Ziplining in the Smokies
Friday
I ticked off another item on my bucket list this past week, zip-lining in the Smokies with Julia. As I soared through the air, I thought of the ending of Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon.
Flight is a major theme in the novel. Early on, after seeing a man attempt to fly and fall to his death, protagonist Milkman feels boxed in by life. It symbolizes how African Americans feel that this society has clipped their wings:
Mr. Smith’s blue silk wings must have left their mark, because when the little boy discovered, at four, the same thing Mr. Smith had learned earlier—that only birds and airplanes could fly—he lost all interest in himself. To have to live without that single gift saddened him and left his imagination so bereft that he appeared dull…
In the course of the novel, however, Milkman discovers that (so legend has it) he had a slave ancestor who could fly. Morrison captures how freeing it can be for African Americans to uncover their history, especially if they uncover resistance in the process.
In the novel’s magic realist ending, there’s a chance that Milkman can fly as well:
Without wiping away the tears, taking a deep breath, or even bending his knees—he leaped. As fleet and bright as a lodestar he wheeled toward Guitar and it did not matter which one of them would give up his ghost in the killing arms of his brother. For now he knew what Shalimar knew: If you surrendered to the air, you could ride it.
Anything is possible for a young man of color who has found himself. There’s a reason why Song of Solomon is Barack Obama’s favorite novel.
I can’t say that I entirely surrendered to the air after leaping, even though I was safely snapped into a harness. As you may see in the photo above, I’m somewhat tentative in letting myself go. (Or as Langston Hughes would put it, I’m not exactly “fling[ing] my arms wide in some place in the sun.”) Still, I was thrilled.
A glider ride is next.
