Flight by Sherman Alexie follows a narration of a 15-year old Native American boy that named Zits. Zits is an orphan living in abusive foster homes because he lost his parents, and after persuasion by a troubled teen, Zits travels back to witness the important moments in the Native American History. Zits is in the midst of the struggle as he struggles to balance between the cultural past of the American community with that of the present circumstances. Zits transformation and reflections of the past contribute to his loneliness, emptiness, and grief. Flight follows how Zits meets Justice and becomes a self-named teenage philosopher who undergoes difficulties in defining himself as he kills a number of people in the lobby of a bank. In addition, …show more content…
Zits understands that the FBI agent Hank has a community; Gus has power and talent while Jimmy is the same as him. When Zits is inside other’s bodies, he can see and can feel the world through their eyes. The distinctions come about after Zits develops an understanding of Americans religion, politics and the sense of alienation. The time travels influence Zits on transverses and transformation for taking care of his miserable life. Zits chooses to follow Justice’s way of patching to rob a bank for gaining empowerment. The plot, however, did not work out in the first place, and Zits lost his memory. Zits said, “There aren’t half-breed pale-beige green-eyed Indians here.” ( 60). The reflection on Indian community was the transformation of Zits once he faced fellows of different backgrounds in the jail. Zits’ inner conflict reveals the road to transformation because he realizes the human tendency of cruelty. However, Zits later understands himself by realizing what is missing in his life, that are his parents, lack of education, happiness and peaceful; because he has seen a lot of violence in his life, and he always thinks about hurting and killing …show more content…
When he plays the role of his father, a homeless and alcoholic individual who searches food leftovers in dustbins. The struggles have different renewal ends that required Zits in making critical decisions. The reincarnations carried out in Zits’ life proved the struggle for survival in the absence of fathers. From Zits’ experience, the continued time travels with discriminations showed a racial divide. Society judges an individual based on personal decisions. Zits considered himself a misfit, and the imprisonment led to his ideas of vengeance. Zits transformed into some historical characters because of the struggles he underwent. For instance, Zits questions himself, “is revenge a circle inside of a circle inside of a circle?” (77). Zits made a personal choice that changed his life, and he was forced to shoot an innocent person as a way of revenge for a soldier who almost killed him. However, he learns about himself and his identity from struggling of discrimination that violence is not a good solution for everything. Sometimes we have to know to forgive and forget what happened in the
In Sherman Alexie's short story, "Flight Patterns", the story's setting is in Seattle, Washington a year after the 9/11 attacks. The main character is William, is a middle class paranoid workaholic Spokane Indian. His sales job consist of him flying on planes for the majority of his life. He has a wife and daughter who loves him unbearably. The next supporting character in the short story is a taxi driver named Fekadu who is from Ethiopia. Alexie has used this short story to portray the bigger picture about how after 9/11, many people have started racially profiling and labeling others and/or themselves out of force of habit. He does this through the use of
This book report deal with the Native American culture and how a girl named Taylor got away from what was expected of her as a part of her rural town in Pittman, Kentucky. She struggles along the way with her old beat up car and gets as far west as she can. Along the way she take care of an abandoned child which she found in the backseat of her car and decides to take care of her. She end up in a town outside Tucson and soon makes friends which she will consider family in the end.
Living in hard conditions, can make the person understand the world better. Being disabled, can create from the person a novelist. Hearing another stories, can help the person to live satisfy. Learning history, can teach the person to be unjudged. Embodiment the author to his real experience in some of his stories, consider as the most tentacles talk that can touch reader's heart. Because he lived, heard, learned, embodied, and according to all of his written, Sherman Alexie classified as the most successful writer who his words represent the reality. The story “Flight Patterns,” which was written by Sherman Alexie was representing some perspectives from his own life, like being Native American, and person with disability. The story also was about the severe problems people in this world have with profiling. It doesn’t matter if you’re White, Black, Indian, Spanish, Muslim, Jewish, rich, or even poor everyone does it. The two character I would like to focus on in this story is called William and Fekadu.
“Flight Patterns,” by Sherman Alexie, tells an interesting story of a man named William, who is a Spokane Indian and lives in Washington State with his wife Marie and five-year-old daughter Grace. William struggles with living between the traditionalist American and Indian worlds by appearing confident and assured, but on the inside, he is actually weak, fearful, and has an abundance of obsessions. He loves his job and hates it at the same time, He needs to fly for his job, but flying scares him since the terrorist attacks that happened on September 11th. He seems very indecisive and unassured at times. He stays in the same hotel chain, eats at the same restaurants, and has the same exercise routine while
Alexie shows a strong difference between the treatment of Indian people versus the treatment of white people, and of Indian behavior in the non-Indian world versus in their own. A white kid reading classic English literature at the age of five was undeniably a "prodigy," whereas a change in skin tone would instead make that same kid an "oddity." Non-white excellence was taught to be viewed as volatile, as something incorrect. The use of this juxtaposition exemplifies and reveals the bias and racism faced by Alexie and Indian people everywhere by creating a stark and cruel contrast between perceptions of race. Indian kids were expected to stick to the background and only speak when spoken to. Those with some of the brightest, most curious minds answered in a single word at school but multiple paragraphs behind the comfort of closed doors, trained to save their energy and ideas for the privacy of home. The feistiest of the lot saw their sparks dulled when faced with a white adversary and those with the greatest potential were told that they had none. Their potential was confined to that six letter word, "Indian." This word had somehow become synonymous with failure, something which they had been taught was the only form of achievement they could ever reach. Acceptable and pitiable rejection from the
Although, Zits has a heart of stone, he still commits an act of violence towards th... ... middle of paper ... ... atural human behavior, and there is no way around it. Zits’ journey show that violence is inescapable in all of history. Every single flashback or transformation is filled with murder, brutality and agony.
