Song of Solomon
Chapter 6
The Seven Days
Homework Change
Weds Chapter 7
Thursday Chapter 8
Monday Chapt 9 1st 10 pages
"“He’s been dead 30 years and I can’t see why it can’t stay dead,” he says. Other people have made a lot of money off of that, and I haven’t seen a dime.
Roy Bryant – One of the killers of Emmett Till, a
month before his death.
"every death is the death of five to seven generations" (Guitar, 155)
"You can't marry." "No." "Have children."
"No." (Milkman & Guitar, 160)
Song of Solomon Chapter 6
“I did what you do to some woman every six months– called the whole thing off.” (Milkman to Guitar – 152)
"Slave names don't bother me; but slave status does." (Guitar, 161)
"when a Negro child...is killed by whites and nothing is done about it by their law and their courts, this society selects a similar victim at random, and they execute him" (Guitar, 155).
The Seven Days is "made up of a few men who are willing to take some risks" (Guitar, 155).
"Why don't you just hunt down the ones who did the killing?" (Milkman, 155).
“Every time somebody does a thing like that to one of us, they say the people who did it were crazy or ignorant…Why isn’t cutting a man’s eyes out…the kind of thing you never get too drunk or ignorant to do? Too crazy to do?”(Milkman, 156).
A meme that was posted after the mass murder of worshipers in a Historically Black
Church.
"white madness--crimes planned and executed in a truly lunatic manner against total strangers" (100).
"I will take off from Mercy and fly away on my own wings. Please forgive me. I loved you all" (Mr. Smith, 3).
"Don't you see I love ya? I'd die for ya, kill for ya. I'm saying I love ya. I'm telling ya. Oh, God have mercy..." (Porter, 26).
"What I'm doing aint about hating white people.
It's about loving us. About loving you.
My whole life is love." (Guitar, 160)
"As a race they [whites] are unnatural" (Guitar 157).
“But there are more of them than us.” (Milkman)
“Only in the West. But still the ratio can’t widen in their
favor.” (Guitar)
"You could've taken him [Franklin Roosevelt] and his wheelchair and put him in a small dusty town...and a rope and he'd have done it [a lynching] too" (Guitar, 157-158).
"Milkman secretly preferred FDR and felt very very close to him. Closer, in fact, to him than to his own father" (62).
"Can't you even let other Negroes know about it? I mean to give us hope?" "No." "Why not?" "Betrayal. The possibility of betrayal.“ (158)
"“The earth is soggy with black people’s blood.” (Guitar Speaking)
“What that means is that a black man is a victim of a crime only when a white man says he is.” (Guitar 160).
“Justice” by Langston Hughes
That Justice is a blind goddess�Is a thing to which we black are wise:�Her bandage hides two festering sores�That once perhaps were eyes.
"what I tell you can't go any further...if it does, you'll be dropping a rope around my neck" (Guitar 154).
"I know I wouldn't join one [a lynching party] no matter how drunk I was or how bored, and I know you wouldn't either, nor any black man I know or every heard of" (Guitar, 157).
“Am I going to live any longer
because you all read the newspaper and then ambush some poor old white man?” (Milkman speaking)
What you’re doing is crazy. And
something else: it’s a habit. If you do it enough, you can do it to anybody. You know what I mean? (Milman, 162).
“Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return
To plague the inventor.”
Shakespeare - Macbeth
“I do accept it [his, name]. It’s part of who I am. Guitar is my name. Bains is the slave master’s name. And I’m all of that.
Slave names don’t bother me; but slave status does.”
"We don't off Negroes" (Guitar, 162).
"Cause young dudes are subject to change the rules." "You worried about yourself, Milkman?" Guitar looked amused" (Milkman & Guitar, 162).
“Fried. Then somebody ought to bust your shell." (Guitar to Milkman, 116)
Song of Solomon Chapter 6
Milkman rubbed the ankle of his short leg. “I’m scared for you, man.”
“That’s funny, I’m scared for you too.” (161)
From “If We Must Die by Claude McKay”
Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,�And for their thousand blows deal one death-blow!�What though before us lies the open grave?�Like men we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack,�Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!