Magic Realism in Song of Solomon

In discussing cultural myth and archetypes that explain collective memory and cultural identity, Eliade (27-8) refers to "acts which presuppose an absolute reality, a reality which is extrahuman . . . created in illo tempore, in the mythical period, by an ancestor, a totemic animal, a god, or a hero." By ritual or custom, the hero's acts may be duplicated in a given culture, thus transmitting it and keeping the paradigm alive. In a discussion that focuses on the figure of the mythic hero, Campbell cites the "successful adventure of the hero" that unlocks and releases the "flow of life into the body of the world" (40). He continues:

For a culture still nurtured in mythology the landscape, as well as every phase of human existence, is made alive with symbolical suggestion. . . . Here and there . . . are special shrines. Wherever a hero has been born, has wrought, or has passed back into the void, the pl

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ily name--Dead--a Reconstruction construction placed by a Freedmen's Bureau clerk on the freedman whose personal history as Milkman's great grandfather is but dimly remembered, even by the Deads of Detroit, who could have had the name changed but did not. Thus embedded into the very identity of all of the Deads is the difficulty of working out the fact that life itself is defined in the term for human death. The resolution of that difficulty is problematic, indeed paradoxical, for the identity of the family living on Not Doctor Street. That is because to find out the real name of the former slave who became the first Macon Dead would be to achieve one's real identity. The paradox is that this discovery would also kill the Dead identity, which from one point of view would be a useful thing but from another point of view would be to negate the identity that comes with honoring family memory. Toni Morrison has said that she did not intentionally make use of Western mythology in Song of Solomon, which has been interpreted as a parody of Freud's Totem and Taboo (Brown 459), that when she does use mythology in her text "it's usually to show that something has gone wrong, not right. I tend to use everything from African or Afro-American
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Song Solomon, Macon Milkman, Morrison's Bradbury, Macon Dead, Deads Solomon, Pilate Macon, Doctor Street, Ruth Macon, Milkman Hagar, Africans America--all, song solomon, macon dead, dead family, black culture, family history, morrison's song, doctor street, ruth macon, morrison's song solomon, pilate macon, alive symbolical suggestion, toni morrison's song, afro-american tradition, life body world,
Approximate Word count = 2537
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page)

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