Flight
Title: Flight: A Novel
Author: Sherman Alexie
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"My memory is strange that way. I often remember people I’ve never met and events and places I’ve never seen.“ These words, spoken by Zits, the endearing and prickly protagonist of Sherman Alexie’s delightful and bittersweet novel, Flight, set the tone for the structure and action of this vivid and engaging story. Readers are put on notice that they will embark upon a wild visionary magic carpet ride through the darkest of nights, the ultimate destination of which is a place of light, healing and wholeness.
When we meet the sharp-tongued, quick-witted and understandably cynical 15-year-old fellow who calls himself Zits, he is at a breaking point in his short and tragic life, the trajectory of which has been and continues to be tremendously painful. An orphan, he is the child of an American Indian father who abandoned him at birth and an Irish mother who died when he was six. Zits is a professional foster-child, having been bounced around from one placement house to the next. He has never had the sense of belonging. He has never felt whole or complete. He has been on the receiving end of adult violence and treachery his entire life. His name reflects the severe state of his skin, as well as the infected state of his soul.
Flight can be understood as the telling of a life in seven dream visions. Or the telling of several lives in a series of visions. The Zits of 2007 is the visionary, the visions he lives through tell of his life and the lives of others. Each of the seven visions, moving back and forth through time and space, is told in three chapters. The progress of the book can be understood as Zits moving from an inchoate childlike state to the attainment of his majority (or at least hope and stability) in chapter 21, this the number of adulthood. He has journeyed from the state of chaotic orphanage to becoming part of a loving and sane family.
The novel starts with an homage to Moby Dick, our hero uttering these self-identifying words: "Call me Zits.“ His journey will be every bit as harrowing as that of Ahab and the great white whale.The novel's first vision tells the reader a good deal about the nightmare that has been this young fellow’s life. He is in yet another foster placement, from which he runs. He comes to live with another homeless kid who calls himself Justice. This dream culminates with Zits walking into a bank and randomly killing customers in the lobby.
Within this first vision, Zits talks about dreams. The theme of running away, of flight has its own dream. "I used to dream that I could run fast enough to burn up like a meteor and drop little pieces of me all over the world.“ (pg. 16)
He talks about his rage manifesting in dreams. There is the daydream. "I get so angry sometimes that I want to hurt people. I dream about hurting people. About killing them. I’ve always had those kind of dreams.“ (pg. 26)
There is a night dream. "I have this recurring dream where I’m attacked by this gang of black men. They’re punching and kicking me, and I think I’m going to die. But somehow I get to my feet and turn into a raving maniac. I tear those black guys apart. I kill them and go cannibal. I rip open those black guys‘ bellies and chests and eat their livers and lungs. I break open their skulls and eat their brains. … A couple years back, this kid psychiatrist told me I have violent dreams and fantasies because I’ve seen too much violence in my life." (pg. 26-27)
He shares visionary experiences of others. "Do you know about the Ghost Dance?“ I ask. "No,“ Justice says. "Teach me." "It was this ceremony created by the Paiute holy man Wovoka, back in the eighteen-seventies. He said, if the Indians danced this dance long enough, all the dead Indians would return and the white people would disappear.“ (pg. 31) This shared vision articulates goals of individual and cultural survival as well as ideals of rescuscitating from the slaughter of genocide.
In this first vision, Zits‘ life is replete with all the types of dream: sleep dreams, daydreams, visions/hallucinations, goals (of vengeance), ideals (an intact family). He is entirely too familiar with all the forms of nightmare, those of sleep as well as those of waking life. "I remember the bank so clearly. I can hear the screams and smell the gunpowder. No nightmare can feel that real, can it?" (pg. 36)After the bank shooting spree, Zits comes-to in an altered state, a different reality. He discovers that it is 1975 and he is European-American FBI agent Hank Storm on an Idaho Indian reservation. He participates in the killing of an Indian. He inhabits Storm’s body and life. He learns about circumstances that mitigate this person’s violent behaviors.
In this second vision, Zits very much deals with dream worlds. His altered state is inadvertently confirmed by his compadre, Art: "You’re in one of them waking dreams, aren’t you?“ he asks. "Like sleepwalking or something, right?“ (pg. 39)
Zits-as-Art feels completely dislocated and disoriented, compelled to enact utterly repellant violence. "Okay, I think, I have to be in some kind of dream. This can’t be real. I cannot be getting ready for a gunfight.“ (pg. 45)
There is the classic pondering of what is dream and what is "real,“ of who is the dreamer. "But then I wonder if I’ve always been Hank Storm and was only Zits in a nightmare. " (pg. 54)
The theme of ubiquitious violence is articulated by our hero in an FBI agent's body: "Art and Justice fight on opposite sides of the war but they sound exactly like each other. How can you tell the difference between the good guys and the bad guys when they say the same things?“ (pg. 56)
Zits then wakes into another realm, his third vision. He is an Indian adolescent at the Battle of the Little Big Horn, Custer’s last stand. He is mute, his throat having been slit previously by a U.S. soldier. He understands that this battle will be victory for Indians, but is appalled at the level of violence practice by his tribesmen upon fallen soldiers. This vision culminates with his being expected to mutilate a captured teenaged soldier.
