Ponderings of a Self-Loathing Woman On An Unsent Postcard

Doesn't he know "black women want your whole self"?! "Why [doesn't] he understand me"?! I don't want him to "go anywhere I ain't "or love anything on earth but me" - is that too much to ask?! He hasn't given me anything but fake love for sex and pleasure. He doesn't know who I am or understand me. He does not truly love me - he left me. Dumped me with a letter that said "thank you"! He thanked me for making him happy?! He's grateful?!

Don't you see? That's why I had to stalk him and try to kill him. He dumped me! He used me! He was the only thing I had in my life that made me feel like I was loved, special, and wanted. When he left me, I realized just how worthless I am. I realized how ugly and unwanted I am. I realized that no man could ever want me, and I shall die alone. Milkman has the same hair as me, but he doesn't like mine. He wants to escape that kind of hair. "He likes silky hair." He likes "curly, wavy, silky hair. He doesn't like mine." That has to be why he left me right? I'm not beautiful enough? Or maybe I'm not white enough. I thought mango tango, sunny glow, and jungle red could fix this. I thought they would make me prettier - and lighter. But they just highlighted my flaws. I saw myself in Pilate and Reba's eyes. They thought I looked foolish, heartbroken, and desperate. Well that's because I am! I just want Milkman to love me! How can he not love his own cousin?! I gave myself to him and he tossed me to the curb like a bag of trash!

But as angry as I was and still am, I couldn't kill him. His face is still so beautiful. The killing attempts are simply an excuse to get close to him and pretend like I hate him for what he did. I do hate him, but even more than that, I just don't want to let him go. I want him to to be mine! I want to scare him, yes, but I could never hurt my baby. I own him. I consume his thoughts and his nightmares, and that was my plan all along. That is what I want. If he doesn't want me, he surely won't forget me.

Every time I hold that knife inches from his body, I own him. I have him wrapped around my finger. He can't do anything but be close to me and hold his breath in my presence. And that is always enough for me.

But Milkman still hates the way I look. He likes "lemon-colored skin" and "penny colored hair." I am right for him, but I hate myself for not being right for him! If he can't see how right I am, then he can't have me. I will leave this world - dead from a broken heart. I will die with the mango tango, sunny glow, and jungle red on my face so maybe God will think I'm beautiful. 

~ Hagar

Attempting to Read the Inner Pockets of Toni Morrison's Mind

As indicated by the title of this post, I am going to attempt to analyze one of the big decisions Toni Morrison had to make in the writing of The Song of Solomon. The reason I want to analyze this decision, is because the decision she made strayed from the *stereotypical definition of a novel and what most authors choose to do.* But let's face it, if anyone were to stray from the norm, it'd be her since she's pretty much a genius. It worked for her too, because she won every award possible for the novel, and English classes around the world read her book. This "decision" that I'm referring to is her decision to make the main character (Milkman) somewhat annoying, extremely oblivious, profoundly stupid, and quite unlikable to the reader. Being the main character, the reader encounters Milkman the most, so why would Toni (yes we are totally on a first name basis with each other) make Milkman so annoying and unlikable to read about? If she wasn't thee Toni Morrison, no one would read the book then... right? Milkman would immediately annoy readers and deter them from the book, causing them to eventually abandon it altogether. So why does Milkman as a main character work in The Song of Solomon for Toni Morrison? Is it just because of Toni Morrison's acclaim? Do people just trick their minds into thinking the book has to be good because it was written by her? We may never know for sure, but some theorizing never hurt anyone, in fact I hope it serves to satisfy some curiosity.

Before I begin to analyze, I must clarify and explain. You may be wondering how I thought to even analyze this. How did this particular thought even enter my mind? Well it goes back to the *stereotypical definition of a novel. In the process of planning to write a novel in my creative writing class, we had to learn about what makes a "good novel" good and a "bad novel" bad. We had to think about novels we'd previously read and what we liked and disliked about them. Then, in groups we had to create two lists; one list consisting of the elements of a good novel, and one list consisting of the elements of a bad novel. As you can probably guess by now, one of the main elements that the majority of the groups included on the "Elements of Good Novels List" was a likable main character! I came into AP English the next day, and my group started recapping the chapter we read the night before for homework. I can't remember the exact chapter, (mind you this happened a few times in my group) but they immediately stated how much they disliked Milkman, and POOF - this idea came to me. Milkman doesn't fit the stereotype for main characters and I intend to theorize about why.

First, let me remind you how annoying Milkman can be in case you forgot. Here are just a few examples of some really stupid things Milkman has done throughout the course of the novel.

1. Milkman breaks up with Hagar through a letter! This is equivalent at this time to being "dumped by text"! He also includes money in the letter as if he's trying to buy her tranquility and ignornace over the fact that he just dumped her through a letter.

Let me include a specific excerpt of the letter that was included in the book to show how ridiculous this really was. Milkman ENDED the letter with this; Also, I want to thank you. Thank you for all you have meant to me. For making me happy all these years. I am signing this letter with love, of course but more than that, with gratitude. This of course was followed by a wad of cash stuck at the bottom - because duh, Milkman is GRATEFUL!

2. Another more minor example is this quote that really just speaks for itself.

Example of Pure Stupidity #107

"There he saw a crude footpath he might have found earlier if he had not been so hasty."

3. The next example is when Milkman receives the message left for him by Guitar at the general store. He goes in circles thinking about what Guitar could've meant by "good luck" and "your day was sure coming" and concludes with the LEAST PLAUSIBLE possibility. He concludes that "Guitar needed to find [him] and he needed help" indicating that Guitar is in some sort of trouble. Yeah right. Guitar does need to find you Milkman, but only so you can help him kill you!

4. Don't forget the little fact that Milkman decided to go hunting with a group of men that were angry with him, teasing him, picking fights with him, and trying to KILL him! He then puts himself in the position where he is surrounded by these men while they have GUNS! He has never shot a gun in his life, but he thinks this is a good idea?! Not to mention that Guitar is still out there, and we all know what happens with that.

So hopefully you at least somewhat agree that compared to most main characters, Milkman is so annoying, extremely oblivious, profoundly stupid, and quite unlikable to the reader. Now the question is... why?

Here is my first thought. In a good novel, the main character should come to some realizations and/or show some growth. Therefore, by making Milkman so extremely oblivious, Toni allows him to have extensive room for growth and a huge potential to come to realizations. Some authors pull this off without making the main character extremely oblivious or annoying, but Toni had a vision for Milkman and she chose to make him that way in the novel. But not only does Milkman have a lot of room for growth, but everything else in the story stems from his bad or stupid decisions because he is the main character. He stirs up conflict with almost every other character in the novel, and conflict is also an element of a good novel. If you have no conflict, you have no story, or you have a really boring story. So somehow, Toni took out the element of a likable main character, but inserted twice the element of conflict to balance it out, and it worked!

Another reason I think Toni might've chosen to make Milkman well... Milkman is that I think she was  trying to use reverse psychology on us readers. If you think about it, it's kind of worked. We get so annoyed by Milkman and so confused as to why he does the things he does, that we actually begin to root for him and want to see him change. This intrigue is what causes us to keep reading despite our confusion and annoyance. Toni has written it so the potential happy ending of this book becomes Milkman finding who he is, understanding society, hopefully becoming more mature, and learning to be thoughtful and rational. Since human nature naturally wants a happy ending, we subconsciously (yes I just tied back to subliminal messaging) keep reading without knowing why.

Hopefully these theories and insights make you feel a little more sympathetic towards Milkman. It not, hopefully they help you understand our friend Toni's decision a little bit better, satisfying the curiosity I raised by my questions.

Pickpocketed Identities

What I find the most interesting in Song of Solomon is how the characters are named and the meanings behind their names. As a writer myself, I love considering every little detail (like the meaning of a name) when I write my own characters. Just recently I was trying to come up with a name for a character in my novel that I'm writing for my creative writing class, and I literally searched for names that had the meaning I was looking for. This is so fun to do as an author, because you hope eventually, you will have some smart readers that discover your secret. You hope that they figure out that the characters' names mean something and tell about who the character is. What is interesting with Song of Solomon though, is that Toni Morrison outright tells us how the characters are named, saying all their names "come from the bible" and sometimes even by "blind selection" if the namers were illiterate for instance. So Morrison doesn't hide the fact that all the characters' names are names that can be found in the bible (with a few exceptions), and the people of the bible's identities have been

pick-pocketed and given to her characters from the reader. What she doesn't say though, is if as the author, she gave certain characters their specific names from the bible for specific reasons. Somehow I have a hunch that she did. We already learned the story behind Guitar's name since his doesn't come from the bible, and we learned the significance of Pilate's name this past week in class. Some implied foreshadowing on our parts led us to believe that Pilate's name will have even more meaning, in addition to the irony it already contains, as we read further. This got me to wondering if all the other character names extracted from the bible shape the character's roles in the story according to their meanings as well. Let's take a look at Hagar, Reba, First Corinthians and Magdalene.

Starting with Hagar, I didn't even have to do much digging, and I was shocked at what I uncovered! Hagar from the bible lived with a couple named Abraham and Sarah and acted as Abraham's concubine - a woman that has sex with someone that she in not legally married to and possibly cannot get married to. This is precisely what Hagar is to Milkman in the novel! In Hagar from the bible's case, she could not marry Abraham because he was already married to Sarah. In Hagar from the novel's case, she cannot marry Milkman because they are technically cousins. Hagar from the bible also longed for a relationship like what we have seen Hagar from the novel seem to do. In the bible though, it turns out that Hagar's most intimate relationship is with God. Will we see Hagar and Pilate's relationship develop more? Hagar from the bible also got pregnant with Abraham because she was acting as a surrogate for Sarah who could not conceive, but desperately wanted a kid. Please tell me that Milkman doesn't get Hagar pregnant.

Next we have Reba (short for Rebekah). I skimmed several super long articles about Rebekah in the bible, and really couldn't find anything to connect her to Reba in the novel. Her time in the bible is rather extensive, as evidenced by the long articles about her, so she must've been important and influential, but how does this connect to Reba - if it does at all? Reba is one of the main characters in the book since she is part of the Dead family, so I think it is safe to say a lot more is to come from her. The only thing I found is that Rebekah saves one of her son's lives in the bible. Will Reba have to save Hagar's life? So far in the novel, we haven't been given any indication that Hagar will die. Grasping at straws here, I looked up the literal definition of Rebekah and it literally means "to captivate." So far I haven't found Reba's role in the novel super captivating, but like I said, I think we can expect a lot more from her. In the bible Rebekah is captivating with her beauty. All the articles I read about Rebekah made a point to emphasize that she was this gorgeous woman. I don't feel like it is emphasized in the novel that Reba is beautiful, but I assume she is because she is the daughter of Pilate who we know a little bit more about. We also know that Hagar is beautiful (at least to Milkman) and Reba is her mother.

First Corinthians is a little different because she is named after a book in the bible, rather than an individual. Could this alone somehow be significant? In thinking about that question, I was immediately taken back to when Freddie told Milkman to "ask Corinthians" about the recent murders. We are given the impression that Corinthians knows a lot more than the rest of the characters. So could her name imply that she knows a large, book-size amount of knowledge compared to the other characters? She does seem to be very smart, even informing her father that "negroes don't like water." Additionally, the book of First Corinthians addresses many issues such as lawsuits, sexual immortality, and arguments among the different people and groups in the bible. This further confirms the theory that Corinthians seems to know "the town gossip" if you will, that includes issues such as the book of First Corinthians in the bible does. The overall community in the bible actually had a negative impact on the Corinthian church, which leads me to believe that Corinthians may be negatively impacted by all that she knows. There is something quite eerie and disturbing about the fact that she knows something about murders and she's just a young child. That can't be good for her young mind. 

All I am really able to provide about Magdalene is some insightful foreshadowing because she hasn't played a very big role in the novel thus far, and therefore we don't know much about her. Could this be because her role will be huge later? Mary Magdalene in the bible was one of Jesus' most devoted and loyal followers. She was the first one to see Jesus' empty tomb, and therefore the first to know of His resurrection. She was then able to share that news with everyone. If Pilate is still acting as God in the novel, will Magdalene become closer with her? Will Pilate die like we have inferred and Magdalene be the first to find her and share the news?

Some of these are purely inferences or speculations, but I do think they help make the future reading we have ahead of us seem much more interesting. Toni Morrison is just amazingly good at developing the novel slowly and keeping the readers intrigued by not giving away too much information. 

Tucked in My Mind's Back Pocket

Tucked in my mind's back pocket, there is one last afterthought about Maus that I didn't get to share in the socratic seminar... so here it is.

Some may claim that Maus ended because Vladek died, and while that is true, Art could've added more. Art could've made up a bunch more and never told us when Vladek died in relationship to the story. Or, Art could've ended the story where he did, but added a bunch of his own commentary and afterthoughts.


Instead, Art shows a gravestone with the name Spiegelman at the top and the name Vladek underneath. This serves to remind the remind the readers that Vladek was a Spiegelman too - so technically his name is also on the cover of the book. Underneath the gravestone is Art's name and the years that make up the time in which he worked on and completed Maus. Art includes the dates after the gravestone to show that Vladek died, and immediately after, he ended the story.

I find this really touching and honorable on Art's part. Even though Art and Vladek didn't have the best father-son relationship, Art took every single measure possible to make sure his father's story was told accurately and honored properly. He even went through all the trouble of recording Vladek to include what he said verbatim. But the most important measure was this ending, because it truly represents the notion that Art believed he was just the middle man between Vladek's words and the page. It wasn't Art's story to tell - it was Vladek's, and Art shows that he knew that full well and believed that wholeheartedly through the ending he chose. When Vladek's story ended (literally), so did the book, because Art knew that adding his own commentary or afterthoughts would've tarnished Vladek's story.

