Zits's True Identity In Flight By Sherman Alexie

No one is Perfect
Everybody, at some point in their lives, has felt lost and confused. In the book, Flight, written by Sherman Alexie, the main character Zits is searching for his true identity. Zits are a lonely and unhappy 15 years old orphan boy who is half Indian and half Irish. Zits were raised in multiple foster homes and lost himself in the process. Zits, who refuses to reveal his real name at the start of the book, begins to body jump as he is trapped in different people during different time periods. While being trapped in each of the characters, Zits becomes more mature and causes him to reflect on his own ideology. These different experiences help Zits to develop himself as a person through identity, violence, and forgiveness.

In the beginning of the novel, Zits refused to tell the readers his real name.

Alexie states, “Call me Zits. Everybody calls me Zits. That’s not my real name, of course. My real name isn’t important” (Alexie 1). Zits believe that he is not important and he reinforces that by telling people to call him “Zits."Appearance is very important to him, he described himself as ugly because of the acne on his face which shows that Zits lacks confidence. In addition to his lack of identity, he did not have much knowledge about his mother or father. Zits only know a few things about his parents; his mother was Irish and his father is Indian. Zits do not know anything about the Indian culture, except for what he learned through television and from Indians on the streets. Zits lack of identity derives from being raised by many different foster families instead of his parents. He has lived with 21 foster families which contributed to the confusion that is causing him to lose sight of who he really is. However, as he experience body jumping he learn more about life and that he can shape how he wants to be

defined.

Zits is an orphan with an abusive history. His aunt's boyfriend sexually and emotionally abused Zits when he was six years old. Aunt Zooey’s boyfriend molested him and told him, “Nobody loves you anymore” (Alexie 161). That terrible experience caused him to resort to violence. However, chapter eleven changed Zits’s perspective about violence. When he was in Gus’s body, he witnessed a soldier killing a mother and daughter very violently. Gus saw the soldier "shoots the woman in the back. She falls. The daughter drops to her knees beside her mother. Daughter wails. The soldier shoots . . . he smashes the gun down on the girl's skull. He hits her again and again. Keeps hitting her until his rifle breaks in half” (Alexie 90-91). At this point, Zits didn’t want to see, hear, or even be there anymore; he actually wanted to kill himself. He comes to the conclusion that killing people is madness.

In the beginning of the novel, Zits was very unapologetic about his behaviors and constantly talk about his father and how he left him when he was born.

Zits hated his father for abandoning him and his mother. However, in chapter sixteen, Zits goes into his father’s body. He learned his father’s suffering and struggling with his own life. When Zits said, “He can not be a father” (Alexie 156). As Zits understands his father’s pain, he accepted the reality and eventually to rise above the abandonment and pain that his father put him through.
Jumping from body to body opened Zits's eyes to different perspectives. He experienced other people's pain and dilemmas. And in the process of doing so, he learned to be a better person. When he witnessed all the violence that happened in the past, he can not change what happened. He can only change himself and not resorts to violent like his ancestors. He learned to forgive his

father.

Sources:
Alexie, Sherman. Flight: A Novel. New York: Black Cat, 2007. Print.