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South in Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon: Initiation, healing, and home, The
Studies in the Literary Imagination, Fall 1998 by Lee, Catherine Carr
The journey south introduces the first of Milkman's new set of teachers and helpers. Milkman perceives these teachers as instruments to bring him closer to the gold, but as the quest for gold becomes a quest for identity, their meanings change. In Danville, Pennsylvania, Milkman meets the Reverend Cooper, who provides important information about his ancestry and at the same time gives Milkman a sense that he is included in the larger Dead family. He greets Milkman with "I know your people!" and tells him the stories of his grandfather's murder and of Circe's caring for Pilate and Macon in the days to follow (231). During the next four days the old survivors come to visit, the ones who knew his father and grandfather-a chorus of teachers reciting a litany of the earlier days-and Milkman learns something new about the relationship between the two men for whom he is named. Milkman cannot "recognize that stern, greedy, unloving man in the boy they talked about, but he loved the boy they described and loved that boy's father" (237). As the past becomes vivid in the words of the old men, Milkman sees the patterns of his father's life emerge, and he understands that the past he hears about shaped the present he knows. But the drive to own property that meant liberation to the first Macon Dead has been perverted into selfishness and endless acquisition by the second. It is a sign of Milkman's continuing corruption that the talk about his father's current financial success makes him long even more for Pilate's gold. To the other black men in Montour County, Macon Dead's farm symbolized the richness and possibility of the community. If Macon Dead could have a home, then "you got one too!" (237). And the message was "pass it on!" (238). This is what the second Macon Dead has forgotten; it is what Milkman must learn.
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Circe, Milkman's second helper in Part II, tells Milkman how to find the cave where Macon thinks the gold still lies, but she also provides information about Milkman's ancestors that he will later use in deciphering the Solomon song, chanted by the children in Shalimar. Circe tells him that his grandmother, an Indian named Sing, came with his grandfather, the first Macon, to Pennsylvania from Virginia, and she tells him the town's name, Charlemagne, a corruption of Shalimar. She also knows that Old Macon's body was dumped in the very cave in which the gold was discovered, and later Milkman will realize that it was her father's bones that Pilate found when she returned to the cave. Finally, she reveals his grandfather's real name, Jake. But Circe serves as more than just a teacher; she is a living relic of the past that Milkman has previously only heard about. Circe mistakes Milkman for the Macon Dead she knew, Milkman's father. Although Morrison never indicates that Milkman and Macon resemble each other, Circe's mistake makes it clear that Milkman looks exactly like his father. With Circe, the past reaches out and intrudes on Milkman's present as surely as Circe reaches out to embrace him.
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