Top 2 Song of Solomon quotes
"He didn’t mean it. It happened before he was through. She’d stepped away from him to pick flowers, returned, and at the sound of her footsteps behind him, he’d turned around before he was through. It was becoming a habit—this concentration on things behind him. Almost as though there were no future to be had."
- The narrator, Chapter 2
The quote describes Milkman's thoughts before he turns around to urinate on his sister during a family road trip that they had been taking. The language used here is meant to indicate the world-weariness that Milkman has inherited from his father, who has escaped Pennsylvania as a hunted man for killing a white man. The author hopes to elucidate how a single instance of racism can have a lasting effect on people as well as their descendants. It is also interesting to note that the mistake Milkman makes in this section is considered to have a symbolic meaning to Lena, who brings up the even much later in their adulthood as she reprimands him for having always 'urinated' on the women of his family.
““Gold,” he whispered, and immediately, like a burglar on his first job, stood up to pee.
Life, safety, and luxury fanned out before him like the tailspread of a peacock, and as he stood there trying to distinguish each delicious color, he saw the dusty boots of his father standing just on the other side of the shallow pit.”
- The Narrator, Chapter 7
This quote describes Macon Jr's reaction immediately after the discovery of gold in the cave. This is an important turning point for his character since it marks the beginning of his transition from a hard-working boy to an overbearing landlord obsessed with the accumulation of wealth. He glimpses his father's boots, but he chooses to ignore them since wealth has suddenly become far more important to him than his recently deceased father.
