Flights

As a motif, the narrator’s writing habits develop the novel’s intersecting themes of preservation and movement. Her methods as a writer center around traveling. She observes strangers or pursues “pilgrimages” into historical figures while studiously maintaining her anonymity. The narrator’s philosophy to “not leave any unexplained, unnarrated situations” encourages her to fill in the blanks of strangers or historical figures’ personalities through writing (177), which allows her to connect with others during her solitary travels; the stories become her community. Additionally, the narrator preserves her memories and impressions of others through writing. She immortalizes, draws connections, and demonstrates the contextual nature of writing practices.

After introductory notes on herself in the opening fragments of the novel, the narrator allows her writing to characterize her and incorporates her own personality traits in the fictional characters she writes about. She admires cross sections because “each slice is part of the whole, but it’s governed by its own rules” (312). As Flights is built of fragments of travel writing and fictional vignettes, it works as a cross section of the narrator’s character itself. Each piece of writing or character she interacts with reveals some aspect of her personality or interests, dispelling the notion of static personality that she learned as a psychology student and demonstrating her belief in an identity that moves, incorporates others, and creatively engages with travel experiences.