Milkman and the Similarities to Daedalus

One of the topics that was brought up in class on Tuesday was the fact that Milkman doesn't seem to be a very interesting main character because there doesn't seem to be a clear development as the novel progresses. There isn't really a sense of time going on the story. Although this is partially because Toni

Morrison likes to jump around to different moments in the characters' lives, I was really shocked at the gap in Milkman's life when we suddenly found out that he was in his thirties. His behavior when he was a teenager compared to when he is thirty seems very similar. Also, Toni Morrison seems to focus more on other characters, giving long and very detailed stories about them while Milkman listens. To me, this was confusing at first because Milkman should be the main character but Toni Morrison doesn't go into his perspective at all. Milkman just seems to reject the explanations and the stories behind his life and his family. For a while, it was difficult for me to be sympathetic towards Milkman. He prided himself on not being like his father and yet he shares similar characteristic; he loves money and his attitude towards the women around him is similar to his father's. For these reasons, I find it very difficult to understand why Milkman is the main protagonist in the novel.
However, as part 1 ends, I find myself believing that Milkman will change by the end of the book. Part of the reason is because it wouldn't make sense to make Milkman the main protagonist otherwise since he doesn't carry any of the qualities of a protagonist that we have seen in previous books in the semester. My main motivation for why he will change goes back to the very first chapter of the book. If you remember, the novel opens up with the death of Robert Smith, the insurance agent who believed he could fly. In the first chapter we also get a section where it is described that Milkman "lost all interest in himself. To have to live without that single gift saddened him and left his imagination so bereft that he appeared dull even to the women who did not hate his mother" (9). This was because he found out that only birds and planes could fly. The notion of flying appeared many more times in the book, from the winged woman that Milkman sees while he is in the car to the plane ticket that Milkman would buy if he was in a dangerous situation. These didn't really seem to connect to the story at first, especially the first seen when the insurance agent died. As the novel progresses however, slowly everything begins to fall in place. Milkman despises the situation that he is in. He mentions several times throughout the novel that he is surrounded by abnormal people and how he wishes that his family was normal. His main reason to steal the gold from Pilate is to escape from his family and live on his own. He wants to "fly" out of his situation. To make a connection to Robert Smith and Milkman, the first instance of the flying contraption that Robert Smith used was the myth of Daedalus. For those who aren't familiar with it, the story of Daedalus is a Greek myth where he fashioned pairs of wings for him and his son Icarus so that they could escape from the tower/prison that King Minos kept him in. This bears many similarities to Milkman's situation where King Minos is Macon Dead and Daedalus is Milkman, who is trying to escape from his prison. It seems by the end of Part 1 that he does leave as he shuts the door after the lecture by Lena. What will be interesting to read about is what happens after. In the myth of Daedalus, his son Icarus died because he became too cocky. Perhaps Milkman is more easily related to Icarus.