Infinite Past in Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon
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In Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison focuses on the cultural experiences that provide continuity for African Americans as a group beyond one's personal existence. Morrison examines her characters' troubled relationship to ancestors and their cultural past, and shows the quest for participating in their familial and cultural history. Morrison scrutinizes the paternal legacy and male ways of understanding the history and legacy. With Solomon's choice to fly away leaving his loved ones behind, Morrison shows that the beginning of African American history, the point of origin that African Americans refer back to for their sense of cultural continuity and connection, entails loss. As Solomon's legacy entails loss, the male characters' way of understanding the legacy also focuses on the loss. Morrison seeks a different mode of remembering and liberating from the experiences of loss in Pilate's example. Choosing to live in relation to her ancestors and others in her own way of retaining their presence symbolically rather than their absence or loss, Pilate opens room for her and others' interpretation of their cultural legacy, and therefore for actively engaging in transforming the past into something meaningful to her and others. Being a daughter who finds her way of connecting to her ancestors, Pilate also becomes a maternal ancestor for Milkman by teaching him the way of liberating from the memory of loss and carrying out the responsibility for the lost ones.
Abstract
In Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison focuses on the cultural experiences that provide continuity for African Americans as a group beyond one's personal existence. Morrison examines her characters' troubled relationship to ancestors and their cultural past, and shows the quest for participating in their familial and cultural history. Morrison scrutinizes the paternal legacy and male ways of understanding the history and legacy. With Solomon's choice to fly away leaving his loved ones behind, Morrison shows that the beginning of African American history, the point of origin that African Americans refer back to for their sense of cultural continuity and connection, entails loss. As Solomon's legacy entails loss, the male characters' way of understanding the legacy also focuses on the loss. Morrison seeks a different mode of remembering and liberating from the experiences of loss in Pilate's example. Choosing to live in relation to her ancestors and others in her own way of retaining their presence symbolically rather than their absence or loss, Pilate opens room for her and others' interpretation of their cultural legacy, and therefore for actively engaging in transforming the past into something meaningful to her and others. Being a daughter who finds her way of connecting to her ancestors, Pilate also becomes a maternal ancestor for Milkman by teaching him the way of liberating from the memory of loss and carrying out the responsibility for the lost ones.
참고문헌 (12)
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