The person01–03
01·Who they are
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.
02·Arc & motivation
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.
03·Key moments
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.
The cast04–05
04·Relationships
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.
05·Connected characters
How is Solomon (Shalimar) connected to the other characters?
Study06–07
06·Questions
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.
07·Essay angles
Use this in your essay
Tool · Essay angles
Freedom versus responsibility
Oral tradition as genealogical record
Masculinity and abandonment
The mythic ancestor as identity
Landscape as trauma