Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison

Published 1977 · 115,882 words · about 12 hours at an average pace · Anthropology & Folklore, Literary Fiction, Magical Realism

How hard is Song of Solomon to read?

Song of Solomon scores 68 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it quite demanding. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.

Vocabulary: 62 out of 100
Morrison uses Black vernacular and dialect alongside literary prose. Folk sayings, blues lyrics, and African American cultural references appear throughout. Some readers may need to look up references to Black cultural history. The vocabulary moves between accessible narrative and elevated literary language. Morrison trusts readers to understand dialect and cultural context without excessive explanation.
Sentence structure: 65 out of 100
Morrison's sentences range from simple dialogue to complex lyrical constructions. She uses stream of consciousness for interior monologues, shifts between past and present tense, and builds long flowing sentences that carry multiple images. The syntax follows emotional rhythms rather than strict grammatical logic. Paragraphs can extend for pages during intense sequences. The baseline is sophisticated literary fiction that rewards attention.
Abstraction: 68 out of 100
The novel operates on multiple levels simultaneously—realistic family drama, mythic quest narrative, allegory of African American history, meditation on masculinity and freedom. Concrete events carry symbolic weight. The flying African myth functions both as literal family history and as metaphor for transcendence and abandonment. Morrison expects readers to hold literal and symbolic meanings together without resolving them into simple allegory.
Information density: 70 out of 100
Morrison packs the narrative with family history, community stories, historical context, and symbolic resonance. Every character carries backstory; every name contains meaning; every song encodes history. The reader must track multiple generations, decode children's rhymes, understand references to Black history and folklore. The density is managed through compelling narrative drive, but full appreciation requires attention to pattern and repetition.
Narrative indirection: 70 out of 100
Morrison tells the story obliquely, revealing crucial information through fragments, songs, overheard conversations, and dreams. The children's rhyme contains the family's true history, but Milkman must learn to hear it. Characters withhold and misremember. The flying African story is told multiple times with variations. Readers must assemble meaning from pieces, interpreting symbols and connecting scattered revelations. Morrison trusts readers to do this work.
Symbolic density: 78 out of 100
The novel is saturated with symbols—flight, names, gold, milk, peacocks, eggs, the flying African myth. Pilate's bag of bones becomes a symbol of ancestral burden and connection. Flight itself is the master symbol, meaning both freedom and abandonment. Every element carries multiple meanings. Morrison weaves African American folklore, biblical allusions, and original symbols into dense texture. The symbols accumulate and resonate rather than being explained.
Ironic distance: 55 out of 100
Morrison writes with controlled irony, especially about Milkman's obliviousness and the Black bourgeoisie's pretensions. She exposes Macon Dead's materialism and Ruth's neurotic attachment without overt judgment. The tone shifts between sympathetic immersion in characters and distanced observation. The irony is present but not dominant—Morrison is more interested in understanding than satirizing. She allows readers to see what characters cannot.
Resolution withholding: 68 out of 100
The novel's ending is famously ambiguous. Does Milkman fly or fall? Morrison leaves this unresolved, presenting the moment of leap without aftermath. The quest for family gold resolves but transforms into a deeper quest for identity. Many questions remain open—what happens to Pilate's bones, whether Milkman's transformation is complete, what Guitar will do. The plot concludes but the deeper meanings remain in tension.
Structural complexity: 72 out of 100
The novel moves between different time periods and locations. Part One covers Milkman's birth through his thirties in Michigan. Part Two follows his Southern journey through Virginia and Pennsylvania as he traces family history. Within this structure, Morrison uses flashbacks, multiple perspectives, and stories within stories. The children's rhyme that appears early only reveals its full meaning late. Time layers as past and present interweave.

How Song of Solomon is regarded

Song of Solomon holds a literary regard score of 89 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.

Prizes

Where Song of Solomon sits in Northrop Frye's Anatomy of Criticism

Placed by a full reading of the text (218 passages), not from reputation. Each verdict quotes the passage that earned it. On the axis from myth to irony, Song of Solomon scores 55 out of 100. A second mythos, tragedy, pulls at it with a weight of 0.3. About the map of stories.

Mode: Low Mimetic (with Romance displacement)
Without ever leaving the ground, she could fly.
Symbol: Mythical (archetypal)
Solomon done fly, Solomon done gone
Mythos: Romance iii (the quest), with tragic pathos (romance iii)
Without wiping away the tears, taking a deep breath, or even bending his knees—he leaped.
Genre: Novel + Romance
And Milkman memorized all of what they sang.

Where the story of Song of Solomon takes place

  • Mercy, a Michigan lake city (Not Doctor Street and Southside), 1931-1963 (1931 to 1963), the main setting
  • Lincoln's Heaven farm, Montour County, Pennsylvania, and Circe's house and Hunters Cave (1895 to 1907)
  • Danville, Pennsylvania and Shalimar, Virginia, autumn 1963
  • Solomon's flight from the Virginia cotton fields, before emancipation

5 things that are true of Song of Solomon, with the passage for each

  1. The novel opens with an insurance agent's written promise to fly from a hospital roof on a dated afternoon.

    At 3:00 p.m. on Wednesday the 18th of February, 1931, I will take off from Mercy and fly away on my own wings.

  2. The hero's nickname comes from the janitor Freddie, who catches his mother nursing him when he is far too old.

    A milkman. That’s what you got here, Miss Rufie. A natural milkman if ever I seen one.

  3. Boys ask Pilate about her missing navel the first time they meet her.

    “Somebody said you ain’t got no navel.”

  4. Guitar explains to Milkman that he belongs to a secret society of exactly seven men.

    They call themselves the Seven Days. They are made up of seven men.

  5. The Shalimar children's rhyme names Solomon's twenty-one children, ending with Jake.

    Twenty-one children, the last one Jake!

Scenes in Song of Solomon that Frye would name

52 sightings of Frye's terms in the text. The strongest:

Agon, untitled
he heard the voice of the someone holding the wire say, “Your Day has come,” Guitar's wire attack is the climactic agon of the southern quest.
Anagnorisis, untitled
These children were singing a story about his own people! Milkman decodes the song as his family's hidden history.
Pathos, untitled
Yet when she moved her head a little to gaze at something behind his shoulder, it took a while for him to realize that she was dead. Pilate's death on Solomon's Leap is the pathos of the quest.
Anagnorisis, untitled
My mother nursed me when I was old enough to talk, stand up, and wear knickers Milkman recognizes the origin of his nickname after a long repression.
Displacement, untitled
When Hansel and Gretel stood in the forest and saw the house in the clearing before them, the little hairs at the nape of their necks must have shivered. The gold-seeking walk to Circe's house is framed as Hansel and Gretel and the witch's house.
Katabasis, untitled
He entered the cave and was blinded by the absence of light. Milkman descends into the cave of the dead man and the pit where gold should be.

Books that share these scenes with Song of Solomon

About the author

Toni Morrison