SoS Critical Lens Close Reading - Biographical/Historical Lens

"A young Negro boy had been found stomped to death in Sunflower County, Mississippi. There were no questions about who stomped him - his murderers had boasted freely - and there were no questions about the motive. The boy had whistled at some white woman, refused to deny he had slept with others, and was a Northerner visiting the South. His name was Till...'I'm serious now, ' Hospital Tommy went on. 'There is no cause for all this. The boy's dead. His mama's screaming. Won't let them bury him. That ought to be enough colored blood on the streets. You want to spill blood, spill the Crackers' blood that bashed his face in.' 'Oh, they'll catch them,' said Walters. 'Catch 'em? Catch 'em?' Porter was astounded. 'You out of your f***** mind? They'll catch ’em, all right, and give ’em a big party and a medal.' 'Yeah. The whole town planning a parade,' said Nero. 'They got to catch ’em.' 'So they catch ’em. You think they’ll get any time? Not on your life!' 'How can they not give ’em time?' Walters’ voice was high and tight. 'How? Just don’t, that’s how.' Porter fidgeted with his watch chain. 'But everybody knows about it now. It’s all over. Everywhere. The law is the law.' 'You wanna bet? This is sure money!' 'You stupid, man. Real stupid. Ain’t no law for no colored man except the one sends him to the chair,' said Guitar. 'They say Till had a knife,' Freddie said. 'They always say that. He could of had a wad of bubble gum, they’d swear it was a hand grenade.' 'I still say he shoulda kept his mouth shut,' said Freddie. 'You should keep yours shut,' Guitar told him. 'Hey, man!' Again Freddie felt the threat. 'South’s bad,' Porter said. 'Bad. Don’t nothing change in the good old U.S. of A. Bet his daddy got his balls busted off in the Pacific somewhere.' 'If they ain’t busted already, them crackers will see to it. Remember them soldiers in 1918?'”

In this passage of Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison, several men including Milkman and Guitar are talking about and discussing the death of a boy from the North, Till. Till had whistled at a white woman and denied other accusations and was killed by white men because of it. The main issue at hand that the men are talking about is how because Till was Black and not White and his killers were White and not Black, no sort of kind of justice will be served to him because of the segregation and unequal treatment of the two races. One man states how the law doesn't really apply to Black people unless it's to send them to prison or a death sentence.

The first thing I noticed when reading this passage are the clear differences between how Milkman and Guitar are reacting to the crime and how their beliefs in racism are so different. Milkman is kind of numb to all of the racism and not very reactive towards any racist remarks or racial slurs. He does not at all talkative in this particular conversation, and he does not seem to know how exactly to react to the information being presented in front of him by the other men participating in the conversation. I believe this to be in part of his upper-class bringing and shelter from the lower-class as he was being raised. Guitar, on the other hand, is extremely sensitive towards racism and is very offended by racial remarks and racial slurs. He is very talkative during this particular discussion. Guitar is quite the opposite of Milkman when it comes to this situation, also partially because of his lower-class upbringing rather than Milkman's upper-class upbringing.

The second thing I noticed when reading this passage is a parallel to a current event of today. When Freddie says, "They say Till had a knife. They always say that. He could of had a wad of bubble gum, they'd swear it was a hand grenade," it reminded me of the past shooting of Trayvon Martin, where supposedly an iced tea and a packet of candy were mistaken for possible weapons. In both this real life crime and the crime stated in Song of Solomon, a Black boy is killed by others for rather confusing reasons. There is a huge gap in the years in which the book was written (1977) and in which the crime took place (2012), yet the two crimes presented seem to be very similar.