My deep affection and appreciation for this novel primarily
stemmed from the way that it depicted love. Not only did it depict a more traditional,
stereotypical “We were born for each other” teen-romance kind of affectionate
romantic love (Milkman with the girl in part 2) but it also portrayed many many
different kinds of love. Each and every character in the novel loves someone or
something; Macon Dead loves money, power, and status, Hagar holds an obsessive
love for Milkman, there’s Lena’s reverse maternal love, to Guitar’s sociopathic
love for ‘all black people’, etc. It was beautiful how Morrison interwove all
these characters together tangling them in love for different things each with
unique motives and desires (basically Morrison is just friggin amazing and jesus
would I like to gush about how this novel is so amazing but I can’t because
that would take a whole lot of time and space, which I don’t have, so this parenthesis
is all I get).
What was particularly interesting about the depictions of
love however was the manifestations of the character’s love in the form of craziness. Craziness is defined as “mad,
wild, or erratic behavior or nature” by the Oxford English Dictionary. There
are many instances of extreme behavior that stems from almost every character
in the novel. Some cases would be Pilate’s protective love causing Pilate to almost
commit murder, Hagar’s obvious crazed state in which her obsessive love cause
her to take extreme crazy action to bring attention to herself from Milkman,
Macon Dead’s greed/love for money to tell his son to commit burglary to his own
sister. There are so many cases of “crazy” actions driven by love in the novel
that it would be very hard to list them all. What I liked about these extreme forms
of love was just how honest and human that they were. Sure the “craziness” was
in fact quite extreme, and the way that every
character had shown this sort of extreme “craziness” at least once seems like
an unlikely occurrence in real life. But once again, the sheer honesty of the craziness
felt as though it was true to heart, and as if it were a classic portrait of
human irrationality. Fueled by strong emotion, each had a sort of charm,
brought a strong feeling of empathy. However, there is one that was extremely striking
to me: Milkman’s “crazy” suicide.
First off, I would like to state that the way that I interpreted
the “flight” at the end was that Milkman committed suicide. I think that it was
a way to face death on his own terms, and to avoid living a life of cat and
mouse, forever being hunted until he is eventually caught by Guitar. To
elaborate on the reason for the suicide I believe it was because he came to love
his life so much, he wanted to preserve it through his death.
We discussed how Milkman goes through a kind of
traditional hero’s journey in the second part of the novel. Thus, by the end Milkman
has gone through a journey which has caused a profound sense of self-discovery
and purpose. In contrast to the first part of the novel Milkman seems as though
he finally is enjoying life, seen through his newfound appreciation for the
things he took for granted: his parents, strangers, the earth itself, and etc. I
think that by the end of the novel, Milkman is in love with the new freedom in
his life. Finally finding his sense of self-identity, Milkman sheds his father’s
overbearing influence and lives life for himself. This is the true “flight”
that he had been looking for. Therefore, by the end of the novel, as Guitar threatens
this freedom, Milkman choses rather to abandon his life to preserve his
freedom. Milkman’s love of freedom drive him to make the crazy decision to end
his life.
This is the way that I interpreted the ending, however
there are definitely many other ways to also interpret the ending. I definitely
would’ve like to pursue more about Milkman’s love of flight from an early age, symbolic
of Milkman’s desire for freedom, however I think that that could be another blog
post in it of itself. All in all, I definitely like the way that Morrison
portrays love, and the irrational lengths that humans go because of that love,
often times far enough to be called crazy.
What do you think? Any other interesting examples of craziness?
Other interpretations of the ending? Perhaps disagreements with the obsessive
love?
I was puzzled initially by your reference to the girl in part 2 as an example of Milkman falling in love--Sweet is clearly a prostitute of some kind (the guys tip him off, and he pays her at the end of their first encounter), and she's initially presented almost as a "prize" for him passing the test of his night out in the woods. But something curious does happen with this interaction, and you're right that, by the time Milkman takes her swimming, they seem to be more like teenagers in love than a prostitute-client relationship. And there is a remarkable passage near the end of their first night together, which closes chapter 11: for the first time, we see Milkman in a *mutual* relationship with a woman, as we get him offering to bathe her, and then a litany of shared favors for one another ("She put salve on his face. He washed her hair," etc.). We never see anything so mutual in Milkman's interactions with Hagar, and even though this passage ends with him paying her, it does somehow seem like an evolution in Milkman's emotional maturity.
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree that Milkman's leap at the end of the novel is him trying to preserve his freedom. Even if he dies, he wants to die on his own terms. No "your day has come" or whatever; Milkman's, as you said, newfound appreciation for things and freedom aren't things that he wants forcibly taken away. I think part of this decision also comes from Pilate's love (for Milkman and also people in general). I don't see it as a coincidence that Milkman comes to this resolution immediately after her death.
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