The Theory of Flight

by

Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu

Genie/Imogen Zula Nyoni Character Analysis

Genie is Golide Gumele and Elizabeth Nyoni’s daughter. Her free spirit and resilience make her an inspiration to many. She gestates in a golden egg that Elizabeth lays after having sex with Golide. The novel implies that she hatches in 1978, at the same moment Golide—a freedom fighter—shoots down a plane carrying the white heiress Beatrice Beit-Beauford (who survives) and her biracial sons (who die). This unusual birth links Genie to colonial and postcolonial history, as well as to the novel’s use of flight to represent aspiration. Genie’s life thus embodies aspirational and violent aspects of historical change. Genie grows up on a farm with her friend Marcus, where they often play in a sunflower field. In 1987, genocidal soldiers inflict a massacre on the farm’s residents. The novel implies that the soldiers rape nine-year-old Genie during the massacre, infecting her with HIV; this incident epitomizes how oppressive governments attack their citizens in the most personal ways. During the massacre, Genie’s parents fly away on silver wings, an image indicating both death and internal freedom. Dingani and Thandi, who took Marcus from the farm before the massacre, adopt Genie to assuage their guilt. At 18, Genie leaves the Masuku home to live with Vida de Villiers, a homeless sculptor. They enter a relationship, though Genie makes Vida promise not to discuss love. When, at 39, an ailing Genie decides to die, she returns to the sunflower field of her youth and flies away on silver wings but leaves behind her “calcified” heart. This death exemplifies Genie’s aspirations—to be free, to choose how her life ends—and her legacy of free-spiritedness.

Genie/Imogen Zula Nyoni Quotes in The Theory of Flight

The The Theory of Flight quotes below are all either spoken by Genie/Imogen Zula Nyoni or refer to Genie/Imogen Zula Nyoni . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Individual Aspiration vs. Group Belonging Theme Icon
).
Book 1, Part 1: Genealogy Quotes

He felt that the name that he had been born with, Bafana Ndlelaphi—which literally meant, ‘boys, which is the way’—was not fit for an explorer such as himself and so he changed it to Baines Tikiti. Tikiti—a ticket, something one purchased in order to go on a journey. Something that gave one purpose.

Related Characters: Genie/Imogen Zula Nyoni , Golide Gumele/Livingstone Stanley Tikiti, Baines Tikiti/Bafana Ndlelaphi
Page Number: 2
Explanation and Analysis:
Book 1, Part 2: History Quotes

Well, Marcus Malcolm Martin Masuku, you can be friends with my Genie here if you promise me one thing. Can you promise me one thing? […] Promise me that you will not become a politician . . . promise me you will become a real revolutionary instead.

Related Characters: Elizabeth Nyoni (speaker), Genie/Imogen Zula Nyoni , Marcus Malcolm Martin Masuku, Thandi Hadebe, Dingani Masuku, The Man Himself
Page Number: 28
Explanation and Analysis:

“Do I have a father?”

“It depends.”

“On what?”

“On the future.”

Related Characters: Genie/Imogen Zula Nyoni (speaker), Elizabeth Nyoni (speaker), Golide Gumele/Livingstone Stanley Tikiti, Thandi Hadebe, Dingani Masuku
Page Number: 35
Explanation and Analysis:

So engrossed were they in their travels that it took them a while to notice that shoots were beginning to rise out of the reddish-brown earth. The sunflowers were being reborn. This was how they learned their most valuable lesson about death—that after it there is life again, that things that perish will rise again, that after every ending there is another beginning.

Related Characters: Genie/Imogen Zula Nyoni , Marcus Malcolm Martin Masuku, Beatrice Beit-Beauford
Related Symbols: Sunflowers
Page Number: 36
Explanation and Analysis:

We are your family now,” his new grandmother said, still not smiling. They all looked beautiful, the members of his family, but Marcus felt that their beauty was not to be trusted. It was a dangerous beauty. He was suddenly more terrified than he had ever been before. He let go of his bladder then, well aware that his urine would soil both his shorts and his mother’s shiny dress.

Related Characters: Eunice Masuku (speaker), Genie/Imogen Zula Nyoni , Marcus Malcolm Martin Masuku, Krystle Masuku, Thandi Hadebe, Dingani Masuku, Elizabeth Nyoni
Page Number: 46
Explanation and Analysis:

The man told Bhekithemba how he had come up with his theory of flight on September 3, 1978, as he watched elephants swim across the Zambezi River. What had made the first elephant cross was that it could see the other bank of the river—the elephant would not have swum into the ocean, of this the man was certain. What made the other elephants follow was the successful passage of the first. The man wanted people to know that they were capable of flight, and at first he had erroneously thought that they would realize this if he taught them how to build airplanes. After watching the elephants, he understood that what was needed was merely his own belief in flight. If people saw him build a giant pair of silver wings, then they too would believe that they could fly.

Related Characters: Genie/Imogen Zula Nyoni , Vida de Villiers/Jesus, Golide Gumele/Livingstone Stanley Tikiti, Bhekithemba Nyathi, Baines Tikiti/Bafana Ndlelaphi
Related Symbols: Wings, Birds, and Eggs
Page Number: 60
Explanation and Analysis:

“There was a time, not so long ago, that we thought only white people capable of such hatred and anger, such evil. We know better now. Evil does not discriminate. It visits all of us with equal opportunity.”

Related Characters: Jestina Nxumalo (speaker), Genie/Imogen Zula Nyoni , Golide Gumele/Livingstone Stanley Tikiti
Page Number: 69
Explanation and Analysis:
Book 1, Part 4: Teleology Quotes

“You understand that in the grander scheme of things you are but a speck . . . a tiny speck , , , and that that is enough. There is freedom, beauty even, in that kind of knowledge . . . and it is the kind of knowledge that finally quiets you. It is the kind of knowledge that allows you to fly.”

Related Characters: Genie/Imogen Zula Nyoni (speaker), Marcus Malcolm Martin Masuku, Golide Gumele/Livingstone Stanley Tikiti
Related Symbols: Wings, Birds, and Eggs
Page Number: 126
Explanation and Analysis:
Book 1, Part 5: Epidemiology: Love in the Time of HIV Quotes

It was only when he saw Genie looking at the things he had created with awe and wonder, only when he saw one hand traveling to her mouth to cover an “O” that had already escaped, only when he saw the other hand reaching out to touch him gently on the shoulder, only when she looked at the things he had created as things of utter beauty, only when she whispered, “I knew it. I knew you were special. I knew it,” her brilliant eyes never leaving the sculptures, it was only then that he realized that the things he created could actually have lives of their own—beyond him.

Related Characters: Genie/Imogen Zula Nyoni (speaker), Vida de Villiers/Jesus, Marcus Malcolm Martin Masuku, Golide Gumele/Livingstone Stanley Tikiti
Page Number: 147
Explanation and Analysis:

He heard his father’s voice say: “There are many ways to be a man. Always remember that.” He knew that in uttering these words his father had prepared him for precisely a moment such as this. His father had spoken the words at a time when Vida had needed absolute understanding and acceptance. And this was a time in Genie’s life when she needed absolute understanding and acceptance.

Related Characters: Genie/Imogen Zula Nyoni , Vida de Villiers/Jesus, Marcus Malcolm Martin Masuku
Page Number: 148
Explanation and Analysis:

In a house filled with the proud collections and clutter of Jakob de Villiers’s life, Blue’s absence seems like a haunting.

Related Characters: Genie/Imogen Zula Nyoni , Vida de Villiers/Jesus
Page Number: 157
Explanation and Analysis:

“Promise me you will never speak to me of love,” she said. She looked at him and ran the back of her hand idly over his chest. “To not have to speak of love is such a freeing thing.”

Related Characters: Genie/Imogen Zula Nyoni (speaker), Vida de Villiers/Jesus, Marcus Malcolm Martin Masuku, Golide Gumele/Livingstone Stanley Tikiti
Page Number: 163
Explanation and Analysis:
Book 2, Part 1: Epistemology Quotes

Funny that during her final moments her thoughts and concerns should be so domestic.

After a lifetime of believing she was in flight, of believing that she was something spectacular in the sky, had she rather been a hybrid thing—something rooted but free to fly? Could such a hybrid thing even exist?

Related Characters: Genie/Imogen Zula Nyoni
Related Symbols: Wings, Birds, and Eggs, Sunflowers
Page Number: 180-181
Explanation and Analysis:

“We live in a time of HIV and AIDS,” Bhekithemba continues. “Everyone knows someone in [the] hospital who is fighting to survive. That fact alone—that we all know someone who is struggling to be alive—should be the headline every day, but it is not. It is our reality, the way we live now, our truth. So of course we cannot acknowledge it, let alone print it.”

