The Theory of Flight Themes

Throughout The Theory of Flight, characters experience tensions between their individual aspirations, often symbolized by wings and flight, and their communal histories, often symbolized by rooted organisms like sunflowers. The main character Genie’s grandfather, Baines Tikiti, demonstrates this tension. He loves travel and leaves his wife behind in an unnamed country (implicitly Zimbabwe) to work as a traveling salesman in South Africa. There he becomes obsessed with airplanes, an obsession that…

The Theory of Flight never names the country where most of its events take place, but context clues indicate the country is Zimbabwe, which was occupied by British companies in the late 19th century and officially annexed as Southern Rhodesia by the U.K. in 1923. In 1965, the white minority that ruled Southern Rhodesia declared independence from the U.K., which triggered a civil war between said rulers and indigenous African political parties. In early 1980…

In The Theory of Flight, oppressive political systems constantly impinge on people’s private identities, such as their gender and sexuality, while problems of gender and sexuality sometimes erupt into the political arena. The novel suggests that oppressive governments intrude on citizens’ lives in ways that are, as one character puts it, “too intimate”—more responsible governments would leave their citizens’ private lives and personal identities alone.

One main way that the novel shows oppressive politics…

In The Theory of Flight, beauty is something to be celebrated—but only when people appreciate it for itself, not when they use it as a tool to dominate others. This dynamic is clear in the reception of artist Vida’s sculptures, which he creates out of scrap metal he has salvaged. Initially Vida shows the sculptures to no one—he simply likes executing his own artistic ideas. When he shows them to Genie, however…