SOURCE: “Song of Solomon: Morrison's Rejection of Rank's Monomyth and Feminism,” in Studies in American Fiction, Vol. 15, No. 1, Spring, 1987, pp. 13-24.

In the following essay, Brenner examines ways in which Toni Morrison rejected the sexism in Rank's hero myth.

Around Milkman, the hero of her much-admired Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison wraps various collective fictions: a riddling nursery rhyme that presages his birth and, later chanted by children, leads him to discover his heritage; fables, like the one his father, Macon Dead, tells of the man who rescues a baby snake only to be poisoned to death by its bite; fairytales, like “Rumpelstiltskin,” “Jack and the Beanstalk,” and “Hansel and Gretel”; a common black folktale, like “People Who Could Fly” (as collected by Julius Lester);¹ and family legends, like that of Milkman's great-grandfather's ability to fly. Even through family names and nicknames Morrison underscores a preoccupation of all...