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The Importance Of Milkman In Song Of Solomon

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Everyone is born for a reason, but one never knows how their life experience is going to start. Escaping from the past you can also experience the future, and that will change your life forever. In “Song of Solomon” by Toni Morrison, Robert Smith an insurance agent leaped from Mercy to lake superior and died, the next day Milkman was born. The understanding of one’s death and another being born is a reincarnation of a new life, experience, and an opportunity to soar. The motif of flying is both leaving and experiencing the new place you have found and this is a metaphor for Solomon and Milkman because they both left their family to have an opportunity to soar. Milkman has had a tough background and lifestyle. For example, …show more content…
Milkman flies to Pennsylvania without Guitar to find the gold and to get away from all the problems. For example, Milkman says “I don’t want to be my old man's office boy no more. And as long as I’m in this place I will be. Unless i have my own money”(Morrison 222), here Milkman doesn’t want to live with his parents and be an office boy to please his father, he wants to be different. A new lifestyle is what Milkman wants and needs because he doesn’t expect anyone to interfere in the decision he is going to take. He also said “I have to get out of the house and I don’t want to owe anybody when I go. My family’s driving me crazy”(Morrison 222) Milkman wants to leave his home and wants to live a new life because he feels everyone wants to come after him and doesn’t know what they want from him. Solomon flew to Africa to escape slavery, the result was that he had to leave his wife Ryna and his children behind. Milkman discovered a song that Solomon left behind which it indicated that the song was about his family. Milkman assimilates that the song is important to his family's history. Solomon and Milkman both have similarities of wanting to fly.
Soaring is the meaning of where life takes you and escaping it isn’t what anyone would want. Milkman wanted to escape from his family because he felt everyone pressuring and wanting something from him. For example, he says “Everybody wants something from me, you know what I mean?” (Morrison 222) Milkman didn’t understand what they wanted and why

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