The Daly Post

When reading the novel "Song of Solomon" I often find myself setting the book down in order to process the work of the author. Toni Morrison, I would say, is known for her numerous hidden meanings and symbols in her texts. As a class, we are constantly reminded to take note of scenes that stick out to us. Most likely, those out of the ordinary scenes signify an idea or may grow into something more as the books continues to develop. Most of the time after discussing the significance behind these scenes, I walk out of the classroom in shock. For example, this past Friday in class we touched on the scene regarding Milkman and his hunting friends and their experience in the woods. First off, we came to the conclusion that the bobcat that the boys hunted and killed represents Guitar. Why a bobcat? Little did we know, Morrison has been comparing Guitar to a cat since the beginning when she referred to him as the "cat-eyed boy" (Morrison 7). In opposition to killing the bo...

Before even reading Toni Morrison's "Song of Solomon", our class was directed to talk about meanings behind each of our names. "Grace"... what meaning could that have? Everyone at my table had an intricate story behind why their parents chose the name they did and all I had to say was, "I think my parents just liked the name." Although I found the situation kind of funny, I couldn't help but feel a little down about the fact that my name didn't have a meaning. In my eyes, this meant that my name was just a name. Although as I read Morrison's novel, the motif of names was often brought up especially when talking about the naming of streets. It allowed me to think, "what are names and what do they really represent?" When talking about streets, many city legislatures referred to a specific street as "Doctor Street" while many others refereed to "the avenue fronting the lake to the junction of routes 6 and 2 leading to ...

       Reality can be brought upon an audience within any type of image. “Why did Art choose to put the photograph of his father in his novel instead of drawing?” During seminar, this was a question that caught my eye. At first, I was slightly unsure of why he chose to include a photograph of Vladek instead of a drawing because above all... it was a comic book! Although throughout the week after reading passages in regards to our synthesis essay, the relationship between violent images and reality became more apparent.        When the comic surfed across its darkest scenes, Art chose to display a real life image of his father instead of a drawing. To most, comics are just a fun piece of literature that don’t hold much importance. Although “Maus” portrays characters as mice and cats which may come off as childish, in my opinion it gives off more of a meaning than any other picture-less book. So in order to bring the audience out of the “comic book...

Throughout the comic book “Maus”, Spiegelman repeats the motif of guilt. Although, when most people think of guilt, it tends to be linked to the word “regret”. This type of guilt throughout the two volumes of comics is defined as “survivor’s guilt”, which is the product of both Vladek and Art’s relationships with the Holocaust. The complicated relationship between history and current life, can have an effect on an individual whether they went through a historical trauma or not. Since Art was born post war, he became that individual that ultimately grieved over his fathers past. For example, order and cleanliness was very important to Vladek in all aspects. After living in dirt and disgust literally and mentally for four years, when in a situation of mess it most likely gives him PTSD and brings him back to his times in the Holocaust. For Art, this can be a very difficult thing to understand not only when learning to cope with his father’s patterns, but when writing his comic. It’s almo...