Song of Solomon and Love Medicine
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In both Morrison's Song of Solomon and Erdrich's Love Medicine, one of the main purposes of the story seems to be to create, for men, a whole new way of thinking about their place in the world. What makes that way of thinking especially unusual is that their path to knowledge takes place through images and experiences that reflect female references. That is perhaps partly because these novels were written by women. However, the character development becomes powerful partly because the male characters come to terms with their family relationships, which must involve women. In Love Medicine, Lipsha finds a way to connect himself to his heritage by working out his relationship with his dead mother June. In Song of Solomon, Milkman frees himself from what he thinks he hates about his mother and what is so embarrassing about his aunt Pilate. In both novels, the central characters come to an entirely new consciousness about their place in the world. Significantly, it involves turning away from the traditional image of self-made materialism.How this all comes about can be seen by looking in more detail at the books themselves. Milkman, the central character in Song of Solomon, discovers this new way of thinking by way of conflicting accounts of family history. His work in uncovering the facts of his family history leads him to act on his discovery in a way that clarifies his own identity and truly liberates him. That is an aspect of spiritual redemption connected with spiritual my
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dependent on it (Morrison 458). Thus, by the time Milkman forms the plan of traveling to Virginia to track down the gold, one of his motives is to separate himself from suffocating at Not Doctor Street. It turns out that the real gold of the Dead is returning to the cave (womb) and figuring out the "Song of Solomon" game, plus the meaning of the identity of Jake, who was both the founder of the Deads and the last of the "Solomon" line. In other words, the treasure is Milkman's new personal identity and the Deads' new identity as Solomon. At the same time that new identity is found, the Deads are "emancipated" from both slavery and Emancipation (Morrison 215-6). Ironically, it is at that same moment that the hustler Guitar finds Milkman and physically kills him. The cycle of birth and death is never ending and is hard to escape except in the mind.
In Love Medicine, Lipsha's search for identity starts with his knowledge that he is straddling two different cultures. The fact that the search starts with a death is significant. June Kapshaw, a Chippewa whose parentage is vague, is not murdered, but her hopeless life is a kind of death and typical of the experience of many Native Americans. This becomes clear in the opening--very path
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Song Solomon, Native Americans, June June, Holy June, Love Medicine, Macon Milkman, Macon Macon, Solomon Milkman, Pilate Macon, Eli Kapshaw, song solomon, love medicine, family history, pilate macon, doctor street, macon pilate, parentage vague,
Approximate Word count = 1342
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page)
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