The meaning of multiple voices in Morrison's Song of Songs Among the various manifestations of the voice that participate in the interaction of voices in the Song of Songs, I would like to mention three: the narrative voice , the significant voice and the responsive voice, each of which dialogues in itself and in relation to the others. In the novel's opening scene, the third-person omniscient narrator [emphasis added] informs us that at that time of day when Mr. Smith plans to fly from the roof of Mercy Hospital, "word of mouth has spread" (3). This phrase not only codifies the black vernacular, but also immediately directs the reader's attention to the cultural and communicative process through which the community is structured. Interestingly, the phrase appears in the second sentence after Mr. Smith's note about his scheduled flight appears in the text. Thus, he abruptly shifts the reader's attention from Mr. Smith's spectacle to the linguistic community of which he is a part. For this community, word of mouth is both a mode of communication and a category of knowledge on which its members depend. The sentence is also at odds with the written word of Mr. Smith's note and therefore, paradoxically, points to his announcement as a suspension of the legislation, just as the description of the community that follows the sentence suspends the reader, along with the curious crowd of onlookers . On the one hand, the narrative voice contextualizes an individual's act with the resulting community response; on the other hand, it informs the reader at the same time and abdicates any all-encompassing capacity in this sense. Perhaps more importantly, however, in the litany of information about how the bl...... center of the paper ......means to the listener. By paying attention to how identity is constructed dialogically rather than monologically, the reader listens to and celebrates the voices that Toni Morrison stages both directly and indirectly in the text. But this process also allows the reader to critique those hegemonic cultural forces that have silenced some voices. A dialogic reading not only encourages the reader to abandon interpretations that reduce the African American community to a monological, manageable entity, but discourages the reader from reaching the conclusion too easily. Works Cited Marilyn Sanders Mobley, “Call and Response: Voice, Community and Dialogic Structures in Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon, in Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon, in New Essays on the Song of Songs, and 1995, 41-68.42-43: