The Goddess of Speed

*Note: This comes from a 1928 5th Series 528 Formal Sedan. Though the scene in Song of Solomon occurs sometime around 1936, from 1929-1942 Packard changed their logo to a more chiseled masculine hood ornament.

Toni Morrison doesn't add superfluous details, anything that makes it into the book is something worth noting.  So why then, is the one thing Milkman can see outside of the car this image of a woman shown above?  And then what is the importance of it being in front of him, while looking behind makes him uneasy?  Let's tackle the former first.  The most obvious reading is the freedom she represents.  Her wings allow her to fly away from anything she wants, nothing can hold her down.  This is of course very different from Milkman's life, true he is only six or seven, but even at this young age he recognizes the domineering nature of his father.  Macon Dead II lives his way, and makes sure his entire family does as well.  In the car, the time when Milkman sees this image of the goddess of speed, he is quite physically constrained between his mother and his father.  His father controls everything about Milkman in the car, even something as basic as when he can go to the bathroom.  When Milkman starts squirming his father is reluctant to stop the car, he only does so when Magdalene tells him he could stop (Morrison 33).  Then there is the independence that the goddess having a tire suggests.  Even if a tire ruptures, she can still keep the car moving because she has an extra tire.  It isn't next to her, she isn't standing on it, it is in her outstretched arms ready for use.  Milkman doesn't have anything to give him independence.  It isn't until later that he does anything against his father's wishes (visiting Pilate's house) and only much later that he asserts anything to his father by punching him.  

I would argue though, that it is the action pose the woman has that makes this small thing such an important detail.  Look at her, she's running (or flying).  In the first chapter Milkman doesn't do anything, everything happens to him.  In the start of the second chapter Milkman's first real action that we see is him having to go to the bathroom--notice how we don't actually see him pee on his sister--that is relayed to us back in the confined car.  Like I said earlier, Milkman is physically constrained at the time he sees this image, and I think we can all remember being a 6 year old kid and wanting to do anything rather than sit in the car (moving at a crawl no less!).  Later Guitar and Milkman talk about how Milkman doesn't fit in, he lives on Not Doctor Street, but he hangs around Southside (103).  He wants something to do but the big old house that his grandfather created confines him just as much as his father does.  He can't just go in the backyard or to the park to play, and it isn't like he can throw a ball around with his dad.  Milkman is stuck, physically and emotionally, and this hood ornament is the only "role model" he has for escaping his current state.

That idea of the goddess of speed being his role model I would propose as why that is the only thing he can see out the front.  Milkman can't actually see the wide open expanses of lakes or neighborhoods, but up on the hood the goddess of speed can.  She isn't constrained by anyone or anything, the world literally opens up to her as the car moves, she is the first to see the new land.  By being the first thing anyone sees as the car approaches she is the face of the car.  Contrast this to the scene at Feather's pool hall, where Milkman is denied entrance because of who his father his.  Even though Macon isn't there, his image is strong enough that it projects over that son, casting a shadow that everyone notices.  Out front the goddess is always traversing the new, virgin, frontier.  Macon assumes after Milkman works for him for many years that he will take over, even Milkman says that he kind of assumes it as well (107).  But Milkman from the very beginning wants to be different, he doesn't want to follow his father in to real estate.  It just doesn't interest him because it's what he's always grown up knowing.  Yet, unlike his sisters and mother he won't content himself to living statically, he needs change, and he wants somewhere that his father hasn't touched already, where he could be Macon Dead, not Milkman, and no one would mistake him for his father.  The goddess represents everything Milkman wants, and the fact that she's the one thing he can see out front, in his future, shows his determination to get what she has.