Sherman Alexie's Flight Essay Topics

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In the novel Flight by Sherman Alexie, the main character, Zits, shifts through time to lead to the ultimate "rebirth" at the end of the novel by showing Zits he has an identity of his own, one that is tied to his family and his culture's histories. After shooting up a bank, Zits body-hopped into different people in different points of history including a FBI agent named Hank, a little Indian child, Gus, a pilot named Jimmy, and Zit's father. These people show Zits different sides to identity, justice, and family. Zits learns that every family has their own problems and that no family is perfect. As he body hops, he learns about a variety of different family secrets and issues. Zit's first body switch was to an FBI agent named …show more content…

He is an Indian tracker, a person who hunts down Indians for other people to kill. There was a massacre of the Indian Village and there he spots a soldier saving an Indian child. Gus would have turned them over but Zits as Gus helps them. He understands that the soldier joined the army to help people and that's exactly what he was doing. “These are not my thoughts. This is not my sadness. This all belongs to Gus, and his grief and rage are huge, so my grief and rage are huge, too, and I scream as I lead one hundred soldiers down the hill into the Indian camp.” Alexie, …show more content…

Zits becomes his father and understands that he does love him. He learns that his father had as bad of a life as Zits, maybe even worse. His father was a homeless Indian who lived on the streets. Zit's father's father was horrible to him, therefore he was nervous he'd be a bad father when Zits was born. He was so terrified of that thought that he walked out of Zits' life right after his birth. He does love Zits though because at all times he carries a picture of Zits with him. “I stare at the photograph. It is me, the five-year-old me. The five-year-old Zits. The real me.” Alexie,

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