The Peacock In Toni Morrison's Song Of Solomon

In Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison uses the peacock to illustrate the future of the characters in her story. The peacock was used because of its characteristics of having all the “treasures” in its tail, which in return weighs it down, making it hard to fly. The peacock serves to indicate the character’s personality and change in mind. It also juxtaposes the two main characters, Macon Junior and Milkman, to give tension to the overall plot. The peacock first appears as a simile when Macon Junior sees his luxurious future fan out “before him like the tail-spread of a peacock”. The peacock simile connects Macon with the idea of acquiring money, which explains the greedy personality of Macon Junior. The peacock also signifies the change in Macon’s personality …show more content…
The same peacock is mentioned when Milkman is sharing the dead bobcat with the hunters. Immediately after he observes the bobcat’s tongue lying in “its mouth as harmless as a sandwich” and the eyes that “held the menace of the night”, the peacock appears again soaring away. The soaring peacock is signifying that Milkman is cutting himself away from what he is familiar with since his birth. He was getting too used to being in the center of everybody’s life and having the false sense of being free because of the money his family has. The bobcat is in a similar situation as Milkman where he is the target of every hunter and thinks that it is free in the woods when in reality it is in constant danger of being hunted. Milkman sees himself as the bobcat and feels the urge to separate himself from the luxuries of life. The flying peacock is a symbol for the “real freedom” that Milkman took his entire life to realize the importance of. The image of a peacock having too much weight on its tail contrasts with the soaring peacock, which highlights Milkman’s future as more free and