Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon focuses on a character as he develops, and his overall inaction towards his own name can be seen as a metaphor towards the rest of their society. Macon Dead III, coined by many as Milkman, has a name which alludes to an experience he had before being wholly conscious of what the experience was. The name “Milkman” was given to him over an embarrassing instance in which his mother had breast-fed him when he was far too old, and he seemed to have accepted the name himself. Milkman “had always hated that name, all of it,” (38) yet he never tried to direct any other name upon himself. When talking with Guitar at a later point, Guitar claims that Milkman “is [his] name,” effectively enforcing the idea that his name,