This could also be why, in the book, Artie is uncomfortable with all the press for Maus. It is precisely because he feels guilty for essentially building his career off of dead bodies, but also off of his father's story and not his own.

That is why I think that the ending is so important - it gives credit where credit is due. Art literally puts his name under Vladek's to not only represent the fact that Vladek was a Spiegelman, but to represent the fact that he was the superior Spiegelman in the project that was Maus. This not only honors Vladek, but probably also gave Art some closure in knowing that the world is now privy to the true author of Maus.

Packed Pocket-Size Panels

Everything in Maus has meaning. Spiegelman uses a variety of literary techniques to symbolically yet powerfully tell the story of the Holocaust. Specifically, through the strategic placements, sizes, and representations of symbols, Spiegelman emphasizes their importance and creates a relationship between the characters and the readers.  

Let's unpack all the hidden meanings in the panels on pages 32-33 in chapter 2 of volume 1. The chapter is titled The Honeymoon and starts with an image of a line of mice looking at a flag with a swastika on it, but the flag is folded. Because of the folds, you can't see the the full swastika, which represents that at this point, the Jews don't yet know their fate. They are still not privy to the full picture that awaits them. The title is also a symbolic way of saying that this was still a good time, or rather a time where the Jews were still blindsided by awe and the sense of elation at the unfamiliarity of change in the treatment of Jews now occurring in the war. A honeymoon, or even more so the honeymoon phase, is a lot like that because the marriage or relationship is still new and unfamiliar, thus making it exciting, and yet when each person gets settled in and comfortable, it can often become tragic or toxic and fall apart.

Turn to page 32, and the first thing the reader sees is a train seemingly in the distance, which simply represents the fact that the Jews are traveling so they are now further away. The odd thing though is that the train is going in the opposite direction of the way the reader reads. This makes it seem like the train is going backwards, but of more importance is the fact that because the train is oriented this way, the smoke is going forward. This is a symbol for the smoke and gas from the gas chambers in which Jews were killed, representing that by being on the train, the Jews are getting closer to their final destination... death. The bridge that the train rides on also looks like gravestones if you look at the dark negative space. 

The next panels underneath the train show the mice within looking out the windows, while the panels themselves act like windows for the readers. Therefore, the reader is an onlooking observer looking in at the mice, while the mice simultaneously look out. This relationship created between the narrative and the real world is something Spiegelman constantly uses throughout the book to include the reader in the story and make it seem more real.  

Next comes the central and biggest panel on page 32, in which the reader sees the mice looking at a flag with a swastika on it, mirroring the opening picture of the chapter. I find two things about this panel very interesting: 

1. In the previous panel, it says "Every Jew from the train got very excited and frightened." 
2. In the central panel we are told that the swastika flag was "...hanging high in the center of town..."  

Number one is interesting because why would Jews be excited to see a Nazi flag? That just means Nazis are present there, and they are the enemy of the Jews. Instead, the purpose of this remark is to reiterate what the folded swastika flag in the opening picture of the chapter was supposed to represent - the fact that the Jews can't see the whole picture yet. Even in the central panel there is still a fold in the flag, continuing to partly obscure it from the Jews, which explains why they don't know whether to feel excited or frightened at the sight of it. They may know what the flag is even when slightly obscured, but a lot more of reality is still very obscure to them. 

Number 2 is interesting because it re-establishes the relationship created between the reader and the characters. By putting the swastika in the center of the page, Spielgelman lets the readers see the swastika from the same point of view as the mice, just on a smaller scale. The smaller scale may represent that to the reader, this is far away (or from a long time ago) and may have little meaning to them... but my next point describes what Spiegleman may have done in spite of a reader attempting to think that way.  

Take note that throughout the entirety of page 32, the mice's faces all point to the swastika, symbolically emphasizing that the swastika is the center of the war, and at or soon to be at the center of every Jews mind. Spielgelman may do this to emphasize the haunting presence of the swastika, justifying its importance to the reader.
 

Finally, on page 33 in four out of the six panels, the swastika seems to be in a spotlight, again reiterating how predominate it is. It is also always in the background of those panels, a symbolic way of representing that the Nazis were always there in the background, lurking and waiting to catch Jews. 

As you can see, even on just two pages, the panels are packed with symbols that are placed, sized, and represented in such ways that their importance is emphasized and they connect to the reader. The folds in the swastika flag, the way the mice's noses point towards the swastika, the way the swastika is in the background, all play a part in subtly and symbolically showing the reader what is important through their repeated messages. They all also involve the reader and place them in the story by making them see the story as if they are looking into windows or standing from afar.