Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison narrates the story of Milkman Dead and his obsession with flying. Solomon, he later discovers, was an ancestor who tried to fly from bondage with his son Jake but couldn't take him along to the destination as Jake fell off somewhere in the middle. The book is full of repetitive motifs and themes. The story of Solomon and Jake itself is adapted from Daedalus/Icarus Greek myth.
             The novel follows Milkman's obsession with flying and chooses flight as an important theme. In fact the novel opens with it when Robert Smith, an agent of the North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company, decides to "take off from Mercy and fly away on my own wings" (3). But Pilate fails to save him and sings a song at his death: "O Sugarman done fly O Sugarman done gone," and he, at least, "had seen the rose petals, heard the music" (9). The very next day, Milkman is born at Mercy Hospital and as if he had been touched by Smith's blue silk wings, Milkman wants to fly as well and "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" (9).
             Many years later when Milkman is a grown man, he and his friend Guitar see a peacock. This is where the theme of flying comes into play again but it comes with a moral message. The author thinks that flying is possible only when a person is not arrogant and actually lets his vanity go. When Milkman and Guitar spot the peacock, Milkman wonders why peacock couldn't really fly and Guitar looks closely at the bird and explains: "Too much tail. All that jewelry weighs it down. Like vanity. Can't nobody fly with all that shit. Wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down" (179-80).
             Throughout the novel, Song of Solomon is consistently relived with the help of this theme of flying. Milkman confusion with his identity and his obsession of flying is somethin
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