Song of Solomon Annotation Reflection

One of the most challenging things so far while reading Song of Solomon has been dealing with Morrison’s sentence structure.  He words sentences and actions in a way that seems overly complicated and to coincide to this, he uses a strange choice of words in his writing.  When I first began reading and throughout the book, his choice of wording and vocabulary becomes ever present and really disrupts the flow of your reading.  For example Morrison writes, “So Hagar’s forays we’re Part and parcel of the mystery of having been ‘lifed’ by love, and while the manifestation it took was a source of great interest to them, the consequences were not”.  Passages like these give me pause while I read and really makes me think about what was just said and gives me a difficult time interpreting what was just said as it is worded unusually.

I have been dealing with passages like that by re-reading them which will usually work but if I still have trouble I will read the preceding sentence which helps me understand the context of that sentence.  In addition to re-reading I will also highlight or box the sentence or passage which I’m having difficulty with and will try and analyze and annotate more slowly and carefully to help me gain a better understanding of what happened and what message or undertones Morrison is trying to convey.  For example the sentence above I boxed in and re-read which helped a lot but also required the use of a dictionary to help define “forays” which evidently means a sudden attack or incursion into enemy territory, especially to obtain something; a raid. occurring to Webster’s dictionary. These practices have helped me understand and continue with my reading of the Song of Solomon.