words by Jocelyn Howarth
What’s in a name?¹ Shakespeare’s words are timeless, marked by constant relevancy, and can be referred to in almost any situation. This question has been posed to the audience in Romeo and Juliet, as the tragic heroine leans out on her balcony and longs for a forbidden love . It is the central theme of Song of Solomon, where Toni Morrison takes that question and applies it to a wealthy African-American family, the Deads. Beginning in 1930s Michigan and continuing on through the 40s, 50s, and 60s, the story follows Macon Dead III, nicknamed Milkman as a boy.
The previous two Macon Deads are as follows: Macon Dead II, Milkman’s father, a wealthy landlord who made his own fortune and married the daughter of a successful doctor, and Macon Dead, Macon Dead II’s father, who had built a successful farm before he was killed by people wanting to take it from him. There are no prior Macon Deads.
Morrison contextualises the family name with the abolition of slavery in the USA in 1865. The Freedmen’s Bureau agency was created by the government at the time to help the freed enslaved people gain citizenship. When the first Macon Dead went to register, the intoxicated army man wrote the place where Macon was from as his first name, and when he asked for Macon’s family, Macon said they were dead. ‘Dead’ was written as Macon’s family name, and that became his legal name, thoughtlessly bestowed on him by a drunken white man. His real name has since been forgotten.
Being from the wealthiest family in town, Milkman grows up separate from his peers. They all know he’s a Dead, and they all treat him with the respect his father has always demanded. A boy nicknamed Guitar takes Milkman under his wing and shows him a glimpse into the rougher side of life, which includes the situation of Milkman’s aunt. Pilate is a wine seller, living with her daughter and granddaughter, and to Milkman she is incredibly odd. She wears a little box dangling from her ear containing a bit of paper that her father wrote her name on when she was born. But in her home, in the company of the three generations of women whose lives do not include husbands, Milkman finds an environment that embraces him and respects him, and treats him far more maturely than his father or mother do.
The names carry the weight of the story. Protagonist Milkman earns this nickname from a man who witnesses a four-year-old Milkman being breastfed by his mother, therefore the mother-son dynamic being haunted by the nickname. Pilate is named after the Pilate from the Bible, who presided over Jesus’s trial and ultimately gave the order for Jesus’s crucifixion. With a full name like Pilate Dead, she bears omens of death and sin, furthered by her lack of a navel which causes people to perceive her as unnatural. The street on which the Deads live is called Not Doctor Street. Officially, it is named Main Street, but due to the successful black doctor (Milkman’s grandfather on his mother’s side) who resided there, the community called it Doctor Street. While the government tried to discourage this title, the residents of the town started to refer to it as Not Doctor Street, a compromise that mocked the authority of the government while exposing their attempt to efface black history.
The erasure and creation of names is a constant theme in Song of Solomon. It may occur to the reader that, as of now, I have not yet referred to a single character or place named Solomon. Some may recall the Song of Solomon, otherwise known as the Song of Songs or Canticles, found in the Old Testament of the Bible. Could that be what the title of Morrison’s novel refers to? A poem of love, intimacy, marriage in the name of God? Morrison’s Song of Solomon is, at its core, a mystery. Names taken from the Bible, like Pilate, or from mythology, like Circe—the woman who delivered Pilate and Macon Dead II from their mother, whose name matches Circe the sorceress from Homer’s Odyssey—are clues to the history of the Deads that are gradually unravelled by Milkman. Every name is significant; every name holds layers of meaning that sometimes do not become clear until the final chapter of the novel.
At the centre of it all is a boy who is coming of age. His identity is defined by his name; Dead, Macon, Milkman. While Not Doctor Street is an example of how names can defy and liberate, Milkman’s many titles are an example of the opposite—how a name can be a prison. He works for his father and struggles to discern his identity beyond that. Faced with the news that his friend Guitar has joined a group that avenges the deaths of black people reported on the news, he feels more isolated than ever. Milkman becomes determined to break away from his father’s control, to move somewhere else and live as and for himself. When he hears a story about a hidden treasure left somewhere by Pilate long ago, he sets out on a hunt that evolves into a pilgrimage.
Alongside Milkman, the reader uncovers the truth about his family’s history. Flitting back and forth between the present and the past century of Deads, Morrison weaves a gritty yet mystical tale, and emphasises the trauma caused by slavery that continues long after slavery is legally abolished. She holds space for the women of Milkman’s family, women he dismisses and shows no interest in, or women that he shows too much interest in and ends up destroying. The branches of the Dead family tree are traced back through mysterious men and women—mysterious due to the fact that the records of African-Americans who were subjected to slavery are murky, with names often being omitted or changed by the slave owners, whose existence is passed down through song and myth— and Morrison urges how one person’s behaviour can affect the numerous generations that follow. Milkman, who is so eager to fly away and break free from the names he sees as curses, seeks to understand his past, and in doing so, he begins to understand himself.
Song of Solomon is an incredibly gripping and moving novel. Morrison’s words are vibrant, her establishment of place and character deft and distinctive, the reader being absorbed from the very first page. It is a masterpiece of a story and an absolutely essential read.