Why Do People Fly?

At the very end of "Song of Solomon: by Toni Morrison, Milkman leaps toward Guitar after he had just killed Pilate.  As this happens, Milkman is thinking in his head "If you surrendered to the air, you could ride it."  In class, within our groups, we were debating on whether Milkman actually flew or whether he died at the end of the novel.  This led me on to think about what flying symbolizes within the novel.  Mrs. Valentino said that there is a possibility that it symbolizes when a man would die in slavery and the other people would say that he "flew back to Africa" to make them feel like it was not as bad and that the man was now free.  So along with symbolizing freedom, the idea of flight also may represent death.  In this same fashion, this could go into the thought that someone who is murdered or commits suicide is becoming free, either by their means or somebody else's.  This may seem dark, but it also provides some sort of relief for those that are close to the victim as it supplies them with some idea of closure.  Another possible way to look at this connection between flight and death in today's society is through the planes flying through the sky and our thought flying through the internet.  It was Albert Einstein who said “I fear the day that technology will surpass our human interaction. The world will have a generation of idiots."  Planes are a generally luxurious technology, and the general population that uses these planes feel very free as they can go almost anywhere they want in the world in a short amount of time.  At the same time, however, the many technologies in the world are believed by many people to be slowly killing the population and making them brain-dead.  So in the end, the idea of flight could be construed as both good or bad.