37 pages • 1 hour read
Richard BachIllusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1977A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Character Analysis
Sarah
Sarah is a young girl afraid of heights who accompanies her father to buy a flight from Richard and Don. Richard flies Sarah’s father, and when he returns, Sarah is flying in Don’s plane. Don convinced Sarah to fly with him by revealing intimate details of Sarah’s past and present life to her and helping her work through her problem with heights. Sarah is a catalyst character who helps Richard question the breadth and limitations of Don’s power. He learns through Sarah that Don’s divinity can be used to influence others. Though Sarah only appears briefly, she provides an example of someone with a pure mind being influenced by Don’s teachings. She implies that children may be more receptive to letting go of illusions because they have not lost their sense of imagination.
The Man in the Wheelchair
The man in the wheelchair from Chapter 5 parallels Sarah as someone who benefits from Don’s miraculous powers. The man was in a car accident 11 years prior and has used a wheelchair since that time. Don heals the man, who stands up and walks for the first time since his accident, and rides with Don in the airplane. The onlookers are impressed, and Richard feels their fervent energy as they hope to witness another miracle. Both Sarah and the man are cured by flying, which symbolizes flight’s transformative spiritual power. The crowd remains earthbound, signaling that they want to see a miracle but don’t really want to change. Both the man and Sarah help Richard understand the contrast between The Individual Versus the Masses.
Jeff Sykes
Jeff Sykes is a flat character who only offers a few lines of dialogue in Chapter 17. Sykes hosts a radio show where he interviews people, and others can call in to talk on-air to the interviewee. It is unclear why Don has been asked to appear on a radio show, but the topic of discussion is the airplane rides they sell. Sykes’s show offers Don the opportunity to say what he knows. Instead of helping people embrace the unknown, Don’s message sparks threats of violence from the angry listeners. Sykes’s radio show facilitates the threat that ultimately leads to Don’s death. In a sense, this character exists to generate the answer to Don’s problem and create the crisis Don needed to leave his current reality for another.
