The Theory of Flight: Book 1, Part 4: Teleology Summary & Analysis

On the farm, Marcus was already imbibing sexist attitudes from his surroundings: he couldn’t imagine Genie driving a car, for example. His desire to be a superhero like “He-Man” and his relegation of the girls to generic “bad guys” implies that he has continued to imbibe sexist attitudes, according to which men are protagonists and women are supporting characters. Krystle and Genie, meanwhile, are clearly being exposed to racism and sexism at school: with her staring, their principal implies that the Black students are especially privileged to be allowed in the school—and someone seems to have advertised the school as a good place because of the men its graduates go on to marry. These incidents show the relevance of political climate to the development even of very young children.

The children’s make-believe reveals the politicized beliefs and prejudices they have absorbed from the adult world: Krystle thinks that she can only have a job until she gets married and that foreign countries are better than hers. Marcus disdains women (hence his bragging about being a “bachelor”). Genie, whose parents were more open-minded and less status-focused, seems to have imbibed fewer sexist and materialistic beliefs.

Krystle is likely jealous of Genie and Suzanne’s new friendship. Yet rather than admit she’s jealous, she takes a moralizing attitude toward Suzanne, deciding she’s a “bad influence.” Meanwhile, Genie’s growing interest in personal beautification is alienating her from younger, more sheltered Krystle. The British children’s TV show Button Moon involved a puppet named Mr. Spoon flying a spaceship to the moon. Given the centrality of flight to the show, it seems possible that Genie is devoted to the show because it reminds her of her parents’ aspiration to fly.

Thandi’s failure to pick the girls up from school hints that something has gone wrong. Meanwhile, Genie’s refusal to call Thandi and Dingani “mum and dad” shows she’s aware of the Masuku family’s complicated, partial acceptance of her: though they want her to love them like family, they don’t always treat her like family.

Thandi’s story suggests that The Man Himself tried to coerce her into sex by pointing out his power over her and Dingani’s lives. Dingani’s response—that their lifestyle has a “price”—suggests that he is resigned to The Man Himself sexually abusing Thandi, an attitude that Thandi understandably finds disappointing. This incident shows how oppressive political power can manifest in very personal realms, e.g. in questions of sexuality and consent.

The final episode of Button Moon aired on December 7, 1988. Genie shows that she does care about Krystle—despite Krystle’s childish accusations—by trying to protect and comfort her without lying to her. Genie’s claim that “all parents are different” entails that parental love can look very different from family to family; it also implies that before the massacre, Genie, Golide, and Elizabeth had a happier family life than the Masukus do.

Here readers learn that the “Jesus” mentioned in the prologue is not the Christian Messiah, Jesus Christ, but another character in the novel. That Kuki—already distantly connected to Genie through Beatrice and Golide—happens to strike Genie with her car shows the intense historical interconnectedness of apparently disparate characters. The false poise that Dingani and Thandi assume when they emerge from their closed-door fight, meanwhile, reminds readers that these characters use beautiful appearances to hide from ugly truths.

The novel associates flying with individual aspiration—but Genie is flying in this scene because she’s been hit by a car, which underscores how dangerous aspiration can be. Kuki recalls trying to become beautiful to please a masculine man, a memory that associates beauty standards with restrictive gender roles. Afrikaners are a white ethnic group in South Africa descended from Dutch colonizers, who historically had tense, sometimes violent relations with British and British-descended colonizers, which Kuki’s family are implied to be.

Emil wants to surveil colonized African citizens to keep them “in [their] place,” an obviously white-supremacist goal. He marries Kuki because he believes it will further his racist political goals, another example of oppressive politics shaping people’s domestic and sexual realities. 

When Genie decides to stop taking her medication later in life, Vida is the person from whom she conceals the decision—but it’s not yet clear how she and Vida come to know one another. Though the narration doesn’t say so outright, it’s implied that Emil hates his son for being attracted to men and for possibly having a relationship with Vida, a non-white boy (in South Africa and some other countries, “Coloured” means mixed-race). Emil bullies his son into fighting for the white-dominated colonial government—trying to force his son to conform to a hypermasculine, racist ideology. The son dies in the war, showing that homophobia and an obsession with traditional masculinity can have deadly consequences in an oppressive political environment. 

