mcashman’s author study

All of the main characters in Toni Morrison’s novels Song of Solomon, Beloved, and The Bluest Eye all have similar traits, such as being African American, but they all are very different and their personalities add tothe complexity of the novels.

In Song of Solomon, there are 4 main characters: Milkman, Pilate, Hagar, and Guitar. Milkman, the main character in the novel, is around the age of 30 and revolves his life around finding gold that he thinks is kept in his aunt Pilate’s living room. After breaking into her house and discovering that it was nothing but the bones of her grandfather, Milkman leaves town in search of the gold. He never finds the gold, but he discovers many things about his past along the way. Milkman’s characters drastically progressed; at the beginning of the novel, one of his legs was longer than the other and he was very self-centered and selfish. By the end of the novel, his legs are the same length, symbolizing that he is growing into himself. Compared to other characters in the novel, Milkman’s personality is not very strong. For example, his aunt Pilate is a strong female character that plays a significant role in the novel. What makes Pilate unique is that she doesn’t have a belly button. Some say it is because she birthed herself, making her a strong-willed and independent person. She was always thinking of others and guiding them through life. Even when Milkman and Guitar disobeyed her by stealing the bones from her house, she forgave them because she knew they had learned something from the situation. Her one regret as she lay dying was she wished she could have loved more people. Hagar, Pilate’s granddaughter, was not as strong-willed as her grandmother. Hagar and Milkman were together for sometime until Milkman broke things off. Hagar never let go and did everything she could to get Milkman back. She even went out and bought make-up and new dresses hoping that Milkman would like her. Her obsession with Milkman eventually drove her crazy. Guitar, Milkman’s best friend, went just as crazy as Hagar did. Because of Guitar’s hatred for white people, he joined the Seven Days club. If a black person was killed, the Seven Days club would kill a white person the exact same way. As the novel progressed, Guitar went crazier and crazier. It got to the point where he was trying to kill Milkman, his best friend. All four of these characters progressed through out the novel, whether or not their develop was for the good or bad.

Along with Song of Solomon characters, Beloved characters also developed through out the novel. The main characters in this novel are Sethe, Denver, and Beloved. Sethe, the protagonist in the novel, is the mother of Denver and Beloved. Like Pilate in Song of Solomon, she is extremely independent and motherly. She escaped from the plantation that she lived on to raise her family in Ohio. When she finds out that people are coming to take her and her children back to the plantation, she kills her daughter Beloved to protect her from the life of a slave. She consumes herself with memories of her past, her life at Sweet Home with her husband Halle and his mother Baby Suggs. When she realizes that Beloved, the 20 year old girl she found in the river, is actually the reincarnation of her daughter that she had killed 18 years before, she becomes consumed with her. Sethe cannot fully live in the present until she has accepted the past. Denver is Sethe’s daughter that she gave birth to after leaving the Sweet Home plantation and before making it to Ohio. Ever since her two older brothers ran away and her mother killed her sister Beloved, Denver has been isolated from the outside world. She tried attending school, but the other kids started asking questions about her mother, so she never went back. At the beginning of the novel, Denver is extremely shy and immature, acting significantly younger than an 18 year old should. But by the end of the novel, Denver has developed into a more independent character wanting to do things for herself and maybe even attend college someday. Although it was extremely confusing, from my understanding, Beloved is the reincarnation of the daughter Sethe killed at the beginning of the novel. She has larger than life characteristics such as smooth skin, being emotionally unstable, and not knowing where she came from. She latches on to Sethe the second she arrives in their home and does everything she can to please her. All three of these female characters brings something different to the novel, creating complexity and meaningfulness.

Pecola

The main characters in The Bluest Eye are Pecola and Claudia, two young African American girls. Pecola, comes from an extremely poor family with an sexually abusive father and a mother who cannot stand up to him. Although Pecola Breedlove is the main character, the reader is never given the story from her point of view, only of those around her. Her only wish in life is to have blue eyes. She wants to have blue eyes so that she can escape the world she lives in and become someone who is beautiful. At the beginning of the novel, she is a timid and shy girl but as time passes, she becomes a different person because of the violence she not only sees but also experiences. Her father sexually abuses her, causing her to get pregnant, and although she loses the baby, she has to live with the shame for the rest of her life. Claudia, although still poor, comes from a slightly higher class than Pecola. Her and her sister Frieda are classmates with Pecola, and they hear what society thinks about the Breedlove family. People never feel any sympathy for the Breedlove family, they just turn up their noses and continue gossiping. Claudia and her sister Frieda experience sexual abuse in their family to when Henry Washington, a man living with their family touches Frieda inappropriately. Like Pilate in Song of Solomon and Sethe in Beloved, Claudia in The Bluest Eye is a strong-willed, African-American girl who stands up for what she thinks is right. For example, when she sees a group of boys picking on Pecola, she tells them to stop. Claudia and Frieda try to help Pecola when she is pregnant by planting seeds that will grow into blossoming flowers. In all of Toni Morrison’s novels, she has strong female character and a male character that is either physically or sexually abusive. It is clear the Morrison is trying to show the issue of violence in relationships and families.