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Gold represents Macon Jr.’s obsessive pursuit of wealth. Gold is utterly irresistible to men in the novel, who violate their principles in order to get it. For example, Milkman robs his aunt, Pilate, because he wants to be wealthy and independent.
Milkman tells Guitar about his plan to steal Pilate’s gold, and Guitar agrees to help him. … Later, when Milkman realizes that Guitar has agreed to steal the gold because he wants to use it to support the vigilante activities of the Seven Days, he becomes uneasy but feels he has gone too far to back out now.
Circe gives Milkman directions to Hunter’s Cave, where he secretly hopes to find the gold. However, when Milkman finally locates the cave, he discovers that there is no gold.
Out of fear, Macon killed the man. They discovered that the man had a stash of gold, and Macon wanted to take it, but Pilate prevented him from doing so. Macon left the cave, and when he returned both the gold and Pilate had disappeared.
The cops believe Pilate’s story, return the bundle to her, and let the two men go. Milkman recalls that on the ride back from the station, Pilate told Macon Jr. that she never took the gold, but instead came back to the cave three years after she and Macon Jr. parted to collect the bones of the dead white man.
In English-speaking culture, a milkman joke is a joke cycle exploiting fear of adultery and mistaken paternity. … As the milkman would visit the home at a time when the husband would be away at work, this created an opportune situation for adultery.
He hasn’t been able to eat sweets since he was little when his father was killed in a sawmill accident. As retribution, the white sawmill owner brought candy to the newly fatherless children and husbandless wife. As he relates this story, Guitar gets queasy and throws up next to a beauty shop.
Guitar accuses Milkman of stealing the gold from the cave and shipping it to Virginia. Although Milkman denies doing so, Guitar is convinced of Milkman’s treachery, announcing that he saw Milkman helping an old man lift a heavy crate onto a weighing platform back in Danville.
Milkman is good and drunk when he stumbles back home in the wee hours of the night, when his sister, Lena, tells him he’s peed on everything in the house. Milkman is confused. He tries to dismiss his sister, accuses her of being drunk herself.
When Milkman reaches the cave, all he finds inside are some boards and a tin cup. Milkman goes back to the highway and hitchhikes to the Danville bus station with a man named Fred Garnett. Milkman offers to pay the man for the ride, but Garnett does not take Milkman’s money and drives away, offended.
Milkman’s father and Ruth’s husband, also known as Macon Dead II. Traumatized by seeing his father murdered during a skirmish over the family farm, Macon Jr. has developed an obsession with becoming wealthy. In the process, he has become an emotionally dead slumlord.
The man gives him a coke, which Milkman wolfs down, and drops him off near the bus depot. Milkman tries to pay him for the ride and the coke, but the man is extremely offended and tells Milkman his name is Fred Garnett and that he can afford to give a stranger a ride and a coke every now and then.
The gold is also the object of misplaced contradictory desires: Macon wants it in order to take revenge on Pilate by whom he feels despoiled, Milkman to help him move away from his family, Guitar to finance the organization of the Seven Days.
Over the course of the novel, Milkman changes from a callow, selfish man, willing to do almost anything to gain independence from his family, into a deeply moral, selfless man who is almost completely indifferent to material things. Milkman both loves and hates his parents.
…he depends on Milkman. Milkman mentions to his father a green sack of money that Pilate keeps in her house without ever spending it – she calls it her “inheritance” –… ( Milkman meets Macon for lunch, where Macon tells him about his teenage years with Pilate.
He wants it because it would give him the freedom to break out of his father’s oppressive environment and allow him to find his own road in life. As Milkman’s quest progresses, the mythical world and the world of reality blend together.
Pilate lives and works on Lincoln’s farm with her father and brother.
Milkman mentions that he and Guitar were thrown in jail for two hours, because the sack they found contained human bones — Macon reveals that he used his money and influence to pay off the cops and free Guitar and Macon.
The milkman has been disappearing from daily life since the 1950s, when refrigerators started becoming more common in American homes. And the advent of cheap milk in grocery stores didn’t help much. … Since stay-at-home orders were implemented in mid-March, milk delivery companies have seen demand explode.
