A Analysis of the Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison

In the novel Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison obsesses over the sensual memories in her writing. She uses this type of memory to show how and why certain characters remember specific events and details. Different characters remember in a variety of ways throughout the story. Pilate is a very sensual character; she makes wine and does not wear and shoes, both of which are very sensual things. Remembering details and events are a big part of her life and who she is.

Other characters remember in different ways, or are reluctant to remembering at all. The men in the village of Southside are reminded of certain things, and think certain ideas because of a smell. Milkman and Macon Dead are both reluctant to remembering and are sparse in their memories, but all of the characters use sensual memory as a way of remembering. I think she uses this method to help the reader become closer and be able to connect more with the characters.

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Everyone has some form of a sensual memory. 

We can all relate to remembering things because of a particular smell or hearing a certain sound. Morrison tries to capture this type of remembering in her writing and allow the characters to have the same experiences.

Taste is an especially strong form of sensual memory. The tastes of certain foods can remind a person of particular point in time and place. When I experience the savory taste of a roasted turkey, it takes me back to all the Thanksgivings that I have spent at my aunt and uncles house.

Macon Dead usually is very sparse with his memories and uses them to hurt others. Here the author here has Macon remembering a very good and sensual memory about Pilate and his first day out. I think that she does this to stress how important the effect of a sensual memory is. Macon remembering all these specific details about this day shows that these things were important to him.

The first day out was joyous for them. They ate raspberries and apples; they took off their shoes and let the dewy grass and sun-warmed dirt soothe their feet. At night they slept in a haystack, so grateful for open air even the field mice and the ticks were welcome bedmates. (p. 168)

Macons sensual memory of Pilate and he focused here on the way the raspberries and apples tasted, the way the dewy grass and warm dirt soothed them on that day, and what they had to sleep in. They were not used to being locked up in the house. The two of them were free spirits and so these day-by-day ordinary things were something special to them on that particular day and those are the precise details that they remember about their first day of freedom.

Hearing a sound can take you back to a time long ago in your life. As Milkman is sitting and watching the children playing and hearing them sing their rhymes, he starts to think back to his own child hood. Seeing the children play and hear their cries of joy and laughter triggers his memory back to when he was a child.

Milkman watched the children. Hed never played like that as a child. As soon as he got up off his knees at the windowsill, grieving because he could not fly, and went off to school, his velvet suit separated him from the other children. White and black thought he was a riot and went out of their way to laugh at him and see to it that he had no lunch to eat, nor any crayons, nor ever got through the line to the toilet or the water fountain. (p. 264)

Milkman was different in school. He was different from the whites because he was black, and he was different from the blacks because his family had money. More in general though, he was different from everyone else because he remembers having to wear a velvet suit. Remembering this velvet suit, and hearing the children around him playing their games, sparked him into remembering other details about his school days. He remembers how it was the suit that first separated him from the other kids and how the students would make sure that he never got crayons, lunch, or a drink of water. I think that the sound of the children laughing that he was watching play inspired the remembrance of his schoolmates laughing at him.

Throughout the whole novel, Morrison makes a strong reference on the scent of a ginger like smell throughout the air. She incessantly creates the ginger smell through out the story and how it floats through the air and how the smell reminds you of something magical and fairy-tale like.

On autumn nights in some parts of the city, the wind from the lake brings a sweetish smell to shore. An odor like crystallized ginger, or sweet iced tea with dark clove floating in it. There is no explanation for the smell either Yet there was this heavy spice-sweet smell that made you think of the East and striped tents and the sha-sha-sha of leg bracelets. The people who lived near the lake hadnt noticed the smell for a long time now because when air conditioners came, they shut their windows and slept a light surface sleep under the motors drone. (p. 184)

Morrison helps create what she wants you to think of when you imagine this ginger smell. She wants you to think of an autumn night, the East, and to picture in your mind a sweet iced tea. She wants you to hear the sha-sha-sha of bracelets. She is trying to pull the reader in closer to the characters world. Its smell is something that makes you think of a fairy tale like Hansel and Gretel and the magical gingerbread house that they end up at. The people who live at the lake have grown accustom to this sweet spice smell in the air.

Morrison helps you to see all of this in your mind. All the details that she gives, like the crystallized ginger, and the sweet iced tea with a dark clove floating is to help you picture this better in your mind and make it so that you can almost smell this scent in the air as you are reading, just like the characters do as they are remembering.

The smell of this sweet spice in the air means different things to different people. The different visions that people experience when smelling, hearing, or feeling something is what causes sensual memories to be special and unique. If I am to smell Lady Stetson perfume, I am apt to picture my mother and think about times I have spent with her, whereas to someone else, they will probably not think of my mother. They may not have a memory at all, or it may recall an entirely different remembrance.

So the ginger blew unnoticed through the trees, around trees over roofs, until, thinned out and weakened a little, it reached Southside The two men standing near the pines on Darling Street right near the brown house where the wine drinkers went could smell the air, but they didnt think of ginger. Each thought it was the way freedom smelled, or justice, or luxury, or vengeance. (p. 184-185)

In Southside, where the smell was scarcely present, it blew around and people who noticed it had different ideas of what it was. Some felt that it was the smell of luxury and freedom. Others believed that it was the smell of vengeance and justice. Freedom and luxury and things that whites have in the novel, except for the Deads. Vengeance and justice is something that the blacks are striving for throughout the novel. The smell of this ginger in the air reminds them of this and makes them hungry for the fairness and revenge that they think they equally have deserved.

The time, at which a certain incident is happening, one may not recognize that a sensual memory is being formed. Pilate squatted down and opened the sack while Milkman dug. A deep sigh escaped from the sack and the wind turned chill. Ginger, a spicy sugared ginger smell, enveloped them. Pilate laid the bones carefully into the small grave. Milkman heaped dirt over them and packed it down with the back of his shovel. (p. 335)

The smell of the ginger that envelops them while performing their task could cause both Pilate and Milkmans minds to produce a sensual memory. When they smell the spicy sugared aroma again they will think of the day they were together and buried Jakes bones. For Pilate the scent could represent a type of freedom and completion. She is free from the burden of having to carry around Jakes bones and she has completed the task of making sure that he was properly buried.

The effects of a sensual memory can bring the reader closer to the characters because the author has each character use their memories differently. The men from Southside, Macon, Pilate and Milkman all remember different things, but they are all connected by sensual form that their memories are triggered by. Sounds, smells, and what they feel can cause them to remember different experiences from their past, and in this way, Toni Morrison connects these characters and allows the reader to become closer to them.