Sherman Alexie's Flight Essay

The Golden Age of Aviation is considered to be the 20-year period between the end of World War I and the beginning of World War II and was the pinnacle of aviation excitement. It was a time when there were few regulations, airplanes had character, and pilots were heroes. Between 1919 and 1939, diversity was more prevalent and acceptable in the field of aviation than throughout society. Laura Ingalis made the first transcontinental flight by a woman in 1930 and in 1932, pilot Herman Banning and mechanic Thomas Allen became the first black aviators to fly coast-to-coast. Their journey took 21 days to complete because they had to panhandle for money to make each leg of the flight. After WWI, crossing the Atlantic by plane became an obsession.

“Flying,” by Alice Miller is a complex story about a woman named Allie, who reminisces about a time spent when her cousin Mack taught her to fly when she was just a young girl. On different occasions when Mack visited, he would show her how to do new things. As Allie grew up she found herself thinking of the secret that Mack shared with her and how he told her not to tell anyone or she may get hurt. Allie longed for the feeling of flying, if she could just reach out and talk to Mack but too much time had passed. She dreams of flying in her sleep, not for long periods of time, but just enough to embrace that feeling she had years ago. She wonders if many people have experienced flying the way that she has and if she could fly by herself without Mack. One day, Allie tries to fly on her own and succeeds, soaring higher than she did with Mack. Before Allie knew it, she was flying through the clouds and around town. Now that Allie has experienced the feeling of flying again, more than ever she wanted to share with her kids. One night after the children were asleep she wanted to share her secret with her boys but instead chose her daughter. Miller suggests that when a person is afraid of doing something on their own, sometimes it just takes a little bit of courage to step out and let go of the things that could be holding a person back.

“Flying,” by Alice Miller tells the story of woman reminiscing on the time that her cousin taught her how to fly when they were kids. It begins with the main character, Allie, flying in the air with her cousin, Mack, when she was six years old. Allie has many questions and Mack tells her that all boys can fly and instructs her to not tell anyone that she knows this secret. He also tells her not to ever try to fly without him and compares this secret to the myth about Prometheus giving the God’s fire to man and being punished for it. As the years went by, Allie wonders if she would ever fly again and even doubts if the memory was real. She becomes a wife and a mother to two sons and a daughter but still wonders if flying is possible. One night, she decides to test her memory and tries to fly out of her backyard. She slowly ascends just as she did when she was young but even higher. Over the next few days, her urge to fly again grows. One night, she sneaks into her children’s room and picks up her daughter to take her outside and show her how to fly. The story ends with Allie telling her daughter to promise not to tell the boys what she is about to experience and excitement building in Allie for her daughter. The central idea of this story is the pursuit of satisfaction never ends.

“Whenever my environment had failed to support or nourish me, I had clutched at books.” –Richard Wright, Black Boy. The author suffered and lived through an isolated society, where books were the only option for him to escape the reality of the world. Wright wrote this fictionalized book about his childhood and adulthood to portray the dark and cruel civilization and to illustrate the difficulties that blacks had, living in a world run by whites.

Betrayal hits the most not when by a friend, but by a loved one. In the novel, Flight, by Sherman Alexie, a half Native-American half Irish teen calling himself Zits, struggles with moving from abusive foster home to the next while in the constant search for a real family, real parents. In the act of crime, Zits is shot which transports him into a cycle of different bodies portraying different themes that majorly affects zits life and understanding of the world. The scene in which Zits meets a boy named Justice develops the theme of betrayal by portraying Justice, who seems like a very wise, trustworthy friend, but ends up betraying Zits which changes his view of the world forever.

Following this idea of past meeting present, Wright re-encounters his old hunger by sympathizing with Falk and Mencken, men who have “brought down upon [them] the scorn of the South” (308) for their beliefs and opinions, and immersing himself in literature. In doing so, he recognizes how racism has shaped him to endure pain and accept

“Flight Patterns” by Sherman Alexie focuses on the conversation between the main character, William, and his taxi cab driver, Fekadu, while on their way to the airport. Their conversation shows how quick society is to judge someone without even knowing a thing about them. William in “Flight Patterns” portrays how people stereotype each other based on race by the use of character, setting, and point of view.

