Milkman Character Analysis

Throughout the character development of Milkman, one can a resemblance between him and his Father, Macon Dead. After fourteen years of marriage, the physical attraction that was once the spark of his love and attraction for Hagar is now gone. “He was getting tired of her. Her eccentricities were no longer provocative and the stupefying ease with which he had gotten and stayed between her legs had changed from the great good fortune he’d considered it, to annoyance at her refusal to make him hustle for it, work for it, do something difficult for it. He didn’t even have to pay for it. It was so free, so abundant, it had lost its fervor. There was no excitement, no galloping of blood in his neck or his heart at the thought of her.”(91). Morrison highlights that Milkman has grown tired of Hagar, he is no longer interested in Hagar. His “love” for Hagar is now dead. Morrison's portation of Milkman is comparable of his father. They are both distant and

The community that surrounds the Dead family has also experienced or witnessed such type of relationship “The lengths to which lost love drove men and women never surprised them. They had seen women pull their dresses over their heads and howl like dogs for lost love. And men who sat in doorways with pennies in their mouths for lost love. "Thank God," they whispered to themselves, "thank God I ain’t never had one of them graveyard loves.”(128) The South Side/Not Doctor Street community has witnessed numerous times the repeating effects of obsessive love. Morrison asserts that this type of nervous love is not solely a characteristic of the women in the Dead family, but it is a characteristic of many women. As expressed earlier, the idea of love is different from character to character. But there is a significant distinction between the idea of love between men and women in the