Finding Freedom Within

Something I want to talk about after reading Song of Solomon is Milkman’s character development throughout the book. It’s absolutely beautiful. In the beginning, we all knew him as the the little boy who was used by his mother for her own pleasure. He obviously didn’t know any better but he started to develop a reputation that matched his father’s, where he “[tried] to appear more sophisticated than he was” and viewed women simply as objects, “fucking for six years, some of them with the same woman”. Then, he has an identity crisis and decides to go on a journey to find his origin and evaluate himself as a person. As he gains information about his ancestors and his past, he is “as eager and happy as he had ever been in his life”, slowly realizing that he has started to possess the same freedom that Pilate has. At the very end we know that his “enlightenment” completely transforms Milkman into a new person and eventually he “leaps”.

Now, the idea of self discovery and self satisfaction, I think, is still very relevant today. According to the book, we can say that in order to be truly successful in life, one needs to be selfless and content with him/herself, his/her past, and his/her life. Although Milkman seems to have transformed and become liberated within 337 pages, we obviously know that this isn’t the case in real life. We are constantly faced with obstacles and our brains are much more complex than a made-up character in a book. But the real question is: will we ever be able to achieve the same freedom that Pilate and Milkman have in the book? Would people be willing to spend their whole life trying to find this freedom? And more importantly, is there such thing that exists?

Here’s the song for this week:

Natasha Bedingfield - Unwritten // https://youtu.be/b7k0a5hYnSI

I looked at the lyrics to this song and thought that they fit perfectly for this blog post. It talks about how someone may feel undefined but in the end, he/she is going to be the one to take action themselves, not anyone else. Try it out and let me know what you think :)