The Theory of Flight: Book 1, Part 2: History Summary & Analysis

Before Zimbabwe’s independence in 1980, it was known as Southern Rhodesia (1923–1965) or Rhodesia (1965–1979). In Southern Rhodesia (a British colony) and Rhodesia (an unrecognized, white-dominated state), sex between white women and Black men was illegal. The racist government decides to act against Beatrice as soon as they have undeniable proof that she’s had sex with a non-white man. This shows how oppressive governments seek to control private areas of citizens’ lives.

When Golide shoots down the passenger plane, he kills (among others) two innocent biracial children. Their deaths no doubt traumatize Beatrice, who—though enriched by colonialism—was funding freedom fighters like Golide. Emil uses the incident to turn people against the freedom fighters; this parallels the actions of Rhodesia’s prime minister Ian Smith (1919–2007), who used the 1978 downing of Air Rhodesia Flight 825 as a pretext to shut down negotiations with guerillas and launch brutal attacks against guerilla camps that included the killing of refugees. The ironic consequences of Golide’s attack suggest that chasing positive aspirations can have unintended, even tragic consequences.  

In this context, the word “township” refers to an urban neighborhood or suburban satellite community in which non-white people are segregated. Mordechai’s youth in a township that offered him no future killed his aspirations, making him indifferent to morality and willing to be killed. Mordechai’s story shows the corrosive effects of a racist colonial society on non-white citizens’ dreams.

Minenhle’s example inspires Mordechai, proving to him that nihilistic violence is not the only way to live. Her influence on him illustrates that even very personal aspirations (like Mordechai’s desire to change his whole life) occur within a web of relationships. Yet his unsettling decision to win Minenhle’s love in disguise after having tortured her shows how thoroughly oppressive political power penetrates the private lives of citizens like Minenhle.

Though people usually think of beauty as a positive thing, this passage shows how it can reinforce oppressive social hierarchies such as sexism. Because people value young Thandi solely for her beauty—a demeaning attitude people wouldn’t take toward a handsome young man—she has difficulty forming aspirations unrelated to her looks.

The word “soja” is a slang term for “soldier.” In 1974, when this incident takes place, there are three forces fighting in the Zimbabwe War of Independence (1964–1979): the Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA); a rival guerilla organization called the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army (ZANLA), and the white-dominated Rhodesian government. The novel does not clarify to which forces the soldiers belong, which seems to suggest that any of these forces might have included soldiers who would abuse and endanger a teenage schoolgirl. While Thandi has likely imagined Minenhle’s “satisfaction,” Thandi’s trauma is real, illustrating how violent political conflicts impinge on the psyches and (implicitly or explicitly) the sexuality of civilian victims.

Elizabeth arrives at the farm carrying a golden egg, which symbolizes aspiration due to its association with flight. Elizabeth does provide Thandi with a new aspiration, modeling. Yet Thandi’s aspiration is based on a false belief that beautiful models are “untouchable,” so if she becomes one, she won’t be abused and humiliated again. The novel’s claim that readers can’t know whether Thandi enjoyed the fact of Minenhle’s torture suggests that she may have—a disturbing possibility hinting that the latrine incident has damaged Thandi emotionally.

Marcus’s need to belong with some parental figure, after his parents leave him with his grandparents, reminds readers that group belonging is an important human desire and that Thandi and Dingani’s decision to leave Marcus behind may have harmed him. Elizabeth and Jestina’s dispute shows that an individual’s pride and aspiration (symbolized by the egg) can look like vanity to others.

Marcus Garvey (1887–1940) was a Jamaican political activist who advocated pan-Africanism, i.e., political solidarity among all people of African ancestry. Malcolm X (1925–1965) and Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) were major figures in the U.S. civil rights movement. When Elizabeth hears the name “Marcus Malcolm Martin,” she infers that Marcus was named after these revolutionary figures. The distinction she makes between being a “real revolutionary” and a “politician” implies that Elizabeth is not impressed with Zimbabwe’s postcolonial political leadership.

The novel speculates that the children’s love of exploration may have to do with their country’s independence. This speculation suggests that historical context shapes individual character, though it leaves room for other possible explanations and influences. As an innocent child, Genie reacts to the sunflowers’ beauty without knowing its complicated colonial past.

Because the sunflowers were planted by a white colonizer who exploited indigenous labor, they have up to this point been associated with the colonial past. Yet Genie’s strong emotional reaction to their death suggests an additional meaning. While their death may symbolize the passing of the old colonial order, Genie loves the sunflowers for what they are (beautiful) and not for what they originally represented (colonialism), showing how postcolonial citizens can repurpose inheritances from the colonial past.

Cars can’t be lonely. When Marcus notices the car’s “loneliness,” he is projecting his own loneliness onto it, which he feels despite his closeness to Genie and Elizabeth. When Elizabeth tells Genie that whether she has a father depends “on the future,” she implies that it depends on whether Golide comes back—a statement that suggests fatherhood isn’t simply a biological state, but a choice to have a relationship with and care for one’s child.

Existing gender hierarchies have narrowed Marcus’s imagination, such that he doesn’t even consider that Genie could drive. Yet in other respects, both Marcus and Genie have wide imaginations: they use the 1965 world atlas, a document from an oppressive postcolonial past, not to give themselves a rigid sense of their country but to help them imagine it could be anywhere at all. This is another example of postcolonial subjects repurposing the colonial past to their own ends.

If the sunflowers’ death suggested colonialism’s end, then their rebirth suggests historical change and continuity. Rhodesia has been reborn as Zimbabwe, with an African nationalist government instead of a white-dominated colonial one. Yet the land is the same, and inheritances from the colonial past, such as the sunflowers, persist.

Golide has come back to Elizabeth and Genie, making him Genie’s true father as well as her biological one. Elizabeth, Golide, and Genie generously accept Marcus into their family, giving him the “belonging” to which he—a child who feels abandoned by his own parents—aspires.

The Firebird is a myth from Russian folklore. One famous story about the Firebird appears in Igor Stravinsky’s 1910 ballet of the same name: the hero spares the Firebird’s life, and in exchange, the Firebird helps him kill an evil sorcerer whose soul is hidden in a magic egg. The allusion suggests that Genie is fascinated by her own birth (she did, after all, hatch from a magic egg). Marcus’s dislike of his parents’ “shiny” appearance suggests that some kinds of beauty are obviously superficial and thus distasteful. It also suggests that he wants to stay with Genie’s family rather than finding a sense of belonging with his parents.

As a child, Thandi was praised for her beauty so much that she stopped trying to develop her other qualities. Yet when she sees her son again, she immediately praises his beauty; she doesn’t seem to understand that her own childhood damaged her or that beauty is a better thing when divorced from pernicious social assumptions (e.g. that beauty makes an individual more valuable). Thandi’s hostility toward Genie suggests that she’s jealous of Genie’s friendship with Marcus—a selfish reaction, considering how good Genie and her family have been to Marcus while Thandi was away. 

Thandi’s claim that the area around the farm is “no longer safe” foreshadows that something bad may occur in the farm’s future. By violently resisting Thandi’s attempts to take him away, Marcus shows how little he feels he belongs with his family. Unlike Elizabeth and (eventually) Genie, Marcus won’t accept that Genie’s family must let him go because his parents have a right to take him—hence his refusal to wave goodbye to Genie. Whereas previously the sunflowers have represented colonial history and postcolonial rebirth, here they seem to represent Genie and Marcus’s shared childhood history—which Marcus is losing access to.

Eunice’s assertion that they’re Marcus’s “family now” betrays her awareness that they haven’t acted like his family in the past. Unlike Elizabeth, who suggested Golide would only become Genie’s father when he started acting like her father, Eunice seems to believe that Thandi and Dingani have a right to claim Marcus whenever they want even if they abandoned him before. Marcus senses something “dangerous” in his family’s “beauty”—a sense that suggests beauty can be weaponized to pernicious ends.

A few years after Thandi and Dingani take Marcus away, the farm is desolate, which implies that Thandi was right to claim the farm wasn’t safe. Readers don’t yet know whether political violence or something else desolated the farm.

In April 1980, shortly after Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) leader Robert Mugabe (1924–2019) was elected Zimbabwe’s first prime minister, Prince Charles of the U.K. came to Zimbabwe to formally cede British colonial control of the country. The story of Cosmos Nyathi illustrates that under racist colonial conditions, some Black people succeeded economically by embodying their colonizers’ racist ideas of what a “good African” is.  

“Viva” means “long live!” Here it expresses hope for independent Zimbabwe’s success. The dreadlocked man’s “charisma” makes Bhekithemba shout “Viva!” without knowing what it means and turns the crowd “almost menacing.” These details suggest a charismatic leader can give disaffected people a sense of belonging, but at the cost of their individual judgment—potentially turning them into a mob.

Bob Marley performed at Zimbabwe’s April 17, 1980, independence ceremony. When large crowds tried to enter the full stadium where Marley was performing, police attacked them with tear gas. Bhekithemba’s feeling of being “connected” and “rooted” emphasizes how a charismatic person can give people a sense of group belonging. When Marley calls Bhekithemba a “real revolutionary,” it recalls Elizabeth making Marcus promise to be a real revolutionary—suggesting that the question of who the real revolutionaries are is important to the postcolonial nation. Bhekithemba treats his encounter with Bob Marley precisely how his grandfather treated his own encounter with British royalty, suggesting that Bhekithemba is sticking to an old script of idol-worship (with new idols) rather than genuinely revolutionizing anything, however.

“The Man Himself” is an epithet that implies its owner is the most powerful person in the country, indicating that he’s a stand-in for Robert Mugabe (1924–2019), Zimbabwe’s prime minister from 1980 to 1987 and president from 1987 to 2017. Mugabe was a revolutionary prior to independence: the colonial government imprisoned him from 1963 to 1975, and from 1975 to 1979 he was a guerilla leader. Yet after he became an official political leader, he was accused of fomenting corruption, abusing citizens, and engineering a genocide. Given this context, the novel seems to treat Bhekithemba’s belief that he is helping turn Zimbabwe “into a multiracial, unified country” ironically.

