Sherman Alexie’s Flight intertwines themes of estrangement, vengeance, and mercy through the main character Zits’s time-traveling escapades. Over the summer, Choate students were able to follow Zits in his adventures, but not everyone enjoyed the ride.
While some students were impressed with Zits’s intelligence and thought his narrative was the essence of a troubled youth, others commented that Alexie, as a writer, tried too hard to appeal to the teenage reader.
Nicole Sellew ’17 said, “It was clear from his use of the language that Sherman Alexie doesn’t know how to appeal to teenagers. He missed the mark on connecting with his adolescent readers.”
James Rose ’18 agreed, saying, “The use of the profanity as an effort to appeal to the teenage mind was not relatable at all.”
Students also complained about the lack of depth and of fully developed secondary characters, as well as its speedy finish. While some students said that the plot’s swift pace and tight conclusion were more appropriate for juvenile fiction, others believed that those aspects were what made Flight too childish as a high school summer reading book.
Elyse Cornwall ’18 said, “We really get to understand what it means to be the hero, villain, and victim from Zits’s journey. However, the time-traveling aspect was unnecessary in that it didn’t push the narrative forward — those moments just served as individual lessons that didn’t really contribute to Zits’s character development as a whole in the end. He got a lot of redemption in the end just for going back in time and experiencing events that he had no control over.”
However, among the students who participated in the poll, the consensus was that the entrance of the Native American character was enlightening.
Tristan Jamidar ’18 said, “Sherman Alexie is a really provocative writer. He really wakes up the reader and makes him conscious of the Native American historical figure.”
On a similar vein, history teacher Ms. Courtney DeStefano said, “Flight was not shy with language or with violence and contained difficult imagery. It helped to make students feel uncomfortable and highlight a group of people who get so little attention. It helps us to think about current events, and made me think about what the author has been through.”
Though Alexie’s Flight may have disappointed some students, most people applaud Choate’s efforts for introducing diversity into the summer reading.
