Song of Solomon Characters

Milkman’s left leg is shorter than his right leg, he earned his nickname because his mother breast fed him far too long, and his dad is the ogre-y landlord that likes to put people out on the...

A non-bellybutton, a movement-loving mouth, a snuffbox earring, and a bag of human bones. Pilate is pretty much like everyone else you know. Not. She has a weakness for geography, and has lived in...

Guitar has music in his name. He is the cussing rebel who has a vocabulary that would make the dictionary jealous and who could teach a college course on Identity, and how to find it. Once when Mil...

Hagar is Pilate’s granddaughter and Reba’s daughter, who has a pretty bed with pretty sheets and who, since she was a little girl, has hated dirt and disorganization. This makes her an...

The dreaded Macon Dead is in love with keys, namely, the keys to all of the houses and apartment buildings he owns. If his father-in-law had lent him money back in the day to invest in railroad lan...

Married as a teenager, Ruth stops having sex when she’s in her early twenties, because her husband can’t stand her. In fact, he goes out of his way to criticize her cooking, her storyte...

A Bryn Mawr graduate, Corinthians (Corrie) is the first in her family to go to college. As a child, the greatest excitement in her life is taking off her stockings during the family drive on Sunday...

We don’t know too much about Magdalena (Lena), except that she is doomed to a life of making fake roses, just like her sister, Corinthians, is. However, while Corrie is able to get out of the...

Born to Pilate of a man on the island colony off the coast of Virginia, Reba is a lucky woman. She always wins things, such that people from far and wide come to her to ask for her help choosing lo...

A member of the Seven Days, we are first introduced to Henry Porter as he is hanging out of his attic-apartment window, drunkenly and loudly threatening to kill himself. He lectures on love to the...

Freddie is the town crier, the messenger, and the man who gives Milkman his official nickname. Freddie can’t keep a secret, often bends the truth, but always reports the news with incredible...

Circe is the Danvillian midwife who has birthed hundreds of babies in the region, bringing them safely into the world. She helped birth Macon and Pilate, and the only patient she ever lost was Sing...

Omar is a Shalimar elder who first invites Milkman to go bobcat hunting with the other town elders. He extends this offer to see how the city boy might hold up in the Blue Ridge wilderness. After t...

Sweet is the mystic lady of the night who lives in a cheery cabin in Shalimar. She takes Milkman in and shows him such sweetness and comfort that he truly feels he has died and gone to heaven. She...

Jake is Macon and Pilate’s father and Milkman’s grandfather who, for sixteen years, toiled to create Lincoln’s Heaven, a paradise of agriculture, nature, and family. Jake was once...

Solomon is the father of 21 children and the husband to Ryna. He is the legend at the heart of novel, for he flew away to Africa, leaving his children behind. There is a rock in the Blue Ridge Moun...

Heddy is Milkman’s great-grandmother and Sing’s mother. When Solomon tries to take Jake with him to Africa, he accidentally brushes against a tree as he’s leaving, and Jake the ba...

Susan Byrd and Milkman are related through Heddy. She lives in a crumbling house in the Blue Ridge Mountains, near Shalimar, and Milkman visits her twice. During the first visit, Susan is reluctant...

Grace Long is a watch thief and a terrible flirt. She is Susan Byrd’s friend who tells Milkman to visit her at the "normal school" where she teaches. She is hungry for a bit of gossip and goe...

Coop is the reverend in Danville, but he has to supplement his preaching income by working in the freight yard. He takes Milkman into his home, without ever having met him before, delighted at the...

The Butlers are the greedy white family of farmers who live in a huge mansion just outside of Danville. Though we never encounter them directly, we hear of them throughout the novel, as their actio...

The Seven Days are a society of seven black men who, whenever a black man, woman, or child is murdered by a white person, reciprocate the murder by taking the life of a white person, killing him/he...