Throughout Milkman’s southbound journey, he is a submissive witness of his environment. On a Greyhound bus approaching Danville, Pennsylvania, Milkman tries to appreciate the landscape he has heard his father talk wildly about, “but Milkman saw it as merely green, deep into its Indian summer but cooler than his own city, although farther south. . . . For a few minutes he tried to enjoy the scenery running past his window, then the city man’s boredom with nature’s repetition overtook him. Some places had lots of trees, some did not; some fields were green, some were not, and the hills in the distance were like the hills in every distance. . . . His eyes were creasing from the sustained viewing of uneventful countryside”(226-227).Morrison gives emphasis to the disjunction or radical shift from…show more content… Birth, life, and death- each took place on the hidden side of a leaf ” (220). But of course, Milkman is not concerned about what occurs on the underbelly of a leaf, the “universe” of wood life-insect and animal communities-because he is forever moving, casual and negligent of even the human communities he encounters. We first encounter Milkman’s lack of interest in the landscape early in Part II of the novel as he rides the bus into Danville, and we appropriately recognize the first stages of his heightening perception as he rides the Greyhound bus away from that place. After his uncomfortable experience in the country, Milkman has a changed vision: “The low hills in the distance were no longer scenery to him. They were real places that could split your thirty dollar shoes” (256). Milkman’s excursion through the fields and woodlands of Pennsylvania in search of gold provides substantial comic relief. He falls into a creek, tears the sole of a leather dress shoe, disturbs bats in a cave with his “scream,” and is thereafter driven, shoe sole flapping, from the
