Rootedness: Toni Morrison's Song Of Solomon

Since its publication, Song of Solomon, an uncomplex story with complex people, has caught critical attention and received critical evaluations from various aspects. It is not only the first award novel of Toni Morrison, winner of Nobel Prize for literature in 1993, but also a work that "changed Toni Morrison's public reputation from aspiring novelist to outstanding American writer." While diverse approaches and pluralistic angles of criticism reflect the inclusive nature of the novel, a large part of the criticism, due to the special identity of Morrison as a black woman writer in America, launches a crusade against white domination and white oppression and centers on re-establishing black tradition as an opposition to the dominant western one.Significant as those concerns are, however, Afro-Americans, besides being African, are also American. Therefore, how to better survive in American society is of paramount interest. Evolving around this concern, Song of Solomon presents three different states of living. Represented by Macon Dead and Ruth Dead, some middle class blacks that are saturated with western ideology throw their black heritage away in their upward mobility. Consequently, they are uprooted from black soil and are haunted by an overwhelming sense of insecurity and alienation. Contrary to them, another flock of blacks, such as Guitar and the Seven Days, cling too tightly to the past to extricate themselves from hatred to the white and to fly towards the future. Addicted to self-pity and morbid lust for revenge, they fall into a vicious cycle. Other than sticking to tradition as they have hoped, they are sailing further and further away from it. The third state of living, crystallized through Milkman, is the one Morrison desires, which is a perfect combination of the essence of both African tradition and modern civilization. It is not until Milkman achieves this consummatestate that he is able to realize the dream of flying without ever leaving the ground.