Character analysis
Solomon (Shalimar)
in Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
Solomon, also known as Shalimar, is the mythic ancestor at the thematic and genealogical heart of Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon. While he never appears as a living character in the novel's current events, his presence is felt through legend, song, and spiritual legacy. Solomon was an enslaved African man who, according to the oral tradition preserved in the Shalimar, Virginia community, literally flew back to Africa one day, leaving behind his wife Ryna and their twenty-one children — including the infant Jake (Macon Dead I) — on the Virginia soil below. This act of transcendence is the novel's central myth, evoking both celebration and sorrow.
Solomon's legacy shapes the identities of every major character. His name is woven into the children's song Milkman hears in Shalimar, and unraveling that song becomes the climax of Milkman's journey toward self-discovery. The song — "O Sugarman done fly away / Sugarman done gone" — serves as a communal elegy, expressing both awe at Solomon's supernatural freedom and sorrow for the pain caused by his departure. Ryna's Gulch, a ravine where Ryna is said to have lost her mind from grief, marks the landscape's scar from his abandonment.
Solomon embodies the novel's core tension between individual freedom and communal responsibility. His flight represents an act of radical self-determination rooted in African spiritual power, yet it tears apart a family across generations. Through Pilate's sense of dislocation, Milkman's restlessness, and the haunted geography of Shalimar, Morrison questions whether transcendence achieved at the expense of those left behind can truly be considered freedom.
Who is Solomon (Shalimar)?
Solomon — known as Shalimar in the Virginia community that bears his name — serves as the spectral patriarch of Song of Solomon, appearing throughout the novel, yet absent as a living man on its pages. He is the great-great-grandfather of protagonist Milkman Dead, an enslaved African who, according to community legend, rose into the air one morning and flew back to Africa, leaving behind his wife Ryna and their twenty-one children. Morrison presents him through layers of mediation: a children's street song, a landscape marked by grief, a town's very name, and the slow archaeological work Milkman undertakes in Part Two of the novel. Solomon is myth before he is man, and Morrison maintains this distinction — half-divine, half-responsible for generations of damage.
What is Solomon (Shalimar)'s arc and motivation?
Solomon’s arc exists only in retrospect, reconstructed rather than dramatized. The novel reveals through the Shalimar community's oral tradition that his flight was an act of radical self-determination rooted in what Morrison frames as distinctly African spiritual power — a supernatural capacity that slavery could not fully extinguish. His motivation, as suggested by the legend, is a profound longing for freedom and origin. He tried to carry his youngest child, Jake (Macon Dead I), with him but dropped the infant, an act that is both tender and catastrophic. That dropped child — the origin of the Dead family line — represents the first consequence of his departure, with every subsequent generation inheriting some version of that fall.
What are Solomon (Shalimar)'s key moments?
The pivotal moment involving Solomon occurs in Chapter Thirteen, when Milkman finds himself stranded in Shalimar after his car breaks down and hears local children singing a ring game. The song — "Jake the only son of Solomon / come booba yalle, come booba tambee" — decodes Milkman's entire genealogy. Sitting in the dirt, contemplating the syllables, Milkman recognizes the song as a family history: Shalimar is Solomon; Ryna's Gulch depicts the wife driven mad; Jake is the dropped infant who is Milkman's great-grandfather. This recognition scene is one of the novel’s emotional crescendos, where Morrison intertwines myth with lineage and lineage with identity. Earlier, the geography of Shalimar serves as a monument to Solomon: Ryna's Gulch — described as a ravine from which a sound like wailing rises — makes his abandonment a permanent feature of the physical world, internalizing the grief he caused.
What are Solomon (Shalimar)'s most important relationships?
Solomon and Milkman shape the novel's quest structure. Milkman travels south ostensibly for gold but ultimately leaves with a sense of ancestry. Solomon becomes the destination Milkman never knew he sought; decoding the ancestor's story enables Milkman to feel "his own self" rather than merely a dead man's name or his father's shadow. The inheritance is dual-edged: Solomon's ability to fly inspires Milkman, while his capacity for abandonment — particularly of Hagar — implicates him as well.
Solomon and Pilate are separated by two generations yet remain spiritually interconnected. Pilate, Solomon's granddaughter, carries bones and memory across decades, serving as a living counter-force to his disappearance. While Solomon fled upward and away, Pilate is rooted, grounded, and deeply present to those she loves. Her uncanny qualities — the absent navel, her self-sufficiency that creates unease in every community she enters — are inherited traits of Solomon's apartness, transformed into protective love rather than escape.
Solomon and Macon Dead II illustrate a generational inversion. The great-grandson translates spiritual transcendence into material accumulation: where Solomon ascended above the earth, Macon Dead II clings to it through deeds and rents. His emotional detachment from Ruth and his children represents, in this light, Solomon's abandonment solidified into everyday cruelty.
Solomon and Ryna/Hagar highlight a line of female grief. Ryna loses her sanity — her wailing becomes geographic in Ryna's Gulch — while Hagar's self-destructive collapse after Milkman's rejection echoes that original abandonment. Morrison exposes a wound that spans generations along the women's line of the family.
How is Solomon (Shalimar) connected to the other characters?
- Milkman Dead (Macon Dead III)
Solomon is Milkman's great-great-grandfather. Milkman's entire journey south culminates in deciphering the children's song about Solomon, making the ancestor the destination and answer to Milkman's identity quest. Recognizing Solomon's story allows Milkman to understand his own capacity — and responsibility — for flight.
