The Hero?

The structure of Song of Solomon seemed to me to be a fairly strange one. Though the novel does switch between several perspectives throughout, it is at its core a coming-of-age story of Milkman. While he is clearly the protagonist, though, I felt that for almost the entire book I wasn't rooting for him, and he didn't feel like a hero at all, but a somewhat unlikable and questionable character. Even at the end, the ambiguity of the final scene leaves Milkman's status as a 'good' character fairly up in the air.

Milkman is somewhat unique among the main characters of the novel in that, for almost the entire first book, he's the only one that isn't seen or described from another point of view. We hear Macon and Ruth all talking about each other, and Milkman's descriptions of the other characters he interacts with, but Milkman's character is extremely rarely discussed by anyone else, and we don't get other's internal thoughts about him since the story is generally told from his point of view in every scene that he is in. In fact, the only person that talks about Milkman's character before Lena's rant is Guitar, who says that Milkman isn't "a serious person" and questions how trustworthy he is, but this isn't taken too far. It's also quite difficult to ascertain much about Milkman's character from his own narration, as it's generally somewhat descriptive and reactionary, and he doesn't spend much time in the first book thinking about his own character and actions.

Since the story is largely about Milkman's coming of age, it's somewhat odd that this process doesn't seem to truly start until the second book, very late in the novel. The first book is largely concerned with building Milkman's environment and the people around him, and he doesn't undergo any real personal development during this book. Though it's somewhat hidden by the extremely uneven passage of time in the novel, Milkman ages 31 years in the first book, but it still sort of feels like he hasn't grown up yet.

Lena's speech about how poorly Milkman has treated everyone sort of comes as a surprise, as the things that she talks about were in large part not really discussed earlier or described by Milkman. It's been shown that he doesn't really care about his family all that much, but this is the first time that it's really shown how much he's neglected them and ordered them around, how much like his father he's become to them, and it's the first time Milkman is seemingly made aware of these problems with his character. To his credit, this does seem to have some effect on him, and he has a desire to improve some of these things. It's this moment that's a real turning point for him, and that leads him to get some time alone to think about things by going on his quest for the gold.

While away in Book II, Milkman does some thinking about his character, and does seem to really come of age and become more independent during his search. He comes to realize how much he values some of the people back home, especially Hagar and Pilate, and that he's treated them extremely poorly, showing growth. He also finally solves a problem harder than his previous best of "fourth-grade arithmetic," as Lena claims, as he's very clever and intelligent in piecing together his history from the extremely vague song. Still, though, it seems as if his character isn't very likable.

Most of the attention and popularity he gets in Pennsylvania isn't at all due to anything that he's done, but rather his ancestors' fame in that town, and he's admired there because of who he is, not his character. People in the last town he visits, who have no such connection to him, seem to really dislike him at first, and even try to kill him. Although he is somewhat accepted by the older generation afterwards, showing that he's become better, there fact that nearly every character that knows him  (Macon, Lena, Hagar, Pilate, Guitar) at some point attempts to kill him or injure him doesn't speak very well about his personality. This is especially telling with Guitar. Even though Milkman didn't actually steal the gold, and as such his reasoning his flawed, the fact that he thought that he would and that he wanted to kill him for it is extremely revealing. Guitar is probably the person who knows Milkman best and is his best friend, as he's still very willing, and even eager, to assume bad things about him and attempt to kill him.

The final moments of the book don't really give a good idea of where Milkman stands as a character and as a potential hero of the novel. Though he does improve his relationships with many of his family members when he returns to Michigan, it's unclear where he's going to go from here, or if he even survives; although I think that he will kill Guitar and live. Guitar's actions and motives are really strange at the end, as he kills Pilate while trying to kill Milkman by mistake, but then smiles and puts down the gun as Milkman prepares to attack him. I read this as Guitar witnessing how much Milkman cares about Pilate and how he's willing to avenge her, and feeling somewhat proud of Milkman, that he's finally become a "serious person," and as such not wanting to kill him anymore. If Milkman does end up killing Guitar and avenging Pilate, I think that this action would really show his growth and  make him into a heroic character, but without knowing what truly happens, it's impossible to say if he is a hero at the end of the novel.