Song of Solomon, by Toni Morrison, was a disturbing read to say the least.  The novel tells of a girl named Hagar becomes consumed with insanity after being rejected by the man she loves. Through her character, we can see how the act of emotionally rejecting someone can render a devastating, negative impact on the psychological well-being of an individual.
    When we think of rejection, we think of the many forms it can come in. It exists in the form of ostracism, job termination, stigmatization, and rejection by a loved one or a lover. In this book, Morrison uses romantic rejection to deliver the most tragic outcome in a character who has never experienced rejection before.
    The act of romantic rejection can make the person experiencing it undergo a sudden drop in positive emotion. This is generally displayed as something ranging from a vague disappointment, sadness, and depression, to anxiety, phobic behavior, or even stalking or forcibly abducting the rejecting person.  These are the emotions Hagar feels when being rejected by Milkman. Initially, she finds herself saddened by his breakup “thank you” letter, but that evolves into anger when she finds him with another woman, whose "silky copper-colored hair cascaded over the sleeve of his coat."  She then resolves to kill him (if she cannot have him, nobody can) since she feels he should be her soul mate.  Thus, on the thirtieth day of every month, for six months, she seeks him out, wielding a different weapon each time.  She becomes addicted to finding him, going to great lengths to “move around the house, onto the porch, down the streets…like a reckless ghost, finding peace nowhere and in nothing” (Morrison 127). Her obsessive behavior characterizes her as someone who suffers from relationship addiction. She exhibits such symptoms as fear of being alone, controlling behavior, and selective amnesia—which causes for her to selectively forget the bad aspects of their relationship.  All she remembers is “how beautiful he is” (Morrison 130). When she eventually finds him at his friend Guitar’s house, she attempts to stab him, but cannot bring herself to do so.
    When Guitar returns home, he finds Hagar, despondent and nude, standing listlessly in his room. Pitying her, he drives her home, urging her to stop destroying herself over Milkman.  He urges her to listen to him and to think things out. He tells her everything he has loved in his life, he has lost. He creates a metaphor of love, telling her that clouds often love a mountain, but they can never cover the mountain’s head (Morrison 306). The clouds never consume every inch of the mountain, just as Hagar would not be able to completely consume Milkman’s life.  Guitar deems Milkman’s rejection of Hagar as critically affecting to her psyche because she has been spoiled by Pilate and Reba’s upbringing; they always gave her everything she wanted and spared her from ever being denied. This left her unprepared to psychologically negotiate the trauma of Milkman’s rejection.  This could only lead to tragic results.
    Pilate and Reba, her grandmother and mother, try to cheer up Hagar, but to no avail.  In the catatonic state that followed in the wake of her attempt to stab Milkman, she utters the words “no wonder” repeatedly (Morrison 308).  When she suddenly wakes from her unresponsive state, Hagar starts to convince herself she is to blame for Milkman’s disinterest.  To make herself “good enough” for him, she bursts into a shopping frenzy that same day, believing that if she tries to look more beautiful, Milkman will love her again. She wants to become that woman with the copper-colored hair.  In a cruel twist of fate though, the clothes she so desperately buys and the hair styling she rushes to get, are all for naught when she finds herself in a severe thunderstorm.  Her hair, clothes, and bags get soaked, rendered useless (Morrison 313).  Yet, she still tries on the clothes as if to purposefully demean her self image.  She then spirals down a path of worsening self-criticism that strips her psychologically. 
    What becomes clear at the end when Hagar dies is that Milkman’s rejection of her as his woman leads her to ultimately reject herself.  Tragically, there is no other outcome that can result other than dying.  It is at this point where the ultimate damage of rejection by another is experienced.  Interestingly, Morrison deprives the reader of his participation in the death of Hagar.  She transports us to the scene of Hagar’s funeral as if to protect her from our witnessing the full course of her relentless self-destruction.  Morrison seems to feel that it is intrusive for the reader to look upon Hagar as she ultimately, pitifully, destroys herself at the hands of another.
    The deft use of a negative emotional dynamic such as rejection by a lover, makes for a powerful plot as the affected character’s behavior becomes more urgent.  Morrison successfully uses this technique, and shows us the depths to which a human can go when their very being is rejected by another, and then by oneself.