Sherman Alexie: Flight
Directions: After reading the lecture, answer one of the main questions, which will appear in red. This question is due no later than August 19. Following that will be other questions, in black, which you should read and think about--they may help you answer the main question. However, you are not required to answer these questions in writing.
Your responses to other students' answers are due by midnight on August 20. In order to get the full 20 points, you MUST respond to at least 3 or 4 other people's postings.
This set of discussion questions is worth a possible 20 points. Remember: late answers receive 0 points, so post early :)
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Sherman Alexie: Flight
WARNING! These discussion questions will reveal plot points. If you don't want to know what happens, wait until you have finished the novel to read them.
1. In Native American tradition, a boy has a vision which reveals to him his path in life. In what ways is Zits's experience similar to or different from a traditional "vision"?
2. Zits says of himself, "I mean jeez, I'm a fifteen-year-old foster kid with a history of fire setting, time traveling, body shifting, and mass-murder contemplation. I think I might be unlovable" (173). How does Alexie make us like Zits and sympathize with him, despite his faults?
1. How does the first line of the book echo Moby-Dick? What is Alexie's point in reminding us of that novel?
2. Why, on page 1, does the narrator say, "My real name isn't important"?
3. Why doesn't Zits like to think about his mother or father?
4. Zits says, "I'm a blank sky, a human solar eclipse" (5). What does he mean?
5. Zits owns three novels: The Grapes of Wrath, Winter in the Blood, and The Dead Zone. What is the symbolic significance of this fact?
6. What is the connection between Zits and Officer Dave? Why do they understand each other?
7. Why is Zits impressed by the white boy in his jail cell?
8. Why does Zits dream about hurting and killing people?
9. What is ironic about Justice's name?
10. Why does Zits go into the bank and start shooting people? (p.34)
11. A man in the bank says to Zits, "You're not real" (35). Is he right?
12. When Zits wakes up in Chapter 4, who is he? What year is it? How does he betray himself in this story? What does he learn?
13. When he says of Hank, "He is one hundred different versions of himself" (58), what does Zits mean? How does this also apply to Zits himself?
14. In his next life, beginning in Chapter 17, who is Zits?
15. Why is he happy in this life, at least for a time?
16. What does Zits discover about Crazy Horse? Why is this important to Zits?
17. What happens after the battle with Custer is won? How does Zits react to this?
18. Why does Zits think of his rich foster father when his Indian father wants him to kill the white soldier?
19. What does Zits learn in this story?
20. In his next life, beginning in Chapter 10, who is Zits?
21. How is his life as Gus different from the others?
22. What does the white soldier do with Bow Boy? What does Gus do? How does Zits become stronger than Gus in this life?
23. What does Zits learn in this life?
24. In his next life, beginning in Chapter 13, who is he?
25. He says, "I am the pilot and the clouds and the ocean and the plane" (107). How is this different from the way he felt when he said, "I'm a blank sky, a human solar eclipse" (5)?
26. How are Zits's memories of his mother and father related to Jimmy's experiences?
27. How do the plane crashes in Chapters 14 and 15 echo those in Chapter 1?
28. What does Zits learn in this life?
29. In his next life, which begins in Chapter 16, who is Zits?
30. Why does he ask the man to tell him a story, a secret?
31. When does Zits realize who he is? How does he feel about it?
32. What does he learn in this life?
33. When Zits returns to the bank, what does he do? Why?
34. Where does Zits go for help?
35. What lessons has he learned?
36. What story does Dave tell Zits? Why does he tell him this story?
37. Who does Zits end up living with? How does it work out?
38. When Mary says, "A few months from now, you'll be brand new" (180), why does Zits cry?
39. What is Zits's real name? Is that at all symbolic?