Toni Morrison's Song Of Solomon

Song of Solomon Analysis

Among many forces that impact what an author writes such as politics, culture, and morals, religion also impacts their writing style. In Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison, Morrison is heavily influenced by Christianity within her writing. This influence can be seen all throughout the book starting with the title of the book Song of Solomon and even among the names of her characters. Morrison’s influence contributes heavily to her work because if read through an archetypical lens, the novel can be seen as a set of smaller stories all within one story, much like the Bible, which reveal many themes and life lessons. These “series” of stories can be seen within Song of Solomon in the interactions with the different

The title Song of Solomon contributes to the work itself because it provides readers with multiple pieces of information, which they can draw conclusions from before they actually begin reading the novel. Readers can deduce from the title alone that the title of the book is a biblical allusion not only to King Solomon of the Old Testament but also the book of Solomon which is also referred to as the Song of Solomon. With these two pieces of information readers can dive even deeper into their pre-reading thoughts based on the fact that if they are familiar with the Song of Solomon which is a series of lyrical poems between a young woman and her lover. One idea that is taken away from this book is the idea of earthly love and nature, and with this idea of earthly love in mind along with the idea of biblicism and biblical allusions, the reader has obtained a good amount of knowledge about some of the ideas that Morrison may touch on even before the book

For example, the relationship between Hagar and Milkman can be seen as an allusion which allows Morrison to build her theme of how women who love men too much are ultimately left and hurt time and time again, which would contribute to the work as a whole because it would be helping Morrison build a theme within her novel. Hagar and Milkman can be used as an allusion to build a theme because of the biblical context of Hagar. Hagar who bore a child of Abraham but was then thrown out of the wife out of jealousy because Abraham’s wife Sarah could not conceive, and by doing so Hagar had been used and abandoned. She bore him a child and was then thrown out never to be talked to again. Similar thing happened to Hagar and how despite how loyal she was to Milkman, Milkman just did not want her, he lost interest after a while and constantly rejected her. Another example of how her use of Christianity is used in the novel is also through her build up for different themes. Similar to the biblical allusion used of Hagar to build a theme portraying the betrayal and abandonment of women, Morrison continues to use allusions like this throughout the novel to aid in her building different themes. Milkman’s sister First Chorinthians can be one of the very few, if not the only, characters in the novel that have received a type of higher