Self-Discovery In Sherman Alexie's Flight

The odds were against Sherman Alexie on that day in October 1966. Not only was he born a minority, but he was also hydrocephalic. At the age of 6 months, he had a brain operation, but was not expected to live. Though he pulled through, doctors predicted he would be severely mentally retarded. Fortunately, they were wrong, but he did suffer through seizures and wet his bed throughout his childhood ("What" 1).

revenge. In the beginning of the story, Zits professed that he despised white people; knowing

Sherman Alexie’s Flight Patterns tries to tackle a challenging subject. It probes the underbelly of modern life, sifting through the cloudy American mind that’s full of seemingly useless information, in search of what’s truly important in life. This happens through the stories two main scenes. The first depicts William’s relationship with his daughter and wife, and conflicts in life. The second engages William in a taxi-cab conversation that shuffles his priorities and forces him to confront his problem. This pushes him to his tipping point, and when the ride is over, he becomes uneasy and cares only to hear his family’s voice, not about his job, or the fears that had previously been driving forces. Alexie is trying to show that

The mind is a powerful thing. This is a theme that is shared among the five short stories we have read in class (Happy Trails) (Christmas at Grammas) (The Mimis) (Crazy) (The Boy Without a Flag). This theme talks about how peoples minds are very influential on your decisions whether you realize it or not and how peoples emotions and beliefs change over time.

This book is told through the eyes of an extremely smart and funny nine-year-old who is also the narrator, Jonathan Safran Foer. He tells a story of the effects of his fathers tragic death, in the 9/11 terrorist attack, on his father, Oskar Schell, and his family as a whole. Oskar's father not only endured the pain of being trapped in the towers, but was killed due to not being able to escape. To add to the stories allready tragic story line, Oskar's grandparents had also witnessed terrorist attacks, like that of 9/11, during World War II and this brings back their old memories. The peoples horrible deaths in

Sherman Alexie is a Native American writer who writes about life as an American Indian. Alexie uses his family and culture to create the setting, and he also uses it to create a three person reflection of himself through his characters Thomas Builds-The-Fire, Victor Joseph, and Victor Polatkin.

Sherman Alexie’s novel Flight explores the Native American spirit quest of a half Indian foster child. Alexie brilliantly invites readers into the mind of a cynical fifteen-year-old who calls himself Zits. Zits uses humor, violence, and shock value to cope with how he has been treated by his absent father and the foster system. Zits’ uses his vocabulary as a defense mechanism which reveals how comfortable he feels in various situations. The following paragraphs analyze how Zits’ speech patterns provide insight to how he feels about certain characters and situations.

In the novel Flight by Sherman Alexie, we see a cruel world through the eyes of Zits. Zits is a young half-Native American and half-American boy that for most of his life, never knew what it meant to be a part of a family. Having his dad leave the day he was born and mother die of breast cancer when he was six, Zits was placed in a foster care system at a very young age. When Zits was 15 years old, he shot up a bank, which then led to a series of unexplained events. After shooting the bank, Zits seems to have traveled through time and other people’s bodies. During Zits’ supernatural journey, Zits finds himself in different settings which force him to view what it means to kill from different perspectives. As the setting changes throughout the novel, so does Zits’ perspective on taking a person’s life.

Every day, people wake up oblivious to the different events that could have transpired had they not made a specific choice somewhere in their past; these choices are in complete control of those people, but there are something they cannot control, like how they were raised or the social class they were born into. For author Sherman Alexie childhood was rough, he grew up fighting to become better than the world that encompassed him as a child. Out of reasons of class and environment, people are set up to fail and overlooked as they learn and progress as a person just like Sherman

Profiling people can cause a brick wall to be built between one another; a wall that cannot easily be knocked down. The person that is doing the profiling has to take the bricks down one-by-one as if each brick reveals information, beyond physical appearance. Once the wall is down a transparent window forms with a beautiful view. There is more to a person than their exterior and class, just like there is more to room then walls. When profiling someone, people do not look past the brick wall; they build it higher and higher. When someone takes the time to get to know someone else the wall comes downs; at that time, people get a clear view of who people are, which could be beautiful. Profiling causes people to become engulfed by other people 's perceptions of who they are and becomes a conflict between racial heritage and human nature. Through the characters, setting, and tone of “Flight Patterns,” Sherman Alexie shows that profiling can lead to the misinterpretation of who someone is.

Similarly, in Sherman Alexie’s novel Flight, the act of storytelling, for the characters, act as outlets to demonstrate respect and to spread a certain message between characters, which also acts as a central theme in the novel itself. When Zits takes his final flight into the body and mind of his father, he finds himself a homeless Native American man, drunk, presumably, on the streets of a town near Seattle. A white businessman passes by and Zits approaches the man demanding respect in the form of a story, “’Something personal. Something you haven’t told anybody. Something secret” (Alexie 143).

In the essay, “Superman and Me” Sherman Alexie, the author, speaks from personal experience through the use of an anecdote to convey his message. He speaks about how he learned to read from a comic book and what life was like for him, a boy living with his family on an Indian reservation. The message he conveys through this narrative is that it is ok to be different, and in fact, it can save your life; never give up just because you are the only person around you doing it. He develops his claim by deciding which parts of the story he tells, and goes into detail on, at different times within his essay. This allows him to have a well controlled, well developed claim.

This novel looked and seemed like it was a boring book which will talk only about life, but it turns out I was wrong.The outside may have looked boring as well as plane, but the inside was like a beautiful day at the beach watching the sunsets setting. Also as I began reading the novel I was pulled in to the author's own writing inside the structure of life, teaching me it’s ways in a way an average human wouldn't be able to understand. As my adventure came to an end through this brilliant story I learned to look at life in a different way an average human would as well as to try to look deeper to meanings and try to understand

After having to read about a novel by Sherman Alexie I have come to conclusion that the novel is a really good book. The book evolves around a character named Zits and how he is living his life at the moment. His name is Zits which helps him define himself as a person in the beginning of the book “I’m ashamed of being fifteen years old. And being tall. And skinny. And ugly” (Alexie 4). By the end of the story he realized why his father had left him at a young age and the crime he was going to do was not only going to affect him, but other people as well.

Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner is a remarkable coming-of-age novel describing and revealing the thoughts and actions of Amir, a compunctious adult in the United States and his memories of his affluent childhood in the unstable political environment of Afghanistan. The novel showcases the simplistic yet powerful ability of guilt to influence decisions and cause conflict which arises between Amir’s childhood friend and half-brother, Hassan; Amir’s father, Baba; and importantly, himself. Difference in class The quest to become “good again” causes a reflection in Amir to atone for his sins and transform into the person of which he chooses to be.