Chapter 1 introduces us to Song of Solomon's main characters and the narrative's unique structure, in which Morrison intermixes the present, the past, and the future and presents numerous stories from various characters' perspectives. Because the narrator functions only as a detached observer who simply reports things as they happen, the characters tell their own stories, and the community comments on or responds to these characters' actions. This call-and-response pattern between the characters' individual voices and the community's collective voice, which originates in the African oral tradition, resonates throughout the novel. The opening chapter also illustrates Morrison's emphasis on participatory reading: She expects readers to participate in the novel's construction by filling in the spaces of the narrative, connecting various seemingly unrelated details as they are revealed. For example, Chapter 1 poses several questions: Who is Mr. Smith? Why is he about to fly from the roof of Mercy Hospital? And why does he ask the community's forgiveness?
The chapter also introduces Morrison's concept of history as "rememory," an approach that views history not as a series of significant public events marked by wars and other national crises but as a compilation of stories filtered through the personal memories of individuals. Consequently, readers receive apparently disjointed fragments of stories that are understandable only in retrospect. Viewed from this perspective, history is not "the master's tale," publicly recorded in newspapers, textbooks, and historical documents that generally reflect a white male perspective and discount the contributions of people of color and women; history is a master tale, or master text, composed of collective experiences, including songs, poems, and personal stories.