Related Characters: Bhekithemba Nyathi (speaker), Genie/Imogen Zula Nyoni , Vida de Villiers/Jesus
Page Number: 191
Explanation and Analysis:

Krystle looks at the telltale line left behind by the adhesive tape. She gets down on her knees and traces the grimy demarcation with her index finger. Tracing the evidence that Genie’s life with them had not been as easy as they all liked to remember. They had loved her in their own way, the only way they knew how . . . jealously . . . possessively . . . imperfectly.

Related Characters: Genie/Imogen Zula Nyoni , Vida de Villiers/Jesus, Krystle Masuku, Eunice Masuku
Page Number: 222
Explanation and Analysis:

“You cannot break me. You see, I know for certain that my parents were capable of flight.”

Related Characters: Genie/Imogen Zula Nyoni (speaker), Golide Gumele/Livingstone Stanley Tikiti, Valentine Tanaka, Elizabeth Nyoni
Related Symbols: Wings, Birds, and Eggs
Page Number: 244
Explanation and Analysis:

“It is too intimate, this interference, this role the state plays in our lives,” Minenhle says, looking him in the eye. “Too intimate.”

Related Characters: Minenhle Tikiti (speaker), Genie/Imogen Zula Nyoni , Vida de Villiers/Jesus, Marcus Malcolm Martin Masuku, Thandi Hadebe, Dingani Masuku, Valentine Tanaka, Eunice Masuku
Page Number: 257
Explanation and Analysis:
Book 2, Part 2: Revelations Quotes

As they gang-raped, shot and pillaged their way through the compound, they had also, unbeknownst to themselves, found another way to decimate the compound. It did not have to be all of them who carried the disease. Just one—the result would have been the same.

And now to find out that Genie too . . .

Related Characters: Genie/Imogen Zula Nyoni , Golide Gumele/Livingstone Stanley Tikiti, Jestina Nxumalo, Elizabeth Nyoni
Page Number: 301-302
Explanation and Analysis:

Genie chooses this particular moment, with the survivors as her witnesses, to fly away on a giant pair of silver wings . . . and leave her heart behind to calcify into the most precious and beautiful something that the world has ever seen.

As the survivors watch her ascend she experiences love as the release of a promise long held.

Related Characters: Genie/Imogen Zula Nyoni , Vida de Villiers/Jesus, Golide Gumele/Livingstone Stanley Tikiti, Elizabeth Nyoni
Related Symbols: Wings, Birds, and Eggs
Page Number: 305
Explanation and Analysis:

This is where he belongs.

Related Characters: Genie/Imogen Zula Nyoni , Marcus Malcolm Martin Masuku, Krystle Masuku, Golide Gumele/Livingstone Stanley Tikiti, Thandi Hadebe, Dingani Masuku, Eunice Masuku, Elizabeth Nyoni, Esme Masuku
Page Number: 314
Explanation and Analysis:
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The Theory of Flight PDF

Genie/Imogen Zula Nyoni Quotes in The Theory of Flight

The The Theory of Flight quotes below are all either spoken by Genie/Imogen Zula Nyoni or refer to Genie/Imogen Zula Nyoni . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Individual Aspiration vs. Group Belonging Theme Icon
).
Book 1, Part 1: Genealogy Quotes

He felt that the name that he had been born with, Bafana Ndlelaphi—which literally meant, ‘boys, which is the way’—was not fit for an explorer such as himself and so he changed it to Baines Tikiti. Tikiti—a ticket, something one purchased in order to go on a journey. Something that gave one purpose.

Related Characters: Genie/Imogen Zula Nyoni , Golide Gumele/Livingstone Stanley Tikiti, Baines Tikiti/Bafana Ndlelaphi
Page Number: 2
Explanation and Analysis:
Book 1, Part 2: History Quotes

Well, Marcus Malcolm Martin Masuku, you can be friends with my Genie here if you promise me one thing. Can you promise me one thing? […] Promise me that you will not become a politician . . . promise me you will become a real revolutionary instead.

Related Characters: Elizabeth Nyoni (speaker), Genie/Imogen Zula Nyoni , Marcus Malcolm Martin Masuku, Thandi Hadebe, Dingani Masuku, The Man Himself
Page Number: 28
Explanation and Analysis:

“Do I have a father?”

“It depends.”

