In Song of Solomon, Milkman experiences many different kinds of love from his family members and close friends. Some of the forms of love that he experiences are healthy, while others are not. For example, the kind of love that Ruth feels for Milkman is unhealthy. She has an aggressively possessive type of love for Milkman. An example of this is how she nurses him much longer than most children nurse for; she doesn't want him to grow up because that might mean that he would grow away from her.
The love that Milkman's father has for him is also fairly possessive and controlling. We see Macon and Ruth competing for Milkman's love and loyalty when they tell him vastly different versions of the night that Dr. Foster died, trying to show themselves as respectable and deserving of his love in their respective versions. However, Milkman doesn't seem to love either of them after these incidents, the only emotion that he gets after listening to his father is disgust, and he seems rather apathetic when hearing Ruth's version of the story and her accusations against her husband.
Hagar's love for Milkman is another example of unhealthy love, although it is not nearly as selfish as the love that Milkman's parents have for him. She cares about him much more than he cares about her, and this ends up hurting her so much when he breaks up with her that she decides to try and murder him with an ice pick.
Perhaps the only example of selfless and healthy love that any character has for Milkman, is the love that Pilate has for him. When he first goes to her house as a child, she welcomes him into her house, even though she has a bad relationship with Macon. Pilate's love for Milkman is epitomized in the scene where Milkman and Guitar are in jail after stealing the bag from Pilate's house and instead of getting angry or leaving them in jail, she convinces the police to let the two boys go. This is also one of the few relationships where Milkman reciprocates the love that he is shown.
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