Flight and the Acceptance of Self

In Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison, the images of flight reflect elements of the past, present, and future: in other words the past represents an appreciation of one's origin, the present is an escape from societal domestication, and the future is a resurrection of the human spirit.

Whether it’s a bird or plane, anything that can soar in the air must have its origin from the ground. Therefore, before one can fly, one must be rooted. From the moment Milkman realizes that humans cannot fly, he detaches himself from the community as a consequence of this disheartening recognition. Although he befriends Guitar Bains, he meets his charmed aunt Pilate and has relations with his cousin Hagar. Milkman is still detached, for his desire to fly compels him to weaken and eventually abandon these human connections on the ground. When the Dead family's Packard rolls calmly through the city on Sunday afternoons, Milkman feels troubled because his sight is restricted to what he can see out of the rear window, this shows Milkman's tragic flaw of depreciating the past in an attempt to catch a glimpse of what will pass. To watch the passing scenery he kneels on the seat, but "riding backward made him uneasy. It was like flying blind, and not knowing where he was going - just where he had been - troubled him" (32). The past should be one's cushion, not its discomfort.

Milkman's journey to establish the origins of his name and family meets opposition with his conflicting desire to remain ignorant, for in ignorance he finds a superficial happiness and security. When Milkman is in the airplane for the first time in his life, the feeling of freedom he finds in the air is only a pale illusion, for Milkman still thinks freedom can be found only outside of reality and apart from his past. Milkman cannot fly without embracing his past as the air underneath his wings. Raised by a man who talks black, lives white and thinks green, Milkman cannot see beyond the money, the house, and the Packard, for materialism and vanity is the "shit" that weighs him down from flying.

For Milkman to truly fly, he must surrender all that corrupts one's mind to disregard the values of identity and culture and instead embrace humanity. Macon Dead also teaches Milkman "the one important thing you'll ever need to know: Own things" (55). Macon Dead was not born into wealth, so he had to work with just ambition to reach the pinnacle of the black hierarchy; however, Milkman was born into wealth and took it for granted, which is even worse. Society corrupted Macon Dead's mind to such an extent that Macon Dead believes "money is freedom. The only real freedom there is" (163). Milkman adopts this principle, when he writes the word "gratitude" and includes money in a breakup letter to Hagar so that he can be liberated from Hagar's love. Money is not freedom or a liberator, especially in resistance to love. The laws of man may revolve around money but the statute of the skies does not acknowledge the value of materialism. As Milkman's journey develops and the layers of his family history begin to peel away, Milkman's money and possessions quickly become useless, because the fortune is not gold but rather the past and its people. "Without ever leaving the ground she could fly" because Pilate realized that no earthly possession held any value in her heart, which the reader learns through Pilate's disregard for her hair and social conventions (336). Milkman cannot fly until he strips off the weight of materialism and vanity on his back.

Although Robert Smith and Milkman leap into the air with no evidence of success, Pilate, even after her death, soars via the birds carrying her name in the air, which insinuates a spiritual resurrection. Death is not the end of the cycle for those whose spirits were pure. Resembling Christ's birth, life, and death, Pilate enters