“I will get up now and go about the city, through its streets and squares; I will search for the one my heart loves. So I looked for him but did not find him.” -Song of Solomon 3:2
Oak Island, 2008. My grandma gently wakes me up just before sunrise. I spring out of bed, ready to take on the day’s first activity. I get ready and tiptoe down to the back deck where my Grandma waits for me. Yellow orange streaks paint the once starry sky and almost silent waves brush the shore. My eyes dart to the damp sand where the night’s high tide dropped an abundance of the sea’s treasures. I race down to scour the shoreline, my mind on only one thing: a fully intact conch shell.
Just like as a 6 year old, I hunted for a specific seashell, Hagar in Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon searches for only Milkman’s love. She becomes so desperate for his attention that she repeatedly “attempts” to kill him and loses who she is as a person. She ultimately values Milkman’s love over her own life and ends up dying.
Pilate also searches for one thing: answers to her father’s post grave appearance. Already belly button less, she alienates herself from the rest of society. Pilate knows she is different and gives up relationships in fear that others won’t accept her true self. When she finally does find out her true life story, she dies.
Guitar searches for justice. As part of the seven days, Guitar kills a person for every black person that is killed. The act of killing as payment is obviously unmoral, but because Guitar obsesses over the idea of justice his morals skew and he thinks a life for a life is fair punishment. He also feels wronged when Milkman searches for the gold without him. Because he feels cheated, Guitar ends up killing Milkman. He chooses to give up his best friend, who is worth more than any gold, in an act of what he feels is necessary justice.
Before his assumed death, Milkman searches for the gold his father and Pilate also dream of. He becomes so obsessed with finding the gold he sneaks off to multiple towns, leaving his own family and Hagar behind. With his full attention on the gold, Hagar feels abandoned and dies. Guitar also gets offended that Milkman did not invite him to find the gold. The loss of this friendship then leads to Milkman’s death. Milkman never finds any gold, but does end up losing the most precious gift he already possesses: his own life.
I spent much of my childhood wistfully consumed with the hope of finding something spectacular: rare shells, dinosaur bones in my backyard, proof of fairy existence, and small specks of gold in driveway rocks. Driven fully by this hope, I spent hours upon hours hunting, always saying “just ten more minutes” or “just one more rock flip.” I couldn’t let myself walk away with the possibility of a great discovery just a second away. All the time I dedicated to searching almost always resulted in absolutely no profit; I never did find a T-Rex skeleton or a gold nugget. Similarly, the character’s in Song of Solomon never find what they seek. Three of them end up losing their lives and one ends up sacrificing his best friend. My own experience along with the character’s in Song of Solomon show that obsessively searching for one specific treasure forces the loss of even greater riches.
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