“On what?”

“On the future.”

Related Characters: Genie/Imogen Zula Nyoni (speaker), Elizabeth Nyoni (speaker), Golide Gumele/Livingstone Stanley Tikiti, Thandi Hadebe, Dingani Masuku
Page Number: 35
Explanation and Analysis:

So engrossed were they in their travels that it took them a while to notice that shoots were beginning to rise out of the reddish-brown earth. The sunflowers were being reborn. This was how they learned their most valuable lesson about death—that after it there is life again, that things that perish will rise again, that after every ending there is another beginning.

Related Characters: Genie/Imogen Zula Nyoni , Marcus Malcolm Martin Masuku, Beatrice Beit-Beauford
Related Symbols: Sunflowers
Page Number: 36
Explanation and Analysis:

We are your family now,” his new grandmother said, still not smiling. They all looked beautiful, the members of his family, but Marcus felt that their beauty was not to be trusted. It was a dangerous beauty. He was suddenly more terrified than he had ever been before. He let go of his bladder then, well aware that his urine would soil both his shorts and his mother’s shiny dress.

Related Characters: Eunice Masuku (speaker), Genie/Imogen Zula Nyoni , Marcus Malcolm Martin Masuku, Krystle Masuku, Thandi Hadebe, Dingani Masuku, Elizabeth Nyoni
Page Number: 46
Explanation and Analysis:

The man told Bhekithemba how he had come up with his theory of flight on September 3, 1978, as he watched elephants swim across the Zambezi River. What had made the first elephant cross was that it could see the other bank of the river—the elephant would not have swum into the ocean, of this the man was certain. What made the other elephants follow was the successful passage of the first. The man wanted people to know that they were capable of flight, and at first he had erroneously thought that they would realize this if he taught them how to build airplanes. After watching the elephants, he understood that what was needed was merely his own belief in flight. If people saw him build a giant pair of silver wings, then they too would believe that they could fly.

Related Characters: Genie/Imogen Zula Nyoni , Vida de Villiers/Jesus, Golide Gumele/Livingstone Stanley Tikiti, Bhekithemba Nyathi, Baines Tikiti/Bafana Ndlelaphi
Related Symbols: Wings, Birds, and Eggs
Page Number: 60
Explanation and Analysis:

“There was a time, not so long ago, that we thought only white people capable of such hatred and anger, such evil. We know better now. Evil does not discriminate. It visits all of us with equal opportunity.”

Related Characters: Jestina Nxumalo (speaker), Genie/Imogen Zula Nyoni , Golide Gumele/Livingstone Stanley Tikiti
Page Number: 69
Explanation and Analysis:
Book 1, Part 4: Teleology Quotes

“You understand that in the grander scheme of things you are but a speck . . . a tiny speck , , , and that that is enough. There is freedom, beauty even, in that kind of knowledge . . . and it is the kind of knowledge that finally quiets you. It is the kind of knowledge that allows you to fly.”

Related Characters: Genie/Imogen Zula Nyoni (speaker), Marcus Malcolm Martin Masuku, Golide Gumele/Livingstone Stanley Tikiti
Related Symbols: Wings, Birds, and Eggs
Page Number: 126
Explanation and Analysis:
Book 1, Part 5: Epidemiology: Love in the Time of HIV Quotes

It was only when he saw Genie looking at the things he had created with awe and wonder, only when he saw one hand traveling to her mouth to cover an “O” that had already escaped, only when he saw the other hand reaching out to touch him gently on the shoulder, only when she looked at the things he had created as things of utter beauty, only when she whispered, “I knew it. I knew you were special. I knew it,” her brilliant eyes never leaving the sculptures, it was only then that he realized that the things he created could actually have lives of their own—beyond him.

Related Characters: Genie/Imogen Zula Nyoni (speaker), Vida de Villiers/Jesus, Marcus Malcolm Martin Masuku, Golide Gumele/Livingstone Stanley Tikiti
Page Number: 147
Explanation and Analysis:

He heard his father’s voice say: “There are many ways to be a man. Always remember that.” He knew that in uttering these words his father had prepared him for precisely a moment such as this. His father had spoken the words at a time when Vida had needed absolute understanding and acceptance. And this was a time in Genie’s life when she needed absolute understanding and acceptance.

Related Characters: Genie/Imogen Zula Nyoni , Vida de Villiers/Jesus, Marcus Malcolm Martin Masuku
Page Number: 148
Explanation and Analysis:

In a house filled with the proud collections and clutter of Jakob de Villiers’s life, Blue’s absence seems like a haunting.

Related Characters: Genie/Imogen Zula Nyoni , Vida de Villiers/Jesus
Page Number: 157
Explanation and Analysis:

“Promise me you will never speak to me of love,” she said. She looked at him and ran the back of her hand idly over his chest. “To not have to speak of love is such a freeing thing.”

Related Characters: Genie/Imogen Zula Nyoni (speaker), Vida de Villiers/Jesus, Marcus Malcolm Martin Masuku, Golide Gumele/Livingstone Stanley Tikiti
Page Number: 163
Explanation and Analysis:
Book 2, Part 1: Epistemology Quotes

Funny that during her final moments her thoughts and concerns should be so domestic.

After a lifetime of believing she was in flight, of believing that she was something spectacular in the sky, had she rather been a hybrid thing—something rooted but free to fly? Could such a hybrid thing even exist?

Related Characters: Genie/Imogen Zula Nyoni
Related Symbols: Wings, Birds, and Eggs, Sunflowers
Page Number: 180-181
Explanation and Analysis:

“We live in a time of HIV and AIDS,” Bhekithemba continues. “Everyone knows someone in [the] hospital who is fighting to survive. That fact alone—that we all know someone who is struggling to be alive—should be the headline every day, but it is not. It is our reality, the way we live now, our truth. So of course we cannot acknowledge it, let alone print it.”

Related Characters: Bhekithemba Nyathi (speaker), Genie/Imogen Zula Nyoni , Vida de Villiers/Jesus
Page Number: 191
Explanation and Analysis:

Krystle looks at the telltale line left behind by the adhesive tape. She gets down on her knees and traces the grimy demarcation with her index finger. Tracing the evidence that Genie’s life with them had not been as easy as they all liked to remember. They had loved her in their own way, the only way they knew how . . . jealously . . . possessively . . . imperfectly.

Related Characters: Genie/Imogen Zula Nyoni , Vida de Villiers/Jesus, Krystle Masuku, Eunice Masuku
Page Number: 222
Explanation and Analysis:

“You cannot break me. You see, I know for certain that my parents were capable of flight.”

Related Characters: Genie/Imogen Zula Nyoni (speaker), Golide Gumele/Livingstone Stanley Tikiti, Valentine Tanaka, Elizabeth Nyoni
Related Symbols: Wings, Birds, and Eggs
Page Number: 244
Explanation and Analysis:

“It is too intimate, this interference, this role the state plays in our lives,” Minenhle says, looking him in the eye. “Too intimate.”

Related Characters: Minenhle Tikiti (speaker), Genie/Imogen Zula Nyoni , Vida de Villiers/Jesus, Marcus Malcolm Martin Masuku, Thandi Hadebe, Dingani Masuku, Valentine Tanaka, Eunice Masuku
Page Number: 257
Explanation and Analysis:
Book 2, Part 2: Revelations Quotes

As they gang-raped, shot and pillaged their way through the compound, they had also, unbeknownst to themselves, found another way to decimate the compound. It did not have to be all of them who carried the disease. Just one—the result would have been the same.

And now to find out that Genie too . . .

Related Characters: Genie/Imogen Zula Nyoni , Golide Gumele/Livingstone Stanley Tikiti, Jestina Nxumalo, Elizabeth Nyoni
Page Number: 301-302
Explanation and Analysis:

Genie chooses this particular moment, with the survivors as her witnesses, to fly away on a giant pair of silver wings . . . and leave her heart behind to calcify into the most precious and beautiful something that the world has ever seen.

As the survivors watch her ascend she experiences love as the release of a promise long held.

Related Characters: Genie/Imogen Zula Nyoni , Vida de Villiers/Jesus, Golide Gumele/Livingstone Stanley Tikiti, Elizabeth Nyoni
Related Symbols: Wings, Birds, and Eggs
Page Number: 305
Explanation and Analysis:

This is where he belongs.

Related Characters: Genie/Imogen Zula Nyoni , Marcus Malcolm Martin Masuku, Krystle Masuku, Golide Gumele/Livingstone Stanley Tikiti, Thandi Hadebe, Dingani Masuku, Eunice Masuku, Elizabeth Nyoni, Esme Masuku
Page Number: 314
Explanation and Analysis: