Love

Love is a tricky concept, especially when using it to define the existence of characters in a time so different from ours. For the most part of this novel, love has been more of a forced burden. The rose petals, one of the most definite symbols of love, were sewn and not authentic; Milkman, the only son of Ruth, watched from afar as his mother was strangled and he chose to ignore reality. In cases where love truly blooms, it is quickly vanquished by another in fear of what it could lead to. When Macon Dead Jr. found out about the nature of the relationship between Corinthians and Porter, he immediately did everything in his power to end it.

            However, in the case where love was meant to be pure, we quickly dismissed it and labeled it as hatred instead. Guitar committed his acts of murder out of “love” for “us,” not for “hating white people,” as he repeatedly told Milkman (Morrison 159). Later on, after Guitar attempted to kill Milkman, and Milkman pulled the heart out of the bobcat, we were steadfast in the belief Guitar never murdered out of love, but rather hate.

I have a different take on this. Guitar did do the killings out of love for his people, but his definition of love is different from society’s general consensus. I say this for two reasons. For one, this entire novel is very strange in the sense that it makes the audience uncomfortable because of lack of relatability. Love has been so unusual that the most normal love that we know enough about has been between Hagar and Milkman, and these two are cousins. So yes, Guitar’s love is weird, but literally everything that has happened so far has been weird. Weird cancels out weird. Second, Guitar’s father died when Guitar was young. I know other characters, like Pilate, were young when their father died, and as per our class analysis, Pilate is the Christ figure in this novel. What went wrong with Guitar? He was compensated with candy. The candy itself doesn’t hold any significance, but the fact that it was a physical object does. Guitar lost a loving figure, and in return, he was given a physical object. So a life equals something materialistic. Most people claim a life is invaluable, but that is no longer what Guitar believes. At the time, of course, he was disgusted, but this concept remained in his mind, and eventually evolved into the law of retaliation, an eye for an eye. This means the crime should fit the punishment. As per Guitar, the punishment should be the same as the crime. Ultimately, it’s a life for a life. To Guitar, this still falls under the umbrella of love as it all began with losing a loved one. Hate was never part of the equation; he just had a twisted sense of what is love.

What about Guitar trying to kill Milkman and the symbolization of the bobcat? I can’t really speak about the attempted murder since I haven’t read further yet, but regarding the bobcat, all I can say is that Guitar’s perception of life and all its contributing factors has been altered so far from society’s standards, where the heart does not necessarily represent his love.