- Pilate Dead
Pilate is Solomon's granddaughter (through Jake/Macon Dead I). She is the living keeper of the family's spiritual legacy, carrying bones and rootedness that counterbalance Solomon's abandonment. Her entire character arc — her lack of a navel, her otherworldly self-sufficiency — reads as an inheritance of Solomon's supernatural apartness, tempered by fierce maternal love.
- Macon Dead II
Macon Dead II is Solomon's great-grandson. Where Solomon flew upward and away, Macon Dead II is anchored downward by property and materialism — a generational inversion of the ancestor's spiritual freedom into earthly accumulation and emotional coldness.
- Hagar Dead
Hagar is Solomon's great-great-granddaughter. The communal grief Solomon caused in Ryna echoes in Hagar's own self-destructive obsession and eventual death, suggesting that the wound of abandonment — first inflicted by Solomon — reverberates through the female line of the family.
- Guitar Bains
Guitar has no blood tie to Solomon, but the myth of Solomon's flight implicitly contrasts with Guitar's ideology: where Solomon escapes through transcendence, Guitar seeks liberation through violence. Milkman's discovery of Solomon reorients him away from Guitar's worldview.
Questions readers ask about Solomon (Shalimar)
Is Solomon actually a character who appears in Song of Solomon?
Solomon never appears as a living character in the novel's present-day events — he exists entirely through myth, oral legend, geography, and song. Morrison presents him through layers of mediation: a children's ring game, the landscape of Shalimar, Virginia (which bears his name), and the genealogical detective work Milkman undertakes in Part Two. He is myth before he is man.
What does Solomon's flight actually mean in the novel?
Solomon's flight symbolizes a radical act of self-determination rooted in African spiritual power that slavery could not fully extinguish. Yet Morrison frames it with deep ambivalence: the same leap that symbolizes supernatural freedom also abandons his wife Ryna and their twenty-one children on the Virginia soil below. The novel questions whether transcendence achieved at the expense of those left behind can truly be considered freedom.
How is Solomon related to Milkman Dead?
Solomon is Milkman's great-great-grandfather. Solomon dropped his infant son Jake (Macon Dead I) during his flight back to Africa, and every subsequent generation of the Dead family — including Milkman — inherits the consequences of that fall. Decoding the children's song about Solomon in Shalimar becomes the emotional climax of Milkman's entire journey south.
What is the children's song about Solomon, and why does it matter?
The song — which includes the lines "O Sugarman done fly away / Sugarman done gone" and "Jake the only son of Solomon" — functions as an oral archive encoding Milkman's entire genealogy. When Milkman hears local children singing it in Chapter Thirteen and deciphers its syllables, he recognizes that Shalimar is Solomon, Ryna's Gulch marks his abandoned wife, and Jake is the dropped infant who is his great-grandfather.
What happened to Solomon's wife Ryna after he flew away?
Ryna is said to have lost her mind from grief after Solomon's departure, leaving behind twenty-one children. Her anguish is permanently inscribed in the landscape: Ryna's Gulch, a ravine near Shalimar, Virginia, is described as a place from which a sound like wailing rises. Morrison uses this geography to demonstrate that Solomon's act of transcendence created an unhealed wound.
How does Solomon's legacy affect Pilate Dead?
Pilate is Solomon's granddaughter through the dropped infant Jake. While Solomon fled upward and away, Pilate becomes his opposite: deeply rooted, fiercely present, and devoted to those she loves. Her uncanny qualities — including her absent navel and otherworldly self-sufficiency — represent an inheritance of Solomon's supernatural apartness, transformed across generations into protective maternal love rather than escape.
Does Solomon's pattern of abandonment repeat in later generations?
Morrison traces a clear generational wound. Solomon drops Jake; Macon Dead II emotionally abandons Ruth and his children, translating the ancestor's spiritual flight into everyday coldness and materialism; Milkman eventually leaves Hagar. The grief Solomon first inflicted on Ryna resonates in Hagar's self-destructive collapse and death, suggesting that the abandonment reverberates most painfully through the women of the family.
Why does Morrison name a town and the novel's central myth after Solomon?
Naming the Virginia town Shalimar — and embedding Solomon's story in its landscape, its children's songs, and its communal memory — makes the ancestor inescapable rather than merely historical. The town's existence as a place of origin and grief compels Milkman, and the reader, to confront him. Morrison uses Solomon's omnipresence to argue that ancestry is not background but the living structure of identity.
Use this in your essay
Freedom versus responsibility
Explore how Solomon's flight reveals Morrison's ambivalence about liberation — that transcendence achieved at the expense of those left behind constitutes a form of violence. How does the novel celebrate and critique his act?
Oral tradition as genealogical record
Analyze how the children's song acts as an alternative archive in a culture deprived of written history. What insights does Morrison provide regarding the power and limitations of communal memory?
Masculinity and abandonment
Investigate the pattern of men leaving in *Song of Solomon* — Solomon drops Jake, Macon Dead II emotionally abandons his family, Milkman leaves Hagar — and evaluate whether the novel frames this as a cultural inheritance or an individual moral failing.
The mythic ancestor as identity
Reflect on how Milkman's self-understanding hinges on uncovering Solomon's story. Does Morrison endorse ancestry as the foundation of selfhood, or does she complicate that model through Pilate's example of self-creation?
Landscape as trauma
Examine Ryna's Gulch and the town of Shalimar as embodiments of historical grief. How does Morrison utilize physical geography to convey that the past is never entirely past?