Within Richard Wright’s novel, Black Boy, Wright depicts his rough, cold progression of life as a young black boy trying to find a greater purpose and meaning for his life as well as for blacks as a whole. His hunger for equality and purpose is prevalent throughout the novel, and Wright’s purpose in its presence is to prove to his audience the truth of the black way of life. He realizes that his audience lives in stark contrast to his life, with their suburban culture, and uses it to tailor his novel to better communicate his story of black reality. Within Richard Wright’s Black Boy, Wright effectively understands the homogenous, sheltered background of his audience, and utilizes it to further demonstrate to his audience his true experience as a “black boy,” and the true experience of black America, to hopefully unite the races at last.

The development of the airplane began in the late 1800's by American pioneers, Wilbur and Orville who were the first innovators to accomplish a manned powered flight. The Wright Brothers integrated the techniques from their observation of birds during flight and how they change their wings shape to glide into the design of their own gliders. Along with designing and testing their own engines and prototypes. The Wright’s encountered tremendous problems during the first testing phase of their innovation which prove to be unsuccessful. These problems did not stop the Wright Brothers from accomplishing their goal. Once they found a solution to fix their problems, that's when they came to the decision that they needed a pilot to navigate the plane

his great novel "Flight" is written by Sheman Alexie and published in 2007 by Black Cat, an imprint of Grove/Atlantic. This novel tells us the story of a 15-years-old orphan, who calls himself Zits because of all the pimples he has. Zits was abandonment by his father, and his mother died when he was 6 years old. Zits falls in prison after having hit her last foster mother, where he meets with Justice a pretty white boy. They become best friends. Zits is convinced by Justice to open fire in a bank. He is killed and Zits falls in a mystical journey where he jumps in a series of people as the agent of FBI, the Indian boy who does not speak, Gus a "Indian tracker", Zits become, Jimmy a pilot who teaches Abbad to fly a plane, finally, Zits ends

On February 7, 2006, UPS flight number 1307, a regular night-time package flight from Atlanta to Philadelphia, had been a normal flight but, just after receiving clearance to land on runway 27R, the flight crewmembers reported that they had a smoke warning light come on. Smoke was coming out of the aircraft as it landed. The flight crewmembers evacuated the airplane after it landed. The flight crewmembers had minor injuries, and most of the cargo and the airplane were destroyed by the fire after landing. The NTSB determined that the probable cause of this accident was an in-flight cargo fire that initiated from an unknown source, which was most likely located within the cargo area. (flight safety, 2006)

Renowned 20th century American author John Steinbeck’s short story “Flight”, written in 1938, tells a tale of a young boy’s journey into manhood. Steinbeck’s narrative of the trials and tribulations of his main character’s entrance into the world of a man is full of turns, twists, and ending with a dark and abrupt conclusion. In the face of adversity, with enough motivation, an individual can do one of three things, let it harden them, let it break them, or let it teach them. Either way, the individual changes. This deeper meaning laced throughout Steinbeck’s words creates an in depth theory that in order for the character to have the motivation to choose their course of action, there must be a force besides the characters own want. In the case of John Steinbeck’s “flight”, the protagonist feels the need to become a man, not only for himself, but to prove to his mother that he is indeed a man like his father.

Richard Wright’s memoir Black Boy, published in 1945, dwells upon the issues African Americans had to face every day including poverty, racism and discrimination in the Jim Crow South. When both the black and white community tries to tell Wright to conform to the discriminating and painful norms of the South, he stubbornly refuses and fights for his convictions. Wright tries not to follow other’s demands, which is quite dangerous and unmanageable for an African American young boy to fight against the system of his social surrounding and environment, when he is conditioned not to have any agency in the South. In the first section of the memoir, “Southern Night,” Wright’s own early life experiences with violence and family make him able to fully understand the Southern culture as threatening and volatile from which he must escape, but cannot.

When most people hear an airplane in the air they may look up and see just another airplane. They don’t think about how the airplane evolved. They also don’t consider any of the material it requires to achieve this most amazing feat. It’s just another aircraft carrying people or items to their destination. The journey began, as most of us have been taught, in 1903 by the Wright brothers when they flew their airplane for the first time. The aircraft was crudely constructed, using modern materials for the time. Some of these materials included wood for the air frame, muslin fabric for covers, and aluminum for the engine crank case (Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum). In today’s aircraft some of the same materials are used especially aluminum.

a.(A woman who loves to fly is seated on an airplane next to an elderly gentleman who is flying for the first time and is shaken by fear)