Song of Solomon: Milkman Dead - Respecting and Listening to Women In Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon, Milkman Dead becomes a man by learning to respect and to listen to women. In the first part of the novel, he emulates his father, by being deaf to women's wisdom and women's needs, and casually disrespecting the women he should most respect. He chooses to stray from his father's example and leaves town to obtain his inheritance and to become a self-defined man. From Circe, a witch figure, he is inspired to be reciprocal, and through his struggle for equ