Song Of Solomon Flight Analysis

“Wanna fly, you’ve got to give up the [stuff] that weighs you down” is a quote from Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon, an extremely well-known piece of literature in American history. This quote about flight, about shedding the things to hold you down, is an idea reflected in and throughout the story, from the beginning to the end. The opening scene in Song of Solomon features a man who attempts to fly away off the top of a building. This concept of flight continues throughout the book, from birds to airplanes to even the protagonist, Milkman. Milkman is obsessed with the idea of flight, and later discovers that his ancestor, Solomon, supposedly flew away from the oppression of slavery. Even in the final paragraph of the book, the idea of flight is again referenced back to just as it was in the beginning, with Milkman flying away into the sky to escape. In this book, Toni Morrison seeks to illustrate the idea of an individual’s escape of oppression and personal

While both of these men flew and found their own personal freedom like Robert Smith, they also left many behind in doing so. Solomon left behind his 21 children as well as his wife, Ryna. Milkman left behind his entire family, including his lover of over a decade, Hagar. In doing so, both men condemned the lives of their loved ones. Ryna’s sorrow was so pronounced that the people of Shalimar referred to a canyon as Ryna’s Gulch, as a result of the wind making the gulch sound like a sobbing woman. Hagar, in the end, died of a broken heart, left behind and unloved by a man obsessed with his own freedom: “[Milkman] had left her. While he dreamt of flying, Hagar was dying” (332). While Morrison uses the motif of flight to illustrate escape of oppression, she also shows the effects on the women that are left behind, forgotten for a man’s ideas of personal