Milkman, the hero in the book Song of Solomon by Tori Morrison, has an interesting connection with his father Macon. Milkman wants to be different from Macon; When Macon wears bow ties, Milkman wears four-in-hands; When Macon focuses in his business, Milkman then goes out for parties. However, Milkman shares certain innate similarities with his father that shapes his identity: they have a poor relationship with their loves, and they both are indifference and cold-blooded towards the unfortunates in the society.
Milkman and Macon both have terrible relationships with their loves. For Milkman, his love of his girlfriend Hagar is inconsistent. He starts from "fallen in love with her behind (her back)" (p43) to finally treating her as if "She was the third beer" (p91), a metaphor of her insignificance. Moreover, he ends this love between them in an extremely unwise and casual way: He uses a letter with some money in it to declare their break up instead of a serious face-to-face talk. The letter infuriates Hagar as if after so many years they have been together, she is more like money rather than a person in his mind. This extremely disrespectful way to break up leads to Hagar's broken heart and her attempts to murder Milkman. During one of her murder attempt, Milkman wishes, "Me or her. Choose. Die, Hagar. Die.Die.Die."(p129). His curse on her confirms that the love between them has completely vanished. They cannot even be normal friends anymore. It is an embarrassingly ugly relationship. Similarly, Macon's relationship with Ruth is terrible as well. .
Macon never thinks of recovering their relationship after their conflicts regard to her father; he simply hates Ruth because of her special relation to her father and tends to abuse her easily. The book describes his hatred as "His hatred of his wife glittered and sparked in every work he spoke to her" (p10). In Macon and Ruth's discussion on Anna Djvorak, Macon smashes her jaw simply because she says "I certainly am my daddy's daughter" (p67), which reminds him again of her sexual relationship with her father.