Kuki’s son’s death shows her that adherence to traditional gender scripts in an oppressive political context can have fatal consequences. In reaction, she escapes her marriage to a racist, macho husband. This passage makes clear that Kuki knew her son had a romantic relationship with a mixed-race boy, Vida, and that this fact had no effect on her love for him—indicating that while Kuki may be timid, conservative, and racist, she genuinely adored her child.

Kuki perceives that following in macho, homophobic, racist Emil’s footsteps was a kind of death for her son—hence his “dead” eyes in the photo where he’s fighting for the white-supremacist colonial government. Her decision to burn the photo of her son rather than have a false keepsake of him shows her devotion to him, while her belief that her living after his death is “a betrayal” shows that even generous family love can turn self-abnegating and self-destructive.

Kuki’s distracted driving—caused by a long, convoluted chain of events involving the white-supremacist government and homophobia—physically harms Genie, showing how colonial and postcolonial history continue to bind together and affect the novel’s characters in unexpected ways. 

An eisteddfod is a kind of festival involving musical competitions that originated in Wales. Vida becomes romantically interested in Everleigh after hearing him sing, which suggests that artistic beauty is important to Vida. Vida, attracted to both Everleigh and Rosamond, is perturbed by his own bisexuality because he doesn’t feel that it’s a socially recognized identity—by contrast, people at least know what gay men are even if they have “unpleasant” words for them. Vida can accept his own bisexuality because Everleigh accepts him and makes him feel “not alone,” which shows the importance of group belonging and social context to individual sexual identities. 

Just as white supremacy and homophobia steal Kuki’s son from her, they steal Vida’s first love from him. Janis Joplin (1943–1970) was an American rock singer who died of a drug overdose at age 27. Vida’s devotion to Janis Joplin emphasizes his desire to die young. “Tongaland” refers to a strategically important area in southern Africa near the Lembombo Mountains. 

African elephant grass, scientific name cenchrus purpureus, is a tall grazing grass; given that September 3, 1978, is the same day Golide sees elephants crossing the Zambezi and realizes how he can inspire others to fly, it seems likely the grass is supposed to prompt readers to connect Golide’s awe at the elephants with Vida’s unexpected “sense of wonder” here. Since September 3, 1978, is also the day Golide downs the plane carrying Beatrice and Genie hatches from her egg, Vida’s involvement in the events of the day once again highlights how various characters are linked, coincidentally, by a shared history. That implication is further emphasized by Golide’s claim that he knows Vida and Vida’s sense that Golide’s smile is “familiar.”

Vida and “Jesus”—the person who catches Genie after Kuki’s car hits her—are the same man. This revelation intensifies the implication that shared history unexpectedly connects all the novel’s disparate major characters. Vida’s ironic reflection that the multiracial homeless population is “probably the country’s best example of post-war tolerance” reveals how disappointing the oppressive postcolonial government is in comparison to the revolutionary ideals that led to the country’s independence.

HIV exploded in prevalence during the 1980s, leading to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. This epidemic was particularly widespread and deadly in southern African countries like Zimbabwe. The “street kids” are orphans either of war or of HIV/AIDS—a grouping that implicitly suggests the war and HIV/AIDs are similarly political phenomena, despite HIV/AIDS seeming like non-political problem related to health and sexuality.

The street girl holds her arm up to the ethnically Portuguese man’s while telling him that they can’t be citizens of the same country. The gesture implies that she was comparing their skin tones because she is Black African and he’s white. Vida, a mixed-race man, recalls that the man’s family had lived in the country for a long time—which suggests that he is sympathetic to people who want to belong to the postcolonial nation despite not being of indigenous African ancestry.  

David and Goliath are Biblical figures. In the Hebrew Bible and Christian Old Testament, David is a shepherd’s son who kills an enormous Philistine soldier named Goliath, whose army is threatening the Kingdom of Israel. David later becomes King of Israel. In the novel, these names seem ironic, as David is not a king but a homeless former scholar and Goliath is not a giant soldier but a scrawny orphan. These names—together with the ironic naming of misanthropic, reluctantly helpful Vida as “Jesus”—indicate that the novel is much more interested in secular history than in religion. 

The anecdote of the 11-year-old orphaned girl turning to prostitution to survive shows yet again how oppressive social contexts can have severe negative impacts on deeply personal areas of life. The girl’s decision to join The Survivors, meanwhile, shows that in some contexts, joining a group isn’t about being a conformist or an individualist, but about securing necessary physical protection.

