A Journey To Self-Discovery: A Study Of Toni Morrison’s Song Of Solomon

Abstract

Celebrated American writer and Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison brings to her readers, the entire sweep of the lived experiences of Black American life. Her narratives reveal haunting truths about the struggles and the pains, the dreams and failures, the strengths and resilience of the black people as they search for survival and wholeness in a world determined to hate and break them. Morrison began by writing The Bluest Eye (1970) to describe a young black girl’s misguided quest for an acceptable identity in an external image. Her second novel Sula (1973) is about a young black woman whose idea of selfhood runs into conflict with the norms of the community. Morrison’s third novel Song of Solomon (1977) adds a richer perspective in her literary representation as it explores the black man’s quest for his authentic self. The protagonist of the story is the wealthy but discontented and confused young black man called Milkman Dead. Milkman’s life takes a different turn after he travels to the rural South to seek a hidden treasure in caves of Pennsylvania which leads him instead to a discovery of his ancestral roots. His literal journey becomes symbolic of a spiritual process of rebirth into a life enriched by a discovery of his history and love for his people. The present paper attempts to examine the novel along the lines of a bildungsroman story as it traces the spiritual growth of the protagonist and his evolution in the course of his journey of self-discovery.