Song Of Solomon (Cliffs Notes)

121 Pages·1999·0.49 MB·English

by  Durthy A. Washington

SONG OF
SOLOMON
NOTES
including
• Life and Background of the Author
• Introduction to the Novel
• A Brief Synopsis
• List of Characters
• Critical Commentaries
• Genealogy
• Character Analyses
• Critical Essays
• Review Questions and Essay Topics
• Selected Bibliography
by
Durthy A. Washington
M.Ed., University of Southern California, Los Angeles
M.A., San Jose State University
Editor
Gary Carey, M.A.
University of Colorado
ISBN 0-7645-8507-X
©Copyright 1993
by
Cliffs Notes, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
Printed in U.S.A.
1999 Printing
The Cliffs Notes logo, the names “Cliffs” and “Cliffs Notes,” and
the black and yellow diagonal-stripe cover design are all
registered trademarks belonging to Cliffs Notes, Inc., and may
not be used in whole or in part without written permission.
Cliffs Notes, Inc. Lincoln, Nebraska
Song of Solomon • xxxx-x/1 • Proof 1 • DMoore • 4/5/99 • p.2 Song of S
CONTENTS
Life and Background of the Author......................5
Introduction to the Novel..........................................9
A Brief Synopsis..........................................................12
List of Characters........................................................13
Critical Commentaries.............................................17
Genealogy......................................................................60
Character Analyses....................................................96
Critical Essays............................................................102
Review Questions and Essay Topics..................113
Selected Bibliography..............................................116
Center Spread: Song of SolomonGenealogy
Song of Solomon • xxxx-x/1 • Proof 1 • DMoore • 4/5/99 • p.3
Song of Solomon • xxxx-x/1 • Proof 1 • DMoore • 4/5/99 • p.4
5
SONG OF SOLOMON
Notes
LIFE AND BACKGROUND OF THE AUTHOR
Personal Background. Chloe Anthony Wofford—Toni
Morrison—was born on February 18, 1931, in Lorain, Ohio, a
racially mixed Midwestern steel town of around 75,000 that—like
the settings of most of her novels—was “neither ghetto nor planta-
tion.” She was the second of four children born to George Wofford,
a laborer, and Ramah (Willis) Wofford, a homemaker whose name,
according to Morrison, was “picked blind” from a page in the Bible.
Morrison’s parents taught her to believe in herself and not let ex-
ternal events control her life. Growing up during a time marked by
overt racism and open hostility toward blacks, Morrison learned
early on that in order to survive, she had to develop a strong char-
acter and create her own life. She also learned the value of being
part of a loving, supportive family and community, the futility and
self-destructiveness of hatred, and the healing power of music.
After graduating from Lorain High School with honors,
Morrison moved to Washington, D.C., to attend Howard
University, where one of her professors was Alain Locke, a leading
figure of the Harlem Renaissance. While at Howard, she began
writing short stories and changed her name to Toni. Much of the
African-American literature she encountered while at Howard left
her, in her own words, “bereft” since it seemed to be written to
someone other than herself or the black people whom she knew.
Consequently, she resolved to write books that focused on “black
people . . . talking to black people.”
In 1953, Morrison began graduate work at Cornell University.
Two years later, she received a master’s degree in English, with a
minor in classics. As part of her degree requirements, she wrote
her thesis on the theme of suicide in the works of William
Faulkner and Virginia Woolf.
Song of Solomon • xxxx-x/1 • Proof 1 • DMoore • 4/5/99 • p.5
6
From 1955 to 1957, Morrison taught humanities and English at
Texas Southern State University in Houston. In 1957, she returned
to Washington, D.C., to teach English at Howard University, and a
year later, she met and married Harold Morrison, a Jamaican ar-
chitect. Stifled by her marriage, she discovered that writing en-
abled her to cope with depression and isolation: “I had nothing left
but my imagination. I had no will, no judgment, no perspective, no
power, no authority, no self—just this brutal sense of irony, melan-
choly, and a trembling respect for words. I wrote like someone
with a dirty habit. Secretly—compulsively—slyly.” Consequently,
she joined a writer’s workshop and began developing a short story
about a black girl’s obsession with blue eyes, which eventually be-
came her first novel, The Bluest Eye.
