Lesson Overview 

The Quiz 

As always, you want to quiz the students on the reading.  If they haven't read - nothing else matters that you do.   I've included the quiz for Chapter 10 below - if you need the quiz for Chapter 9, it can be found in the previous lesson.

Class Discussion - Vertext

For the hows and whys of running a Vertext Discussion - please see my page on Class Discussion Methods.

This Vertext is through Chapter 10 of Song of Solomon in thirty-plus verbatim quotes, arranged in page order (pp. 225–258) so that reading them aloud in sequence retells the chapter through Morrison's own language. It opens with Guitar's "Baby, I hope I never have to ask myself that question," then follows Milkman to Danville: the discovery of what "people" and links mean, Reverend Cooper's chilling "Arrested for what?", the karmic ruin of the Butlers ("Things work out, son"), and the townsmen's memories of Lincoln's Heaven — including the farm's great "See what you can do?" speech and the moment their talk ignites Milkman's hunger for the gold. The middle run belongs to Circe: the ginger perfume that replaces the stench of the house, the Weimaraners, Sing ("White people name Negroes like race horses"), the truth about Jake's body and the cave, and her furious refusal to be mistaken for a loyal servant — she stays so the Butler house will rot and "nobody fixes it up."

The final quotes trace Milkman's stripping-down and coming up empty: the soaked cigarettes, the salt taste, the cave with "no fat little pigeon-breasted bags of gold," the discarded lighter, real hunger, and the quiet rebuke of Fred Garnett's closed door — ending with Milkman's suspicion about the missing second skeleton and his conviction that Pilate took the gold to Virginia. Slides pair key quotes with images that cue discussion — ginger root, the last page of Gatsby, Plato's allegory of the cave, and a George Floyd protest photo set against the Butlers' belief that "if they killed one man his whole line died" — and a single reflective slide near the end asks the chapter's organizing question: "What does he lose in this chapter?"

Class Discussion - Ring Master Teacher

If you choose to go with a Teacher Led Discussion, you can find both my handwritten notes for the discussion and a transcript of those notes that also gives a little more guidance for the discussion itself.

These page-by-page discussion questions cover the end of Chapter 9 and all of Chapter 10 of Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon (page numbers refer to the edition running roughly pp. 214–258 for this stretch — the Vintage/Plume paperback). Suggested answers or the textual detail being fished for appear in parentheses; marginal annotations appear as “Teaching notes.”

Group Work

If you need to utilize it, there is a Group Work    However, I strongly recommend using the Vertext Discussion procedure outlined above or the Ring Master Teacher method.  Please see my page on Group Work for more on the how and why of Group Work - and please see the actual Group Work handout (found below) for the questions that I ask (many of them - if not all - are also found in the discussion questions above and in my Lesson Notes (also found below).  You can find a description of the AP Literature Question below - with the hand

This is  a brief summary n of the questions on the Group Work - see the actual handout for more:

This group work assignment pushes students to synthesize Chapters 9 and 10 of Song of Solomon by connecting each major event back to earlier moments in the novel and outward to other works. The first three questions center on the Dead family's ruptures: Corinthians' awakening with Porter is read against Railroad Tommy's speech about all that black men are denied (with nods to the peacock motif and The Graduate's Elaine Robinson), Pilate's "Aunt Jemima" performance at the police station raises the question of whether she is a sell-out — weighed against Guitar's angry reaction, Milkman's shifting judgments across the two chapters, and Macon's old "snake" label — and Lena's confrontation forces students to reassess Milkman's history of disrespect, from the ruined dress to hitting his father, and what her accusations do to his fantasy that freedom means escaping his family.

The remaining questions widen the lens to flight and power. Students connect the opening of Chapter 10 to the famous last page of The Gatsby — boats against the current — and ask whether Milkman's airplane ride is real flight or just another version of hiding out in Guitar's apartment waiting for Hagar to give up. The final question uses Orwell's "Shooting an Elephant" — the insight that oppressors are bound and deformed by their own oppression — as a frame for Circe's decision to stay and rot the Butler mansion from within (echoing the fate of Emmett Till's killers), the irony of the Butlers' name, and, coming full circle, how Pilate's police-station act is at bottom a refutation of that same relationship of power. Throughout, the assignment demands specificity: direct quotes, page references, and before-and-after comparisons rather than general impressions.