Flying Away

The biggest theme throughout the book is flying. It represents liberation from one's situation and Milkman is shown throughout the book to be slowly edging towards that goal of flying away from his immaturity and father. Its not only Milkman we see flying, we also see the myth of Milkman's great grandfather flying away. For Milkman, flying away meant leaving Michigan and discovering his past so that he would have a chance to finally develop into an adult. For Soloman flying away meant escaping his slave masters and returning to Africa. As you can see flying away is very beneficial to Milkman and Soloman but when it comes to the women that love them it isn't. Hagar and Ryna, Milkman's and Soloman's lovers were abandoned.

When Soloman flew away, he left his wife and children behind in slavery and tasked Ryna with raising their 21 children. This is obviously unfair to Ryna and so she ended up going mad. Even though it was Soloman who abandoned Ryna, he ended up being the hero of the community because he was able to escape slavery. Songs were written about him while Ryna was remembered as a crazy woman. This shows how although Soloman benefited from the flight away from slavery, he ultimately screwed it up for his partner, a similar situation that can be seen in Milkman's story.

I would say Milkman's flight started when he first left Michigan to search for gold and later his identity. Similar to Soloman, he also left a woman behind, Hagar. After leaving, Hagar goes crazy and dies from it. While Milkman found out about his ancestry and got more confidence, Hagar was suffering at home. These two situations of men show that although it is liberating for men to fly away, it is the women who face the consequences.

Comments

  1. blogged downDecember 19, 2017 at 10:33 AM

    This is a very interesting comparison. I definitely see the similarities between the two, and I think that these two parallels are essential to Toni Morrison's story. As you said, Hagar was abandoned after Milkman left to search for the gold, but we also see this abandonment going back farther in the book than when Milkman physically left Michigan. When Milkman unceremoniously breaks up with Hagar and abandons their relationship this also drives Hagar into madness. I think that these two are also slightly different as Ryna going crazy can also be attributed to the responsibility left on her after she was abandoned while for Hagar it mostly seems to be the "crazy love" we talked about in class. Very interesting post!

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  2. Nathalie SteinDecember 19, 2017 at 5:32 PM

    It's interesting to look at the impact of the men's flight (/journey to independence) on the women around them. Milkman using the women in his life as a crutch to allow him to do basically whatever he wants is a theme throughout the novel, and to be honest I think the fact that he doesn't even consider this shows that he hasn't changed as much as one might think. I think that while Hagar and Ryna definitely share some similarities, I would draw a parallel more between Ryna and Ruth, Lena, and First Corinthians. While Hagar definitely suffered because of Milkman's actions, it's his mother and sisters who have to continue keeping the household going and taking care of cooking, cleaning etc so that Milkman can pursue his quest. In both the cases of Milkman and Solomon, their achievement of this sort of enlightenment is contingent upon leaving the responsibilities of day-to-day life on the women they leave behind.

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  3. Abraham HanDecember 20, 2017 at 3:52 PM

    Very interesting post! I definitely agree with you in that it is the women that suffer from the men that "fly". I think this is in part because Milkman's flight came from his journey of self-discovery. While in comparison, in the first part of the novel we read about how Milkman feels trapped and grounded because of the other people that want his life (seen in Guitar's explanation, and Pilate's intervention in the confrontation between Hagar and Ruth). Therefore because those who want his life, also in part depends on it, they suffer as Milkman has found a new sense of 'self' in his flight and is finally free from their respective influence they had on Milkman.

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  4. MitchellDecember 21, 2017 at 10:43 AM

    You're misspelling "Solomon" in this post, but your rendering of the name as "Soloman" draws out a pun that I've never considered before, and which is relevant to your comments on the ambiguity of flight in the novel: Solomon's flight from the ledge is a *solo* flight, he's a solo-man taking off and leaving his responsibilities behind, along with slavery. It's a stirring image of a heroic bid for freedom, a transcendence of the bounds of earthly circumstances, but it's also an abandonment. He is a solo-man, with questionable ties to the community. Is this how we see Milkman at the end? Has he become a solo-man? He does sing the "song of Solomon" at the ending, cradling the dying Pilate, as a solo. And he does leap toward Guitar completely on his own strength, a challenge that hasn't been handed to him by his father. Hmm...

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  5. NishantDecember 21, 2017 at 5:38 PM

    I too felt that the men ‘flying away’ leaving their women with the responsibility of raising the family, with children experiencing the consequences of the absence of a father at home is not really heroic. Solomon would have been a better hero in my mind, and worth being immortalized by a legend, if he took Ryna and their 21 children along with him when he flew away to escape slavery, although I suppose that would have been much more difficult to say the least.

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