Song of Solomon Rejecting Rank’s Monomyth and Feminism

Abstract Around Milkman , the hero of her much-admired SonB of Solomon, Toni Morrison wraps various collective fictions: a riddling nursery rhyme that presages his birth and, later chanted by children, leads him to discover his heritage; fables, like the one his father, Macon Dead, tells of the man who rescues a baby snake only to be poisoned to death by its bite; fairy tales, like “Rumpelstiltskin,” “Jack and the Beanstalk,” and “Hansel and Gretel”; a common black folktale, like “People Who Could Fly” (as collected by Julius Lester); and family legends, like that of Milkman’s great-grandfather’s ability to fly. Even through family names and nicknames Morrison underscores a preoccupation of all four of her novels: for better and worse, humans use and make fictions to give their lives meaning and significance. Underlying these commoner fictions, however, is Otto Rank’s powerful monomyth: the myth of the birth of the hero. Its features with only minor glossing-attach to Milkman and categorically lay claim to his place among the heroes from whose stories Rank extrapolates his monomyth: