Names, Time, And Have A Nice Flight

This is my brain:

… Song of Solomon… Hmmm another woman’s book, Toni Morrison… I hope this one differs from Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice...

[Flips the book to the back cover] African American author, pretty interesting, the first African American I read since Eighth Grade, the Harlem Renaissance, Langston Hughes, etc. Oh, Ann Petry, but that doesn’t count, I only read an excerpt from her novel The Street in a practice timed writing… Twice!

[Begins reading] … 3, 4, 5, 6… The song:

Oh Sugarman done fly away

Sugarman done gone

Sugarman cut across the sky

Sugarman gone home…

Sugarman? Well, I can’t relate that to anything thus far, instead, the theme of flying seems to be pretty recurring in Morrison’s first pages. If she is starting the novel saying that a man “promised to fly,” it’s evident that it might be something to keep in mind.

… The liberty transmitted through Pilate’s “contralto” juxtaposes the silence of the rest of the crowd. It could signify her reluctance of being passive, the conformity of the people with their lives, their futility… Morrison makes her stand out. She differs in every possible sense from the other expectators. In my point of view, the two extremes are, coincidentally, Pilate and Ruth. Their clothing, their attitude, completely opposite. Even though her clothing make her look like an interloper, Pilate demonstrates pure nerve and brevity by being the only one able to express towards Smith’s banal attempt to fly. Maybe the song might come up again, later…

… 7, 8, 9… “the little boy discovered, at four, the same thing Mr. Smith had learned earlier – that only birds and airplanes could fly – he lost all interest in himself” (Morrison 9). We can’t fly. If we can’t fly, like Mr. Smith, our goals might be just dreams. Hence, we can either live this futile life, or aim to fly, to escape into a better future. The question is, do we ever escape? Milkman loses faith in his chance to fly, metaphorically speaking, as he realizes that we have to be compliant with life’s banality. Morrison, extrapolates the meaning of flying and injects it into every character (and their weird names), making of them a figure that attempts to fly many times, until finally, they fly away.

10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17… Pretty weird names. I would never name my son Macon, or my daughter, First Corinthians. But who blames them. Nowadays I’ve seen people call their children Usnavi, Madeinusa, Disneylandia… Very original names.

… 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30… Pilate’s song ends with the first chapter. In Time, that could’ve been between five to ten minutes, more or less. But talking about time, that was years. She employs a lot of time shifting. This time issue, and the relation with the lineage of Macon Dead I, II, and III reminds me of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Cien años de soledad, with his Jose Arcadios, Aurelianos, etc. Here, we are able to have a depiction of their lives (Macon I, II, and III) while Pilate sings. Meanwhile, we live the whole history of Macondo while Aureliano stands in the “peloton de fusilamiento.”