pilate: she is responsible for Milkman's very existence. Macon had not been kind to his wife Ruth, and so Pilate made a love potion to cause Macon to conceive a child with Ruth—which is how Milkman came along. When Macon discovers how he was tricked into conceiving with his wife, he tries to stop the pregnancy, but Pilate turns to voodoo to thwart him. Macon resents Pilate for all of this. He is a deeply selfish character who wants only to please himself and views Pilate and most others as beneath him. He is always dwelling on past wrongs and considering himself the only person of significance—yet inside he is suffering and cannot cope with his own family history.

Pilate's Justice: Love, Humility, and Forgiveness

Macon believes he now belongs to an upper class and that Pilate is beneath him because she is a bootlegger and practitioner of witchcraft. The reality, however, is that Macon's social status cannot save his son when the latter is arrested for attempted theft. It is Pilate—the victim in all of this—who saves them by acting like a worn-out old black woman who doesn't know any better. The police agree to let them all go, and the lesson here is that it is Pilate who truly understands what it means to love someone and to correct old wrongs. She does so not through vengeance or retaliation, but through forgetting, through loving, through humbling herself even if it means being humiliated and receiving the scorn of everyone who witnesses it.

She forgives those who try to rob her, yet she also possesses a strong sense of justice and a desire to help those in need. She did not trick Macon into conceiving in order to hurt him, but rather to help Ruth, who was frightened, alone, without a child, and without love. She acted to help her sister-in-law—but Macon, of course, did not understand this and remained simply bitter. This same bitterness is passed on to Milkman, whose disillusionment upon learning he will never be able to fly makes him apathetic toward everything. Yet Milkman will in time learn that he can indeed fly, and that love is what makes it possible—which is where the novel ends.

Prior to that stunning conclusion, however, Milkman must journey as a character. He wants to know more about his family history, and part of the reason for his isolation and lack of compassion for others stems from the fact that he simply does not know who he is or where he comes from—or why he cannot fly like the birds. Toni Morrison impresses the symbol of the suicide from early in the book—the man who tried to fly but fell—deeply upon Milkman, who loses all interest in life when he learns he will never be able to fly. The cold, crushing reality of this news hits him like a brick and takes all the wind out of his sails. He becomes ambivalent toward everything, finding no connection between himself and the rest of the Black community. He wants only to feed off what others produce, which is why Ruth still breastfeeds him and why he callously accepts the love of Hagar, which she offers him freely. It is also why he goes south to find the gold left in the cave, thinking it will be sufficient to make life bearable—though he is operating under the same delusion as his father, whom he also resents for the man's self-centeredness and cruelty.

Milkman's Journey: Identity, Belonging, and Awakening

In reality, Milkman is beginning to seek out his own identity. He does look for the gold but does not find it, and he gives up the idea when he arrives in Virginia and is invited to take part in a wildcat hunt. He begins to understand the community and, for the first time in his life, feels that he belongs. He listens to nature and feels at one with his surroundings. Even when he is attacked by Guitar, he does not hold it against his former friend but simply tries to explain that the gold never existed—something Guitar refuses to believe. Milkman stays in Virginia for a while before heading back to Michigan to find Pilate, having learned that the bones in her bag are her father's. He feels that those bones should be buried in Virginia, and this conviction signals his awakened sense of identity and belonging. He finally understands his family history and, as a result, his place in the world.

When he returns to Michigan and sees Pilate, she delivers a blow to his head in revenge for his cold treatment of Hagar, who loved him and was spurned by him. Milkman had been inhuman toward her partly because he himself had no reason to feel alive. Now, however, he understands things differently—he sees for the first time and appreciates everything. He now has the meaning in his life that he lacked growing up. After talking with Pilate, the two set off for Virginia to bury the bones. Milkman even speaks to Macon Dead II about what he experienced in Virginia, prompting Macon to want to return home as well, though the reader is left with the impression that Macon never will, too entangled in his own self-interest in Michigan.