In 1964, following a family trip to Europe, Morrison left
Howard University, divorced her husband, and moved back to
Lorain with her two sons, Harold Ford and Slade Kevin. A year
later, in 1965, she moved her children to Syracuse, New York,
where she worked as a textbook editor for Random House. In
1967, she was promoted to senior editor, a position that enabled
her to help publish the works of several African-American authors,
including Andrew Young, Gayl Jones, Toni Cade Bambara, and
Angela Davis.
In 1970—while working as a full-time editor, teaching part-
time, and raising her two sons—Morrison completed The Bluest
Eye, which depicts the psychological destruction of Pecola Breedlove,
ayoung black girl who idealizes white standards of female beauty.
In 1971, Morrison returned to the classroom as the Albert
Schweitzer Professor of Humanities at the State University of New
York in Purchase; she continued to write. In 1973, she completed
her second novel, Sula, which would be nominated for the
National Book Award in 1975. In Sula, Morrison established a
theme that would pervade each of her subsequent works: the
secret, mystical world of the black woman living in a pariah
community.
Morrison’s editorial position at Random House enabled her to
work on The Black Book, a project that would provide a wealth of
material for her later writing and profoundly influence her ap-
proach to literature. Published in 1974, The Black Book is a collec-
tion of African-American memorabilia that spans three centuries
Song of Solomon • xxxx-x/1 • Proof 1 • DMoore • 4/5/99 • p.6
7
of black history, from slavery to the 1940s. It contains newspaper
clippings, bills of sale, sheet music, announcements of slave auc-
tions, invitations to “rent parties,” letters, graphic photographs,
sports files, patents granted to African Americans, and other mem-
orabilia gathered from the scrapbooks and attics of its editors and
other supporters. Although her name does not appear on the book,
Morrison conceived The Black Book as a tribute to “the anonymous
black man.” In explaining her desire to publish the book, Morrison
says that she wanted to create a genuine black-history book that
“simply recollected life as lived” and celebrated the common, col-
lective achievements and experiences of black people.
The publication of Morrison’s third novel, Song of Solomon
(1977), which focuses on the quest for cultural identity, heralded
the public’s recognition of her as a serious author. The mythic folk-
tale evolved from Morrison’s grief over her father’s death. Song of
Solomon was awarded the 1978 National Book Critics Circle Award
for fiction. Eighteen years later, in 1996, it soared to the number
one position on national bestseller lists when it was announced as
a featured novel of Oprah Winfrey’s book club.
In 1981, Morrison published her fourth novel, Tar Baby, an al-
legorical fable about colonialism, commitment, and black identity,
based on white folklorist Joel Chandler Harris’ “Uncle Remus”
story. Morrison imposes her own interpretations on the original
story, which, she recalls, frightened her as a child. Consequently,
the tar baby in her novel—a beautiful, light-skinned model named
Jadine—is “the black woman who can hold things together.”
Seven years later, in 1988, Morrison published her next novel,
Beloved, which won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Based on the life
of Margaret Garner, an escaped Kentucky slave, Beloved tells the
harrowing story of a mother who kills her infant daughter rather
than see her enslaved; she is forced to come to terms with her des-
perate act when, twenty years later, the dead daughter’s ghost re-
turns to haunt her and demands an explanation for her murder. In
preparation for the book, Morrison researched the shameful his-
tory of the institution of slavery and found that no memorials ex-
isted to mark that history. She decided that her book would
provide such a memorial.
Morrison’s sixth novel, Jazz, published in 1992, explores the
relationship between Joe and Violet Trace, a middle-aged couple
Song of Solomon • xxxx-x/1 • Proof 1 • DMoore • 4/5/99 • p.7
8
who find their way back to each other after the husband has a
tragic affair with an eighteen-year-old girl. Set in Harlem during
the 1930s, the novel unfolds as a series of scenes, or jazz “riffs.”