The Man Himself argues that because Western nations are biased against African nations, African journalists shouldn’t report news that could make their countries look bad internationally. In other words, The Man Himself is pressuring Bhekithemba to self-censor. Bhekithemba nevertheless tries to write critical articles supporting marginalized groups, including “Coloured” (i.e. Black/white mixed-race) people and the Khoisan, a minority indigenous ethnic group in Zimbabwe (where most people are Shona). For now, The Man Himself supports this journalism.

At 25, Bhekithemba is very young to be the “head of investigative reporting” at a newspaper. Moreover, The Man Himself—a political figure—is appointing journalistic leadership, which suggests disturbing political interference with press freedom. When Bhekithemba’s editor blocks his story about government corruption, it reveals that The Man Himself is interfering with the press not to protect the country from the West, but to hide his misdeeds.

Robert Mugabe, the figure on whom The Man Himself seems to be based, belonged to the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU), one of two political organizations that opposed the existing white-minority government during the Zimbabwe War of Independence (1964–1979). The other organization was the Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU). After Mugabe and ZANU came to power in 1980, he began repressing ZAPU-associated “dissidents.” From 1982 to 1987, government soldiers carried out a campaign of terror against people of Ndebele and Kalanga minority ethnicities, among whom ZAPU had supporters. This campaign is known as the Gukurahundi genocide. The passage suggests that Bhekithemba hears rumors of the Gukurahundi genocide, including the death of his cousin, but decides not to try to report it because The Man Himself has too much “power” for the story to be published anyway. The phrase “learned his lesson” is ironic; Bhekithemba has learned a bad lesson—to bow to corrupt authority. Under the circumstances, The Man Himself’s interest in Golide foreshadows something bad.

Bhekithemba can’t understand why one person would work to fulfill another’s individual aspiration (symbolized by the wings). He assumes that all familial love is based in “gratitude” (though it’s doubtful that, e.g., mothers who love their babies do so out of gratitude) and dismisses romantic love entirely.

Previously in the novel, sunflowers have represented the shared history connecting disparate characters such as Beatrice, Genie, and Marcus. When Bhekithemba notices the sunflowers, it implies that he too will matter to these characters’ shared history. In answer to Genie’s suspicious questioning, he says that “people need to believe that we can fly,” suggesting that he finds Golide’s dream of flight inspirational even if he doesn’t understand Golide’s motives.

Bhekithemba compares Golide’s charisma to the dreadlocked man’s, i.e., Bob Marley’s. Yet Bhekithemba experienced Bob Marley’s charisma as an external force that made crowds thoughtless and potentially menacing. By contrast, Golide wants his wings to inspire people to fly themselves—to realize their own individual aspirations, not to be part of a crowd under the sway of his charisma.

After Bhekithemba publishes his story about Golide, a terrible massacre occurs on the farm—but it isn’t yet clear whether this massacre is connected to the Gukurahundi genocide, something in Bhekithemba’s story, or neither.

The reference to “sojas” (that is, soldiers) suggests that government forces perpetrated the massacre on the farm, but it is not clear why they did so or why they treated Jestina and Marcus’s grandparents so sadistically.

Since the sunflowers represent the characters’ shared colonial and postcolonial history, Genie hearing the massacre from among the sunflowers suggests that this government violence—and the real-life genocide in Zimbabwe to which it alludes—arises from a long chain of conflicts and oppressions. That one soldier wanted to burn the sunflowers for no reason suggests that some people who enact political violence are merely destructive; that another soldier stopped him suggests that others who enact political violence genuinely believe in killing their political opponents in a targeted way.

Don Williams (1939–2017) was an American country music singer. That the perpetrators as well as the victims of the massacre love Don Williams’s music shows that appreciating artistic beauty doesn’t necessarily make you a good person.

Genie tells a true but incomplete account of the poisoning, hiding Jestina’s coerced participation, which reveals Genie’s quick wits and desire to protect Jestina from unfair blame. Genie’s claim that her parents flew away may be true in this magical-realist novel, but it’s also a euphemism for death—if her parents were still alive, they surely wouldn’t have left her behind. Their flight suggests their moral triumph—they stayed true to their aspirations—but also shows oppressive governments’ murderous hostility to citizens’ individual dreams.

When Jestina says she thought that “only white people [were] capable […] of such evil,” it suggests that people thought they would be free of political violence once they were free of the white-dominated colonial government. Unfortunately, the postcolonial government also violently oppresses its own citizens.

In the prologue, readers learn that Genie’s heart turns into “the most precious and beautiful something” after death. Now it turns out that a similar transformation occurs in the corpse of at least one of the massacre victims—but the significance of the similarity is not yet clear. Jestina’s admonition that Genie not let the massacre change her belies an obvious reality: brutal attacks by the government can change victims in personal ways. Genie’s assertion that she will “choose [her] own endings” from now on reflects her desire to follow her individual aspirations and not bow to external forces like the oppressive government.