Song of Solomon Precis
Guitar is a Tool for Flight to Freedom
In her novel Song of Solomon (1977), Toni Morrison, and acclaimed national bestselling author, insinuates that Guitar is a tool to help people fly to freedom and bring equality, whether in helpful or harmful ways. Morrison reveals this idea after Guitar joins Seven Days and picks up a whole new perspective of life and equality, telling Milkman “You listen! You got a life? Live it!" and by inserting the metaphorical “flight” taking place in whatever Guitar is involved in: Mr. Smith couldn’t handle Seven Days and took flight and Milkman is now taking a flight of freedom after his talk with Guitar about robbing Pilate. By using these symbols of flight creating freedom, she creates a dichotomy by first expressing a sense of entrapment by each character in either their race or inner feelings in order to help the reader understand the conflict each character suffers through in order to find themselves and to whom they really belong. Morrison opens her audience to anyone by creating a novel based on the time-period of the conflicts of racism and the hope of freedom but also showing that both sides have people doing equally wrong things; whites killing blacks and blacks retaliating to kill whites and both blacks and whites becoming greedy with the lust of power; both sides needing to make peace find comfort with who they are and whom others are.