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Destructive Love in Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon Essays

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Destructive Love in Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon

When an emotion is believed to embody all that brings bliss, serenity, effervescence, and even benevolence, although one may believe its encompassing nature to allow for generalizations and existence virtually everywhere, surprisingly, directly outside the area love covers lies the very antithesis of love: hate, which in all its forms, has the potential to bring pain and destruction. Is it not for this very reason, this confusion, that suicide bombings and other acts of violence and devastation are committed…in the name of love? In Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon, the reader experiences this tenuity that is the line separating love and hate in many different forms and on many …show more content…

Morrison includes much intimation to prove that Ruth lacks true love: she is unable to perform basic domestic tasks such as cooking, suggesting that she cannot adequately provide for her family at even the most quintessential level of what woman during that time were expected to provide. When Macon found Ruth with "[Dr. Foster's] fingers in her mouth," the "love" that Ruth had for Dr. Foster has evidently become destructive as it not only estranges her from Macon and the rest of the family, but also forces her to live an impersonal, emotionless life (73). Although at the onset of the novel, she attempts to rekindle these emotions not through Macon who utterly refuses to please her, but through her own son Milkman, a gross exploitation of filial love: "His mother had been portrayed not as a mother who simply adored her only son, but as an obscene child playing dirty games with whatever male was near—be it her father or her son" (79). It seems, however, that her willingness to emotionally satisfy herself finally comes to an end when Freddie blatantly points out her misjudgment of breastfeeding Milkman who is twelve years old at the time. Thus, instead of looking for emotion, she learns to take comfort in the emotionless, the inanimate such as the goldfish, rhododendron, and other flowers she constantly surrounds herself with. And to simply remind herself that she exists as an animate being

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