Past vs. Present

        In many of the novels we have read in class, there has been a common motif about the connections between the past and the present. We first examined this motif in The Things They Carried, as O’Brien and the surviving soldiers continue to “carry” their emotional trauma from the Vietnam War long after it is over, continuously reliving their past. In Maus, Vladek faces a slightly different situation; he is a direct victim of the violence rather than simply a soldier who experiences it. Vladek is unable to move on from the survivor’s guilt of managing to survive the concentration camps where many of his families members perished. Similarly, the soldiers in The Things They Carried also face survivor’s guilt, wondering how they managed to survive the war when someone as morally and intellectually sound as Kiowa did not. More interestingly, in Maus, trauma is transferred to future generations who do not have any direct experiences of the conflict. Art develops an obsession with Auschwitz and the Nazis due to his father’s constant grief and trauma from his past, despite any meaningful connections with his Jewish identity.

       The characters in Song of Solomon are greatly influenced by their past. Milkman’s “concentration on things behind him” is “becoming a habit” even when he is just four years old and does not have much of a personal past to reflect on; rather, he develops an obsession with his family’s past. Macon Jr.’s fixation on the past is revealed when he names his son Macon III, a continuation of the family tradition of naming the son after the father. This tradition is a reflection of the family’s past as slaves: the children are treated as the father’s property, branded with the father’s name just as slaves were branded by the names of their owners. The Dead family also remains fragmented just as many slave families were separated when family members were auctioned off to different owners. While slave auctions drove slave families apart physically, the Dead family is emotionally detached. Macon Jr. owns a Packard and is respected for his material wealth by the rest of the black community. On the other hand, Pilate is “helpful to everybody” and finds happiness in living simply. Macon Jr. and Milkman’s pursuit of wealth and social status draws parallels to the actions of the white people in society, whereas Pilate has more traditional values, singing songs about the Sugarman that are similar to the uplifting songs that slaves sang in the field.

       In today’s society, we don’t seem to worry about our past. We are all worried about our future: college admissions, internships, jobs, and so on. The past seems so different from our current situation, and we simply have so many goals for our future. Hopefully, when we do eventually look back at the past, we will look back at it fondly and be fulfilled.