"I been worried sick about you, too, Macon": Toni Morrison, the South, and the oral tradition

Studies in the Literary Imagination, Fall 1998 by Atkinson, Yvonne, Page, Philip

There is a gap between Macon's questions and Pilate's complex response. She demonstrates her understanding that her brother's complaining questions indirectly indicate his concern for her well-being. Through the act of signifying, Pilate also shows Macon and the reader that she has not given up on him. By signifying, she is giving him a chance to participate in a communal activity. Although Pilate, like Pecola, is a person apart-born without a navel and having invented herself-she is still a part of her culture, for she participates in communal rituals of her Southern, oral, African American heritage. In contrast, Macon seems to have relinquished all ties to his roots. Having lost his heritage, his history, and even his name, he has assimilated the dominant culture of the North. Through Pilate's signifying and through her interpretation of his language, we come to realize that Macon is not as far removed from his cuture of his sister as even he thinks he is. When she gives the pointed, indirect response of "I've been worried sick about you, too," (emphasis added) Pilate points out to the reader and to Macon that his complaints about her are rooted in his concen for her (20). The language restores Macon-shows that he is part of the culture even as he tries self-consciously to reject it. His love for their singing, like his indirect demonstration of his love in his language, demonstrates the ways in which language and the oral tradition served as an anchor and an echo of cultural belonging for migrants who traveled North. Like signifying, call and response and witnessing and testifying are also prominent features of the Black oral tradition. Call and response involves "stating and counter stating; acting and reacting" (Smitherman, Talkin 118). It is "spontaneous verbal and non-verbal interaction between speaker and listener in which all of the speaker's statements ('calls') are punctuated by expressions ('responses') from the listener" (104).

Call and response is an outward expression of the group, indicating a connection, a shared history and culture, and unifying the listener and the speaker. Call and response is immediate validation. Call and response helps to lessen the distancing nature of written discourse by allowing the reader to make connections with the characters: Because they are close to an oral culture . . . black writers bring a dimension of immediacy to the struggle with the written word. They adapt call and response to fiction from the participatory forms of oral culture. (Callahan 14) In Song of Solomon, there are layers of call and response when Macon sits outside Pilate's house listening to the women inside singing: "Macon walked on, resisting as best he could the sound of the voices that followed him" (28). Pilate, Reba, and Hagar are calling and responding to each other, and their song is calling for Macon to respond:

They were singing some melody that Pilate was leading. A phrase that the other two were taking up and building on. Her powerful contralto, Reba's piercing soprano in counterpoint, and the soft voice of the girl, Hagar . . . pulled him like a carpet tack under the influence of a magnet. (29)