The Lack of Consummate Love in the Novel Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison

Consummate Love

Love has been a constant within human society, whether it be romantic love or dedication between a man and a wife love has always remained. Literature has been used to capture the many forms of love and to emphasize the importance of love in society. Love is a complicated emotion to explain because of the many different varieties and forms love can take. It seems to have become a rule that authors, despite love being a complicated subject, use the love between their characters to make statements about how love impacts our society. Toni Morrison, who is perhaps one of the most celebrated African American writers of all time, is no exception to this rule, and Morrison's statements about love are made prevalent in her novel Song of Solomon. Morrison uses the ever-changing feelings of love between her characters to illustrate her belief that true consummate love is almost impossible to attain. Consummate love is love that has the following attributes: passion, intimacy, and commitment. Without all three of these attributes, consummate love can't exist. Though it is possible to attain consummate love none of Morrison's character in the novel attain it and it is through this lack of consummate love in Song of Solomon that her true beliefs are revealed.

There are several different relationships within Song of Solomon that illustrate Morrison's point that consummate love is nearly impossible to attain. The first relationship illustrated in the novel is that of Ruth and Macon Jr. This relationship is evident that long married couple cannot maintain the passionate love necessary to maintain consummate love. The reader is not told if Ruth and Macon ever attained consummate love but in the time period shown in the novel, it is evident that any shred of consummate love the couple had shared, has been decimated. Macon believed that Ruth had sexual relations with her own father and because of that when Ruth mentioned that she, "certainly [was her] daddy's daughter!" he lashed out, his hand, "becoming the fist that smashed into her jaw." (Morrison 67) Any passion, or even liking that used to exist within the relationship disappeared, and Morrison's use of flashback, Macon's telling Milkman the story of the offensive love Ruth and her father shared, further explains why Macon and Ruth do not trust each other. Morrison's use of flashback implies an importance of the memory, and how it consequently destroyed the passionate and intimate parts of Macon and Ruth's relationship. However the love shared by a married couple is not the only love illustrated in the book. Macon and Ruth are one of the only married couples examined and the books and Macon, "[Couldn't] even tell [Milkman] [he] was in love with her." (Morrison 70). Morrison believes that married people will always find rifts, even a seemingly happy couple, Empire State and his French wife, seemed to be intimate and passionate, but they lacked the commitment that bound together Macon and Ruth, proving that two corner's of the love triangle existed but once again at least one aspect of consummate love was missing. This lack of consummate love is evident not only in older couples but also in young ones.

Milkman and Hagar are a representation of young love and their relationship is very flawed it is evident of their lack of love that Hagar was obsessed with Milkman. And Milkman had the passion required for consummate love but Milkman did not have the commitment or the intimacy to Hagar to make the relationship work. Because Hagar was infatuated with Milkman, the termination of their relationship drove her crazy, Morrison uses interesting negative diction and illiteration to draw attention to Hagar's emotional distress stating, "she felt a longing so bitter and tight it yanked her out of a sleep swept clean of dreams." (Morrison 127). This quote with its alliteration on "sleep swept" and its figurative language of being pulled from a dream emphasize Hagar's feeling of loss. Milkman ended up meeting and entering a relationship with Sweet. Sweet and Milkman shared a Romantic love, a love in which the shared intimacy and passion but still Milkman was unable to reciprocate commitment, and because of this he was unable to reach the level of consummate love.

Love is more than romantic and can be shared between everybody. Guitar stated that despite his murderous ways he still believed that it was all for love, "No love? No love... What I'm doing ain't about hating white people. It's about loving us. About loving you. My whole life is love." (Morrison 160) Even Pilate has such a strong familial love for Hagar that when she is shaken she delivers the most important line of the novel, "I wish I'd a knowed more people. I would of loved 'em all. If I'd a knowed more, I would a loved more." (Morrison 336) Despite the fact that consummate love is nearly unattainable, Pilate hits the nail on the head that love is worth it regardless of whether or not you attain the perfect balance of love and achieve consummate love, society is begging to have more love poured into it.

Cite this page