Song Of Solomon Research Paper

Song of Solomon, written by Toni Morrison, is a novel about the Milkman Dead’s journey to understand himself and his family. The Dead family is a group of rich, black Americans in Michigan, well respected due to Milkman’s late grandfather, Dr. Foster, the first black doctor in that town. Milkman grew wealthier than the average black American in the 1930’s, and his father, Macon Dead, tries to turn Milkman into someone like him; a man who owns everyone and everything. As time goes on and Milkman grows older, he distances himself from his father’s identity and builds one of his own, one outside of his father’s capitalistic values. Toni Morrison explores the performativity of wealth through the use of cars, in order to expose the way materialism …show more content…
Morrison creates two paths, two mentors for Milkman to follow: Macon Dead Jr. and Pilate. Macon Dead Jr. owns things and other people for materialistic status and ego; but his family suffers because of this as there is no love behind these items, they’re just for show. Pilate, on the other hand, owns things to use them beyond their set purpose, and to share them among her family and friends; and when Milkman is able to experience all of this with her, he feels “completely happy” and “in love” (Morrison, 47). Morrison further develops the artificiality of materialistic lifestyles, like Macon Dead Jr’s, via the Dead family’s Packard. Morrison associates the pattern of cars with materialism through the Dead family’s drives past Blood Bank, the run-down part of Not Doctor Street, inside their expensive green Packard. As Macon Dead II drives down the street, driving to the rich white neighborhoods, Morrison describes the people of Blood Bank watching: “Some of the black people who saw the car passing by sighed with good-humored envy at the classiness, the dignity of it” (32). Morrison highlights the

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