Morrison followed Jazz with Paradise. Published in January
1998, Paradisecompletes the trilogy that includes Beloved and Jazz.
Set in the 1970s, it tells the story of four young women who are
brutally attacked in a convent near Ruby, Oklahoma, a fictional
town populated exclusively by African Americans. In writing the
novel, Morrison says that she wanted to understand “the love of
God and love for fellow human beings.”
Career Highlights. In 1993, Toni Morrison became the first
African-American writer to win the Nobel Prize for literature. The
prestigious honor, which marks the crowning achievement of
Morrison’s literary career, was another in a series of “firsts” in her
distinguished career. In 1977, Morrison’s third novel, Song of
Solomon, was chosen as a main selection of the Book-of-the-Month
Club, which had not selected a novel written by a black author
since Richard Wright’s Native Son in 1940. And in 1981, Morrison
became the first African-American woman since Zora Neale
Hurston in 1943 to appear on the cover of Time magazine.
Morrison has held teaching posts at Yale, Bard College, and
Rutgers, among others. She held the Albert Schweitzer Chair in the
Humanities at the State University of New York for six years. In
1990, she delivered the Clark Lectures at Trinity College,
Cambridge, and the Massey Lectures at Harvard. In addition to re-
ceiving honorary degrees from many prestigious institutions, in-
cluding Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth, Sarah Lawrence, and Brown,
she is the recipient of numerous awards: She was named
Distinguished Writer of 1978 by the American Academy of Arts
and Letters; in 1980, she was appointed to the National Council on
the Arts by former President Carter; the following year, in 1981,
she was elected to the American Academy and Institute of Arts and
Letters, the Writer’s Guild, and the Author’s League. In 1988, she
was named as a member of the Helsinki Watch Committee and
won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for her fourth novel, Beloved. And
in 1989, she won the Modern Language Association of America’s
Commonwealth Award in Literature. That same year, she accepted
the Robert F. Goheen Professor in the Humanities Council at
Princeton University, where she holds a joint appointment in
African studies, creative writing, and women’s studies.
Song of Solomon • xxxx-x/1 • Proof 1 • DMoore • 4/5/99 • p.8 Song of S
9
Renowned for her detailed imagery and visual language, her
powerful metaphors, her “righting” of black history, and her inim-
itable gift of fusing fantasy and reality, Morrison, in addition to her
novels, is the author of numerous works of nonfiction, including a
landmark essay, “Unspeakable Things Unspoken: The Afro-
American Presence in American Literature,” and Playing in the
Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (1992), a book of liter-
ary criticism that explores the way white authors deliberately and
systematically exclude blacks from their works. She is also the au-
thor of a play, Dreaming Emmett, which focuses on the murder of a
black urban youth who travels to Mississippi in 1955, and a song
cycle, “Honey and Rue,” which won the New York State
Governor’s Art Award in 1986. She is the editor of several books,
including Race-ing Justice, En-gendering Power, a collection of essays
on the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill controversy, and Birth of a
Nation’hood.
In her multiple roles as writer, editor, educator, scholar, par-
ent, and activist, Morrison has consistently demonstrated her com-
mitment to black literature and culture. Speaking of her concern
for black people, who provide the catalyst for her art and activism,
she has said, “If anything I do, in the way of writing novels or
whatever I write, isn’t about the village or the community or about
you, then it isn’t about anything. I am not interested in indulging
myself in some private exercise of my imagination.”
INTRODUCTION TO THE NOVEL
Song of Solomon is Morrison’s third novel and one of her most
commercially successful. Published in 1977, the novel—tentatively
titled Milkman Dead—was condensed in Redbook.It was later cho-
sen as a main selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club, which had
not selected a novel written by a black author since Richard
Wright’s Native Sonin 1940. The same month in which it was pub-
lished by Knopf, Song of Solomon was sold to New American
Library, a paperback publisher, for an estimated $115,000 and
quickly became a bestseller. Well over half a million copies are
now in print, and translation rights have been sold in more than
ten countries. The novel won fiction awards from the National
Song of Solomon • xxxx-x/1 • Proof 1 • DMoore • 4/5/99 • p.9