Same problem as Katie....Too many characters.

So according to google blogs, there is a 4,086 character limit. And since I posted later than everyone else, I had a lot of posts to comment on so my blog post was super long. As a result, I went over that limit. And here is the super long post:

Haley, you pretty much hit the nail on the head and used the word boon (plus 5 brownie points).

The only point I would disagree with would be the unhealable wound. I dont think it was those three events that represented Milkman's loss of innocence. Instead, I think Jordan is correct in saying that Milkman's loss of innocence was Hagar's death. It was an event that cannot be reversed (considering Hagar was dead) and although it did not immediately affect Milkman, it eventually caused him to change his actions. (and realize that making girls go crazy is not the way to live).

Katie, of course your post was too many characters. You wrote so much and somehow even changed the font. I agree with your point that the role of women was to show the value/ state of inner strength. However, this inner strength was not shown through a measure of love. Instead, the inner strength was shown through the woman's ability to stand up to men. (You did briefly mention this point...). Clearly, the strongest woman in the book, Pilate, was free of any ties to males. This immediately sends a message that woman are the most powerful when they are independent. Then, her character foil, Ruth (as you pointed out), was the weakest because she was tied to two males, her father and Macon Dead (Milkman's dad). The other female characters in the novel fit into this spectrum based on their relation to male characters. Sweet is another powerful woman because she is treated as an equal by Milkman; Milkman gives her a bath and then she gives him a bath. The same action is done to both characters. But enough about the female characters, onto the archetypes (I am going to try to talk about Archetypes that were not talked about by anyone else)

Some character archetypes do not apply to Songs of Solomon, such as the Friendly Beast (Milkman was no Pochaontas), the Devil figure (No character was continuously bad or tempted Milkman down the wrong path), or the Creature of Nightmare (No night on Bald Mountain scenes in the this book). That said, there were many archetypes.

The Platonic Ideal- This concept of inspiration woman can be seen in Circe. She is a lady who is extremely old and surrounding by thousands of mythical dogs that are eating each other. However, she leads Milkman to the right path of visiting Shalimar. This visiting of Shalimar eventually leads to Milkman discovering his whole past and eventually reaching his ULTIMATE BOON a.k.a completing his journey.

The Outcast- In a way, Milkman can be seen as the outcast of his town and on a larger scale, his race. He was a wealthy black man and as such, he was excluded, specially by Guitar, from his community. This ownership of wealth was his imagined crime against the black community and as a result, "The Seven Days", mainly Guitar, was going to kill him. Milkman, as an outcast, wanders from town to town looking for his past and for a society that will accept him.

Water vs Desert- This contrast is seen through the passages describing the Dead's Beach house/beach trip. The words describing the beach were more lively and each of the children, Milkman and his two sisters, felt more alive at the beach. However, as they drove back in through the town, the sentence structure in the passage became longer and started to drag on. This represents the water and life at the beach contrasted by the death of the town. Another example of water representing a rebirth was Milkman's journey to Circe's house. In this journey, he has to cross a river in the middle of the forest. While crossing, he slips and his head falls under water representing a rebirth or baptism. Then, at Circe's house, he becomes re-inspired in his journey for his family's history by being pointed in the right direction.

On a completely unrelated side note, I just wanted to give credit to Mrs. Siegel's pen trick. The trick is to hold a pen when reading anything because this makes the reader seem more intellectual. Well, I was a skeptic but today I was reading something while holding a pen and some random stranger came over to me and started complimenting me on how smart and intelligent I looked.....basically, the trick works. ALWAYS HOLD A PEN WHILE READING.