As Pilate’s father did not know how to read and write, he picked her name from the Bible based on the strength and beauty of the impression the…
Spiritually dead and mentally enslaved by apathy and materialism, Milkman embarks on a quest for his inheritance, which he initially believes to be Pilate’s gold. Instead, through a series of mishaps and coincidences, he finds himself on a spiritual quest for his identity.
The last time that Macon hits Ruth occurs when Milkman is 22 years old — and Milkman hits Macon back. Milkman is a mature young man and has been having sex for years. He sees his mother as a sad, weak woman taking care of small, weak things like flowers and goldfish.
In Song of Solomon, Guitar got his name as the result of wanting a guitar as a small child in Florida.
After one of the discussions, Guitar confides to Milkman that his father was killed in a sawmill accident, an incident that left him angry at his father’s white boss and white people in general. At age fourteen, one of Milkman’s legs grows shorter than the other and he masks the defect with a strut.
In a flashback to the beginning of Chapter 6, Guitar returns to his home to find Hagar in a state of shock following her aborted attempt to kill Milkman. He carries her outside, then borrows a car to drive her home. … Burning with fever, she becomes delirious and eventually dies — of a broken heart.
Guitar is the only young man in the group. Guitar tells Milkman that his activities are driven by the firm belief that whites are “unnatural” people who would murder and pillage in the right circumstances.
Guitar explains to Milkman the reason why he hates sugar and sweet food. Even describing this childhood memory makes him wretch and vomit near the sidewalk. The detail supports the idea that childhood memories have an enormous impact on a person’s eventual character and behaviors.
She lost her mom before she was born. She lost her dad and her brother within weeks of each other, when she was only a little girl. She’s spent a good chunk of her life alone, roaming. The Prohibition was her best friend, compelling her into the lucrative trade of bootlegging.
As Milkman stumbles up the stairs to his room during the end of this two-day drinking binge, Lena confronts him. In a loud, angry voice, she vents her hatred of him because of his treatment of her, her sister, and their mother.
Guitar begins to talk about all the things he would buy with his share of the gold: brass beds, good meals, a marker for his father’s grave, presents for his nieces and nephews. Milkman dreams of buying things like cars, airplanes, and ships.
Macon Dead I Eventually Milkman finds out that his grandfather’s real name is Jake. Jake is a resourceful, hardworking man who is an excellent farmer. He grew up in Shalimar, Virginia. When Jake was an infant, Jake’s father, Solomon, abandoned him, his mother, and his other siblings.
Susan also tells Milkman the story of Solomon’s wife, Ryna, who went mad when Solomon flew off, leaving her behind. As a result, Heddy, an old Indian woman, raised Jake, the youngest of Solomon’s twenty-one children and the only one whom Solomon tried to take with him when he flew away.
Macon Dead I was a respected man in his Virginia community, but a powerful white family, the Butlers, murdered him and took his land when Macon Dead II was a child. Get the entire Song of Solomon LitChart as a printable PDF.
Macon owns a real estate business and lives as a successful black man, an anomaly in his community. However, his success and his emotional turmoil take a toll on everyone around him, especially his family. In 1936, there were very few among them who lived as well as Macon Dead.
The narrator tells us that Milkman’s father, Macon Dead II (or Macon Jr.), is a ruthless slumlord, obsessed with accumulating wealth. He inherited his name from his illiterate father, Macon Dead I, whose own name came about when a drunk Union soldier incorrectly filled out an identity card.
Macon. Macon Dead is now smitten with his son, Milkman, but that wasn’t always the case. When Milkman was a baby, his father wanted him dead.
Pilate doesn’t feel the need to abide by society’s rules about what a black woman ought to be and do. For these reasons, she teaches Milkman about what is most important in a life: love and self-fulfillment.
Ruth continues breastfeeding Milkman to age four because nursing was “fully half of what made her daily life bearable” (14).
After Ruth tells a story about her embarrassing behavior at the wedding of the granddaughter of one of her father’s former clients, Macon slaps her. Milkman jumps up to defend his mother, knocks his father to the floor, and threatens to kill him if he ever abuses Ruth again.
Macon Dead gives Milkman this advice, from father to son: “Let me tell you right now the one important thing you’ll ever need to know: Own things. And let the things you own own other things. Then you’ll own yourself and other people too.