With his 21st century knowledge, he realizes the tragic future of these Indians. "All these old-time Indians are doomed. They’re going to die of disease. And they’ll be slaughtered by U.S. Cavalry soldiers. They’ll be packed into train cars and shipped off to reservations. And they’ll starve in winter camps near iced-over rivers.“ (pg. 66)
This chain of historical events, he understands, will lead to his father abandoning him. This current, yet distant in the past, history will impact his life. "That’s what is going to happen to all these old-time Indians. That’s what’s going to happen to me. This is what Justice was always talking about. Old-time Indians were so beautiful, and they were destroyed.“ (pg. 67)
Next he wakes up as Gus Sullivan, a crusty, arthritic Irish scout in the 1800’s for the U.S. army. He leads the troops to an Indian encampment where brutal violence is perpetrated against the Indians, in retaliation for a previously committed Indian raid. He decides to not participate in the slaughter and turns against his fellow soldiers to protect an Indian child and young soldier protecting the child.
Zits gains more insights into the nature of violence. "And these are the children we send to fight our wars. I’m the child that Justice sent to war. And all of us children fight to defend adults. Doesn’t that seem backward?“ (pg. 84)
He then comes-to as Jimmy, a white, 21st-century airplane pilot. He realizes in this incarnation he has trained a pilot and friend who used his flying skills to conduct a suicide terrorism flight. Jimmy is heartbroken by this act of betrayal, but himself is unfaithful to his wife. Jimmy decides to suicide in his plane, diving into a lake.
In Jimmy’s body / life, Zits has a realization about flying, about life. "All of it is beautiful and interchangeable. All of it is equally important and unimportant. All of it is connected.“ (pg. 107)
After nose-diving into suicide, Zits awakens on the street, as a stinking, puking drunk, a street Indian. He comes to find out that he has entered his own never-encountered father’s body and life. He learns about some of the hideous violence his father experienced, violence that led to the corrosion of his father’s soul and, ultimately, to his abandoning newborn Zits in the hospital.
Waking into his seventh vision, Zits is back in the 21st century, in the tangible reality and body of his first vision, except that he has not performed the bank shooting spree. He has a chance to create a different future. After his magic journey, he gives up thoughts of violence and vengeance, giving up his guns. He is adopted by a policeman he’s known and likes, who understands the pain and futility of violence. Zits finally finds Home. The book ends with our hero saying: "Call me Michael.“ He has found wholeness and healing, a sense of belonging and a sense of self.
Zits ruminates about his visionary journey. "I want to tell him the entire story. I want to tell him that I fell through time and have only now returned. I want to tell him I learned a valuable lesson. But I don’t know what that lesson is. It’s too complicated, too strange. Or maybe it really is simple.“ (pg. 162)
The visionary travels seem to have taught our hero that the key to healing is, paradoxically, learning to stay inside his own skin while at the same time moving inside other people’s skins. "I can’t jump into Dave’s body but I can feel and see and understand a little bit about his pain I guess.“ (pg. 169) In understanding others‘ pain, the chains of pain that culminate in the violence of his own life, Zits attains wholeness. Zits has learned compassion.
The title of the book refers to how Zits‘ life has been one instance of flight, in several senses of the word, after the other. In the sense of flight that means to flee, all the adults in his life have fled, abandoning if not misusing him. On a practical level, his life has been flight from one bad living situation to the next. Emotionally, Zits has learned to dissociate in order to flee all the pain visited upon him. The course of the novel allows him to practice flight in the sense of rising above the particularities of his own circumstances in order to gain bigger pictures and understand the people who surround him as well as himself. Zits sees and experiences the circles and cycles of violence across time and space. He learns that each of us is both perpetrator and victim, himself included. Violence breeds violence. Healing arises from stepping outside the concentric circles of pain and vengeance. Healing arises when a dreamer stops running away from their own patterns of violence and transforms them into patterns of understanding and compassion. His journey transforms flight away from overwhelming darkness and abandonment into flight toward wholeness and self-acceptance.
The shocking and awe-filled flying journey that Zits experiences is a marvelous demonstration of how heeding the various types of dream can lead us out of despair and desperation into coherence and community.