FREE ESSAY ON SONG OF SOLOMON BY TONI MORRISON

SONG OF SOLOMON BY TONI MORRISON

In the novel Song of Solomon a major ambiguous event occurs. The author, Toni Morrison
leaves the interpretation up to the reader on the issue of whether or not Macon killed
the white man in the novel. In Song of Solomon, Macon tells his son, Milkman, the story
of when his father was killed by white men and he and his sister, Pilate, ran away
together. Macon says that he and Pilate were followed by a man who looked just like their
father. (168) After three days of being followed by this man, they decided to find an
escape by taking cover in a unused cave. In the middle of the night, Macon awoke to find
a man sleeping near him, very old, very white, and his smile was awful. (169) Spurred by
the images floating through his mind of his father's cold blooded murder at the hands of
white men, Macon lashed out in anger and threw a rock at the white man's head. Instead of
falling to the ground, the white man kept coming and coming(169) towards Macon. This
action by the grinning, sadistic white man signified Macon's sentiment that the white
race would not cease to plague his every action. Macon continues to inflict physical harm
upon the white man, finally resorting to his knife and brutally murdering the man.
After the man took his final breath, Pilate became hysterical, while Macon tried to cover
up the body with a tarpaulin. While doing this, Macon discovered that the man possessed
great wealth in gold. Macon desired to steal the bags of gold, however, Pilate objected
to this and raged at Macon. (12ftopp.) Macon began calling Pilate names, and after
realizing her unresponsiveness, he left the cave. He waited outside the entrance all day
and night, anticipating her exit from the cave. Once dawn came, he slowly approached the
cave until he was chased away by some hunters and their dogs. Macon finally returned to
the cave after three days and two nights to find that Pilate, the gold, and the tarpaulin
were not to be found, although the body of the man remained. 
Years later Milkman journeyed to the cave and did not find bones of any kind. Upon
further investigation, Milkman discovered from an old lady in the area, Circe, that his
grandfather's body had resurfaced after being buried in a shallow grave along a river and
had been thrown into the cave by hunters. The reader also learns that Pilate had returned
to the cave to collect the bones of the dead man.
These events can be interpreted in various ways. A feasible interpretation of this event
is that Macon did not actually kill the white man. The man that he supposedly killed was
an illusion. The way that he acted toward the man suggests that Macon was still extremely
bitter over his father's death, and wanted to avenge his father's murder. The fact that
Macon was chased off by hunters, and Circe's information regarding the location of his
father's body implies that Macon father's body was dumped into the cave by the hunters
the day after Macon's murder. Upon Macon's return to the cave a few days later, the body
he saw was that of his father. The fact that the gold and the tarpaulin were mysteriously
missing also backs up the probability of it all being an illusion. Because of this, when
Pilate returned to the cave years later, the bones she collected were actually her
father's bones. Based on this evidence, Macon did not kill the white man. 
Bibliography
song of solomon 1987