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

Milkman cannot uncover the mystery of his great-grandfather, however, nor can he enter the community that will complete his new identity, until he admits just how much he wants to "find" his "people" (295). And he cannot make that admission until he realizes that "his people" include the very ones he was so eager to escape. Vernell, the wife of one of the hunters, sends Milkman to a local Indian woman, Susan Byrd, but she suggests that these are not his family after all. Ready to abandon the search for both gold and ancestors, he makes the connection of past and present when he realizes that "there was something he felt now-here in Shalimar, and earlier in Danville-that reminded him of how he used to feel in Pilate's house" (296). Pilate is the link, for having first experienced "home" with Pilate, Milkman can recognize it again. It is Pilate he misses most; he becomes "homesick. . . for the very people he had been hell-bent to leave" (303). Paradoxically, the closer Milkman comes to discovering the legend of Solomon and the key to his ancestry, the better he can understand the lives of his mother and father. He does not yet know about Hagar's death, but as he admits his responsibility for degrading her, he again hears the children sing the Solomon song. This time he recognizes it as a version of "Sugarman done fly away" (5), a song he has heard Pilate sing all of his life. The names of Solomon, Jake, Ryna, and the others now make sense. He realizes Susan Byrd is his grandmother's niece. She confirms this and tells him the secret of Solomon: he was a flying African, and he tried to carry his youngest child, Jake, with him, but had to let him fall. Jake was Milkman's grandfather, the man who changed his name to Macon Dead. By learning his ancestors' names, Milkman has learned who he is. As he says to Sweet about the Solomon song and the circle game played by the children in Shalimar, "I can play it now. It's my game now" (331).

Milkman's trip south to Shalimar, to the liberating discovery of family and past, parallels Solomon's return to Africa, to origins, and to freedom. 13 Even so, Solomon abandoned his community, and though he tried to carry his youngest child, he flew to Africa and freedom fully intending to leave his wife and twenty other children behind. With a recognition of his responsibility for Hagar's death Milkman, carries the knowledge of his family's southern past back to his community in Michigan, along with a new understanding of his parents, his sisters, and Pilate. He has learned that, in the words of his grandfather's ghost, "you just can't fly on off and leave a body" (336). He understands, too, that "names had meaning.... When you know your name, you should hang on to it, for unless it is noted down and remembered, it will die when you do" (333). Gone is his failure to attach to place. Now he has roots in every place that Pilate, his father, and his grandparents have lived. He shares that heritage.

In a conclusion that is problematic for many readers, Milkman and Pilate return to the cave in Pennsylvania so that Pilate can properly bury what she now knows are her father's bones. They are tracked down by Guitar who believes Milkman has found the gold and betrayed him by cutting him out of his share. As Milkman and Pilate stand on a plateau at the mouth of the cave, Guitar fells Pilate with a bullet meant for Milkman. With the final realization of his love for Pilate, who could fly "without ever leaving the ground," Milkman prepares to make the ultimate sacrifice of love for Guitar (340). He stands up, fully expecting to be killed instantly, and calls to Guitar, shouting "Over here, brother man! Can you see me? . . . Here I am!" (341). Guitar is still his "brother," and if Guitar needs his life, Milkman can give it: