Maura Entry #5 Song of Solomon Close Reading First Draft

Critical Lens Close Reading: Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison

"She was too insubstantial, too shadowy for love. But it was her vaporishness that made her more needful of defense. She was not a maternal drudge, her mind pressed flat, her shoulders hunched under the burden of housework and care of others, brutalized by a bear of a man. Nor was she the acid-tongued shrew who defended herself with a vicious vocabulary and a fast lip. Ruth was a pale but complicated woman given to deviousness and ultra-fine manners. She seemed to know a lot and understand very little. It was an interesting train of thought, and new for him. Never had he thought of his mother as a person, a separate individual, with a life apart from allowing or interfering in his own." (p. 75)

In this quote, Milkman Dead is reflecting on his own actions and motivations in protecting his mother from his father. Here, he comments on how he doesn't lover her, but still needs to protect her.

Milkman comments that he doesn't love his mother because she is too "insubstantial" and "shadowy", meaning that Milkman doesn't really see her as a person with personality and character, rather as a role of his mother. He claims that this basic view as a role, and his inability to see her as anything else necessitates his defense, because that his what he is supposed to to, protect and love his mother, even if he doesn't truly. Milkman also reflects that while she fills the role of mother, she doesn't fall into the stereotypes of "maternal judge" , even though Macon Dead's actions could be seen as brutalizing, or "acid-tongued shrew", even though Milkman comments that she is "given to deviousness".

Additionally, Milkman mentions how this train of though is "new for him". He explains that he never though of "mother as a person", only thinking of her as his mother, not as a woman, or a wife or a person that has their own motivations in life. This reflects a lot about society in Milkman's time, where a men only think of women in terms of the roles they fill.