Magical Realism

In
Song of Solomon

Remembering and Reclaiming

The myth of the flying African
Wael Bouraoui
Fatma Marzouki
 Outline
• Magical realism
• Features and techniques of magical realism in
Song of Solomon
• The Flying African Myth
• Significance of Magical Realism in Song of
Solomon
• The term magical realism, first emerged in the
1955 essay "Magical Realism in Spanish
American Fiction" by critic Angel Flores in
reference to writing that combines aspects of
magic realism and marvelous realism. 
Real-world setting + fantastical elements =
magical realism
Frida Khalo
 The epic tale of seven
generations of the Buendía
family that also spans a
hundred years
of turbulent Latin American
history, from
the postcolonial 1820s to the
1920s. Patriarch José Arcadio
Buendía builds the utopian
city of Macondo in the
middle of a swamp.
• Morrison and García Márquez first met in
1996 at the home of Carlos Fuentes and
returned to Mexico again in 2005 for a second
Mexico meeting with the Colombian novelist.
 Is it a genre?
• As more and more authors around the world
took their cue from the authors of Latin
America, the genre has become blended and
conflated with other genres.
• Surrealism / fabulism / fantasy
 Ultimately magical realism uses magical
elements to make a point about reality.
Features and techniques of magical
realism in Song of Solomon
 The False Beginning
« The North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance
agent promised to fly from Mercy to the other
side of the lake superior at 3: 00 . »

• Within the opening lines of the entire book,

Toni Morrison sneaks the term ‘ fly ‘ because
it is central to insert Magical Realsim and the
theme of flight .
The reoccurence of fantastical elements

“ Jesus ! Here he was walking around in the

middle of the twentieth century try to explain
what a ghost had done . But why not ? … Pilate
did not have a navel . Since that was true anything
could be, why not ghosts as well. ”

- Song Of Solomon, p298

The Cob web effect
The Flying African Myth
Ebos Landing

It was the setting of the final scene of an

1803 resistance of enslaved Igbo people
brought from West Africa on slave ships.
Its moral value as a story of resistance
towards slavery has symbolic importance
in African American folklore and literary
history .
The Africans are reputed to have grown wings
or turned themselves into vultures, before
flying back home to freedom in Africa. 
Ain't you heard about them? Well, at that time
Mr. Blue he was the overseer and . . . Mr. Blue
he go down one morning with a long whip for
to whip them good. . . . Anyway, he whipped
them good and they got together and stuck
that hoe in the field and then . . . rose up in the
sky and turned themselves into buzzards and
flew right back to Africa. . . . Everybody knows
about them.
“ I don’t care how silly it may seem. It’s
everywhere people used to talk about it; it’s in
the spirituals and gospels. Perhaps it was
wishful, thinking…But suppose it wasn’t.”
- Toni Morrison
Icarus

Father Deadalus makes wings for his

son Icarus . Daedalus warns son not to
fly too close to the sun or sea but to
fllow his path of flight .
Icarus’ curiosity causes him to fall into
The sea and die
 Icarus vs Solomon
• Cautionary tale vs Tale of hope
• While the « white » version of the story warns
against too much freedom the « black »
version sees any kind of freedom as positive
• Reflects the ideology of the oppressor and the
oppressed
Significance of Magical Realism in Song of
Solomon
 Reclaiming the myth
“The flying African myth in Song of Solomon.. If
it means Icarus to some readers. Fine. My
meaning is specific: it is about Black people
who could fly. That was always part of the
folklore of my life: flying was one of our gifts”
(Leclair, 1993)
 Resistance
• Magical realism in some forms can be
understood as a post-colonial move that
seeks to resist European notions of naturalism
or realism.  At times, it calls for a
deep hybridity of cultures and reading
experiences.
 Sources
• Drums and Shadows: Survival Studies among the Georgia
Coastal Negroes
• To Walk or to Fly? The Legend of the Flying Africans in Toni
Morrison’s Song of Solomon by Dr. Nassourou Imorou
• Icarus and Daedalus in Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon by
Manuel Lopez Ramirez
• If You Surrender to the Air: Folk Legends of Flight and
Resistance in African American Literature by Gay Wilentz
• https://newafrikan77.wordpress.com/2017/05/27/igbo-
landing-may-1803-a-symbol-of-african-resistance/