Mirabel Character Analysis

In “Aviation,” Mirabel is a young widow who is still grieving her husband Michael, who died a few years ago in the September 11 terrorist attacks. Mirabel struggles to work through the trauma of Michael’s death. She suffers frequent panic attacks where she sees herself on one of the hijacked planes, listening to the terrorists who overtook it shouting in a language she can’t understand, and watching as the plane crashes into the World Trade Center, where Michael worked. Before Michael’s death, Mirabel and Michael had been trying for a baby, but Mirabel suffered multiple miscarriages. Now, perhaps to honor Michael’s memory, Mirabel has decided to become a foster parent. But she hits a roadblock when her first potential foster child turns out to be a young Sikh boy named Sunni. Mirabel (erroneously) associates Sunni’s hair covering (patka) with the Islamic terrorists who carried out the September 11 attacks and involuntarily slips into a panic attack. Though Antonio, the case worker who accompanies Sunni to Mirabel’s house, pleads with Mirabel to remember that Sunni is a blameless child who needs her help, and though Mirabel recognizes that she’s in the wrong, she struggles to overcome her trauma and prejudice to help Sunni.