Individual Aspiration vs. Group Belonging Theme Analysis

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.

Golide knew that building airplanes was a costly business—that being capable of flight would come at a price. Parts either had to be bought or manufactured, people had to be educated and trained and the state’s monopoly on manufacturing had to be destroyed and decentralized. These obstacles made Golide spend most of his time thinking of ways to make the people understand that they were still capable of flight, and at no cost to themselves.

Bhekithemba did not believe in love, at least not in romantic love. He understood the love one had for one’s parents and one’s country—but that sort of love was born of respect and gratitude. It was a sort of giving back. There was a reason for that kind of love. It was only natural to love the things that had given you life, a sense of place, a feeling of belonging, a connection to things beyond yourself. You could not exist without those things and so of course you loved them. It was a selfish love: a love of self-preservation. Selfish love was understandable . . . reasonable. But romantic love had no reason.

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.

“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.”

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.

“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.”

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?

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

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.