Though a car accident has propelled Genie through the air, Vida sees her as “a thing of sheer beauty” in flight. Given the persistent association between flight and aspiration in the novel, Vida’s reaction to Genie’s accident may foreshadow that she will inspire him to pursue some dream. His ability to see beauty in unexpected contexts, meanwhile, hints that beauty is stranger and more widely distributed than conventional social and artistic perceptions might suggest. Genie’s comment that Vida has “kind eyes” and that he’s afraid people will stop calling him Jesus implies that though he’s a good person, he’s scared to have honest relationships with other people not based on his street persona. When Genie suggests this, Vida “sees her clearly”—that is, he starts focusing on her because she’s seen him clearly. Finally, his sudden desire to “save her” suggests that helping her might become his life’s aspiration.     

Earlier in the novel, Golide sees a herd of elephants beginning to cross the Zambezi just before he shoots down the passenger plane as part of his plan to teach people that they are capable of flight. Later, Golide tells the journalist Bhekithemba that the elephants inspired him to build wings—just as the first elephant that dove into the river showed the other elephants they too could cross it, so Golide hopes that his own flight will teach other people they can fly. Genie believes the herd of elephants crossing the Zambezi to be “the most beautiful thing,” which suggests that Genie really values individuals (like the first elephant or Golide) inspiring others to chase their aspirations and goals. Marcus, by contrast, thinks Genie is the most beautiful thing, indicating that he has stopped seeing her as a childhood playmate or quasi-sister and started seeing her as a potential romantic partner.    

Genie believes that by themselves, individuals are small, like a “speck.” Yet somehow, recognizing their own smallness helps individuals to achieve their aspirations, “to fly.” The poetic language she uses to express this paradoxical idea shows that she thinks the idea is beautiful. Though admiring Genie, Marcus is more focused on his own feelings and whether Genie might “laugh[]” at them than on what she’s trying to tell him. Their aborted kiss reveals that Genie is conflicted about Marcus’s romantic feelings—but does not reveal why.

It is not immediately clear why Marcus is demanding answers from his parents about Genie’s health status rather than asking Genie herself. Yet his parents’ silence suggests they are ashamed either of their own behavior or of Genie’s HIV-positive status. Eunice, who dislikes Genie, is the one to say out loud that Genie has HIV, which does suggest that she feels it’s something to be ashamed of—and that she wants to shame Genie. This deeply unfair, prejudicial treatment of a teenage girl shows how sociopolitical scripts about diseases like HIV/AIDS can deeply impact people’s private lives.

In the mid-1990s, when this part of the story takes place, access to the antiretroviral drugs that dramatically extend the life expectancy of people with HIV would have been extremely limited in sub-Saharan Africa, in large part due to those drugs’ unaffordability. That is to say, many people in Africa with HIV/AIDS died much earlier than they would have because of economic disadvantage—itself a legacy of European exploitation and colonialism in the region. It is reasonable for Marcus to be upset that Genie has a life-threatening illness. Yet he seems particularly upset that the illness in question can be sexually transmitted, which implies that jealousy or expectations about female “purity” are partly motivating his reaction. Krystle immediately infers that Genie was infected with HIV by a blood transfusion she received after Kuki’s car hit her. Krystle blames herself for the accident and thus for Genie’s HIV; at the exact same time, she gets her period—suggesting that her sense of moral responsibility marks a moral maturation for her, in the same way that menstruation marks a physical maturation. When Genie claims that Krystle doesn’t need to be forgiven, it isn’t clear whether she means that Krystle wasn’t responsible for the car accident or that she, Genie, didn’t get HIV from a blood transfusion.

Scheherazade is a character in the famous Middle Eastern folktale collection One Thousand and One Nights, where each folktale is framed as a story Scheherazade tells to keep a despotic king entertained—and thus keep him from having her executed. The phrase “a thousand and one performances” is a direct reference to the title of the collection. By comparing Genie to Scheherazade, Krystle suggests that her own family is like the king—untrustworthy, potentially violent, and interested in Genie only insofar as she entertains them. Genie’s repeated claim that “there is nothing to forgive” between her and Krystle suggests she has a less negative view of Krystle, at least, than she does of the other Masukus. Yet her decision to move out on her 18th birthday clearly indicates she found living with the Masukus untenable.