How White people assumed they were better than Indians and tried to bully a young boy under the US Reservation. Alexie was bullied by his classmates, teammates, and teachers since he was young because he was an Indian. Even though Alexie didn’t come from a good background, he found the right path and didn’t let his hands down. He had two ways to go to, either become a better, educated and strong person, either be like his brother Steven that was following a bad path, where Alexie chose to become a better and educated person. I believe that Alexie learned how to get stronger, and stand up for himself in the hard moments of his life by many struggles that he passed through. He overcame all his struggles and rose above them
In the beginning of the book, we as the readers learn about Zit’s and his past. He has been through a lot and everything that has happened has lead to Zits having very violent thoughts. With all of his aggression built up inside him, Zits often talks a lot about his violent thoughts of
Culture has the power and ability to give someone spiritual and emotional distinction which shapes one's identity. Without culture society would be less and less diverse. Culture is what gives this earth warmth and color that expands across miles and miles. The author of “The School Days of an Indian Girl”, Zitkala Sa, incorporates the ideals of her Native American culture into her writing. Similarly, Sherman Alexie sheds light onto the hardships he struggled through growing up on the Spokane Indian Reservation in his book The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven in a chapter titled “Indian Education”. While both Zitkala Sa and Sherman Alexie were Native Americans, and take on a similar persona showcasing their native culture in their text, the two diverge in the situations that they face. Zitkala Sa’s writing takes on a more timid shade as she is incorporated into the “white” culture, whereas Alexie more boldly and willingly immerses himself into the culture of the white man. One must leave something in order to realize how
Hardship is everywhere but Sherman Alexie’s “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian” is an amusing and intelligent novel that clearly provides the reader with perfect examples of poverty and friendship on an Indian reservation. Alexie incorporates those examples through the point of view and experiences of a fourteen year old boy named Arnold Spirit Jr.
Ever wondered what gets readers hooked on a book? In “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” by Sherman Alexie, the authors have many ways to grab the reader's attention by using many techniques from humor to emotional and traumatic suspense. In the book, the main character named Junior is an Indian boy growing up on a reservation. By growing up on the reservation junior makes a choice to leave the reservation and go to a white school which gives Junior obstacles in his life. There are many obstacles that happen even before Junior decided to go to another path with his life.
In chapter 15 from Thomas C. Fosters’ How to Read Literature Like A Professor, flight is discussed to represent multiple forms of freedom and escape, or possible failure and downfall. Throughout J. D. Salingers’ novel, The Catcher and the Rye, Holden often finds himself wondering where the ducks in the Central Park pond have flown off to due to the water freezing over. On the other hand, the ducks are symbolic of Holden are his interest in the ducks an example of Foster’s ideas that flight represents a desire to be free.
Intro: Summary, Thesis, Highlighting main points (Text to Text, Text to Self and Text to World) The tale of Native Son by Richard Wright follows the story of a young man by the name of Bigger Thomas who lives in the 1930’s. In the beginning of the story, we meet Bigger a young, angry frustrated black man who lives with his mother, brother and sister in a cramped apartment in New York. The story is narrated in a limited third-person voice that focuses on Bigger Thomas’s thoughts and feelings. The story is told almost exclusively from Bigger’s perspective. In recent years, the
Adjusting to another culture is a difficult concept, especially for children in their school classrooms. In Sherman Alexie’s, “Indian Education,” he discusses the different stages of a Native Americans childhood compared to his white counterparts. He is describing the schooling of a child, Victor, in an American Indian reservation, grade by grade. He uses a few different examples of satire and irony, in which could be viewed in completely different ways, expressing different feelings to the reader. Racism and bullying are both present throughout this essay between Indians and Americans. The Indian Americans have the stereotype of being unsuccessful and always being those that are left behind. Through Alexie’s negativity and humor in his essay, it is evident that he faces many issues and is very frustrated growing up as an American Indian. Growing up, Alexie faces discrimination from white people, who he portrays as evil in every way, to show that his childhood was filled with anger, fear, and sorrow.
Sherman Alexie’s short story “Flight Patterns” is an intriguing story about many themes, including identity, stereotypes, and the illusions of society. The story is written from an American Indian’s viewpoint and provides and interesting and different perspective on identities and relations in America after the terrorist attack on Spetember 11, 2001. The main character William, a native American man who has a wife and a daughter named Marie and Grace respectively, leaves his family for a business trip. On his way to the airport, he encounters a black taxi driver, named Fekadu, who tells him his story. He is not sure whether or not he should believe it but by the end of their trip together William realizes how much he loves and cares for his