초록 열기/닫기 버튼
Il-soo LeeThis essay focuses on the meaning of black ancestral legacy and the illumination of historical implication of its reclamation in Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon. In the novel, three generations in the Dead family have survived the heavily racist ridden history settling themselves down into a decent home. Nevertheless, the lives of the Deads symbolizes a historical phase where black people were submitted to ignominious white designation and tragically disinherited their ancestors' high-spirited labor. Milkman, realized on his journey tracing back to the ancestors' true legacy that his whole life was a sheer lack of his ancestors' hard earning independence. At the end of the journey, he seemed to eventually get to the ancestors' true legacy enabling his defected body to fly onto the air like legendary features of his ancestor, Solomon. The interpretation of his flying is allusive; it reads a determined disconnection from white reification to which all characters in Milkman's generation were involved to helpless degree. On the other hand, it implies the author's vision of bleak reality that there could be no solid future for Milkman's generation except for the suicidal consummation. Morrison bears witness to this historical conjunction of post 1968 generation in her novel and asks readers if there could exist a possibility for us to leap forward into a new being totally liberated from the effects of Western reification.
