South in Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon: Initiation, healing, and home, The

NOTES

' For discussions of Song of Solomon as a quest or initiation story, see Barthold, Blake, Bruck, Campbell, Fabre, Harris, Lee, Royster, and Smith. Classic descriptions of the archetypal initiation theme and the heroic quest motif appear in Eliade, Frye, and Propp. 2 For a discussion of the bildungsroman, see C. Hugh Holman, Windows on the World. 3 West writes that initiation brings "a knowledge of the limitations of existence-the limitations of both nature (the present) and the myth (the past)." To come to terms with the "problem of existence," he suggests, the protagonist has "to recognize that there is a problem," and then "understand [that] the problem is capable of only a limited solution" (96-97). Fiedler argues that the initiate, like Adam and Eve in the Christian originary myth, must "fall through knowledge" (22). 4 On the classic story of the "Young Man from the Provinces," see Lionel Trilling, The Liberal Imagination: Essays on Literature and Society.

' According to Byerman in Fingering the Jagged Grain: Tradition and Form in Recent Black Fiction, Milkman's discovery of his family name carries connotations of "certain magical qualities connected with black folklore." Byerman suggests that naming for Morrison "has associations with African cultures in which the name is the expression of the soul" (201). For a discussion of names in African culture, see Janheinz Jahn, Muntu: An Outline of Neo-African Culture and Sterling Stuckey, Slave Culture: Nationalist Theory and the Foundations of Black America. As Jahn explains, childnaming in some areas has been ritualized for years: "the new-born child becomes a muntu [a person] only when the father or the 'sorcerer' gives him a name and pronounces it. Before this the little body is a kintu, a thing; if it dies, it is not even mourned" ( 125). Stuckey points out that, in Africa, "a man's name is often identified with his very soul, and often with the souls of ancestors" (195). 6 Leon Litwack, Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery suggests that such a choice was made from "a sense of historical identity, continuity, and family pride ... not to honor a previous master but to sustain some identification with the freedman's family of origin" (250).

7 Dorothy Lee and Peter Bruck discuss Guitar in their considerations of the novel as quest. According to Lee, "Guitar operates in the tradition of the trickster and other ambivalent archetypal figures who, by challenging the hero, push him to his destination" (66). Bruck calls Guitar an "alter ego" and suggests that "Milkman and Guitar represent two sides of one aspect: the alienation of the black man from himself and his people." As Bruck puts it, the philosophies of both individuals "turn out to be inadequate within the context of the action" (300).

s See Bruck, "Returning to One's Roots," and Krumholz, "Dead Teachers." Bruck notes that Milkman's departure "introduces several elements which clearly place Song of Solomon in the tradition of the novel of initiation" ( 14), while Krumholz points out that the events in chapter 11 (the second chapter of Part II, beginning with Milkman's arrival in Shalimar and ending with his lovemaking with Sweet) "enact most clearly the form and function of an initiation ritual" (558). 9 See Barthold, Black Time, for her comments on "the association of sweetness with death" in the novel ( 176).