Song Of Solomon Identity Essay

As Milkman finds himself alone in the dark woods, Guitar jumps him and a bobcat ends up dead, the novel Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison questions, yet again, the identity of Milkman. As the hunters begin skinning the bobcat head to claws, it seems as if Milkman hears the old words of Guitar after each body part is cut, these lines directly correlated to Milkman’s feelings as he transform from a privileged city boy, to a heroic figure clad in camouflage and a new type of strength. The scene shows the violence towards white men in the hunter’s vulgar procedure, the stripping away of masculinity but also some type of re birth for Milkman. Could Milkman be the bobcat? The patient animal, staying lone but sneakily using it’s strength to make a move. After the killing, Milkman seems

As Omar pulls the hide up, the skin and in this case body part that has shaped the entire novel and dilemmas the characters are faced with through race, Guitar discusses the condition black men are left in. As Omar holds the “transparent under skin tone like gossamer,” (282) Morrison reiterates the idea of race, ‘Everybody wants the life of a black man.’(282) One hunter carves into the cat as if he is coring an apple, striking right through the middle. One cores an apple to get all the bad seeds and harsh stem of the fruit out so that it is ready to eat, firm and shining. Here is where the scene shifts into some type of resurrection of the bobcat and a time when Guitar is questioning himself rather than stating his claims. The hunters core the apple of the bobcat, the animal now seeming to actually be Milkman, taking away his bad qualities that are wound up like seeds in the pit of his body. The hunters “dug under the ribcage to the diaphragm and carefully cut around it until it was free” (282), further stripping away Milkman’s masculinity. Gutiar is heating up in the background, “‘It is about love, what