Analysis Of Flight By Sherman Alexie

The novel Flight by Sherman Alexie is quite an interesting story. It tells the tale of Zits, an Irish-Indian foster kid, and how he gains an identity for himself strangely enough by looking at life through another’s eyes and literally walking in someone else’s shoes. The development of the main character is definitely believable because in the beginning of the story he does have good qualities they are just buried under anger, sarcasm, numbness, and self loathing. The happy end to the book is satisfactory because of the great change that Zits went through during the different lifetimes. At the end of the novel, Zits reclaims his real name because he is no longer ashamed of who he is and wants to start fresh. This essay will describe how Zits …show more content…
Gus is an old Irish man who is supposed to lead an army of soldiers to an Indian village to bring “justice” for a white village that was massacred by Indians. Zits really does not want to lead the soldiers to the Indian village because the thought of killing now is terrible to him, but he doesn’t have as much control over Gus’s body as the others even though he has more access to memory. When they get to the village and Zits sees the slaughter around him he realizes that this is not justice like General Mustache said, but revenge. Justice would have been rounding up the responsible Indians and giving them a fair trial but the soldiers are raping and killing women, beating children to death, and jumping on the bodies of older people they killed. Justice punishes the criminal according to laws this is revenge that is indiscriminate in its destruction like lava from a volcano. In the beginning of the story all Zits knew was violence, but during this lifetime he says, “I had wanted to kill, but now I just want to stop...I think I want to die. I think I want Gus to die.” When the novel began he was willing to kill others and now he cares so much about others that he would rather die than see the carnage. When Zits sees Small Saint rescue Bow Boy he helps them and when he asks Small Saint why he saved the boy he realizes that there are good people in the world who put the safety of others before their own interests. When Zits is trying to hold off the soldiers so that Small Saint and Bow Boy can escape he says, “I once filled a room with bullets. I shot people who would never do me harm. And now I’m not sure I can shoot at the men who plan to kill me.” This is a major point of character development for Zits because not only does he regret killing