Song Of Solomon-A Blues Song

Toni Morrison awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993, has in her works explored the experience of black people in a racist culture, in which an inherent blues sensibility is prevalent as she admits herself, and as demonstrated apparently in Song of Solomon. In fact, the novel itself can be appreciated as a beautiful blues song.Compared with the cheerful, inspiring and exciting tone color of major scale, the tone color of minor scale is sad, and mysterious. The traditional blues is based on minor scale, therefore the reader can clearly and easily feel the two striking features contained in the blues are going all through the story. Under Morrison's pen, the suffering of the Dead family's four generations has been fully expressed, which is also a witness to the sad history of the whole black race. To give prominence to the mysterious atmosphere, Morrison employs the old African flying myth sung in the blues and many supernatural occurrences which draw nutrition from African myth and legends, exactly as the blues does, stating that only by flying to their own black culture can they survive as a race.The story conveys the thematic essence of the blues: the catharsis and the transmission of cultural knowledge and values which have always been central to the blues. The thematic essence of the blues illustrates the folk knowledge and values not transmitted—information without which the black cannot survive as whole and healthy race. The bluesman stereotype—Milkman, a flying myth pursuer, has to shoulder the task to restore the Dead family, and then transmit the cultural knowledge and values of the black people, and throughout the process, he abandons his woman to whom he is not willing to belong. The vigilante group, Seven Days including Milkman's best friend—Guitar, swearing a revenge and taking violence against the white, has played a violent and clumsy blues. Abandoned by her father, her husband and her son, the blueswoman stereotype—Ruth, has not performed 'her function, not possessing the physical or the mental strength to establish her personal identity, failing to transmit the thematic essence of the blues to her son, leaving Milkman in the dark of his name. Only from Pilate—the blues griot, the thematic essence of the blues is fully transmitted, with which Pilate unites the black community, and reminds them of their hardship and hopes, able to transmit the African values and culture to Milkman, offering another way to keep it except the mainstream assimilation and radical separatism.The dissonance in blues is a striking feature of the blues, and the dissonances in black people's life are just like the dissonances in the blues, including those between the black and the white and among the family members. The pattern of tension and release created by resolved dissonances is part of what makes a piece of music exciting and fascinating, without which music tends to seem simplistic or boring. In a white-dominated world, the black people are hard to find a foot-stand in the society, and they are gradually losing their racial and cultural identities. Moreover, among the family members dissonances also arise as well as between the black and other races.As clearly uncovered in the three chapters of the thesis, it can be safely concluded that whether in tone color, in thematic essence, or in dissonances, Song of Solomon is a typical song of the blues.