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By giving nod to postmodernist Kurt Vonnegut in his epigraph of Flight (2007), Sherman Alexie advertises from the get-go a postmodern bent to his novel. One identifiable marker of postmodern thought, according to Frederic Jameson, is “historical deafness”; history is no longer of any value to a postmodern protagonist who denies its relevance and instead preoccupies himself with the present and the now. Consequently, Alexie’s referencing of Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) seemingly foregrounds the significance of ahistoricity. And yet, Flight is a text in which history, be it real or imaginary, cannot be so easily elided. In fact, protagonist Zits’ finding and claiming of his “real” self Michael is contingent on his “flights” back to and reconnection with the collective history of Native Americans as well as that of all Americans. The ending of Flight is ostensibly a happy one; Zits finds himself finally unfettered from self-hatred and is embraced by a wholesome All-American family (with Officer Dave, Firefighter Robert, and Nurse Mary) that promises him baseball games, acne-free skin, healthy food choices, and stability. Still, Vonnegut’s epigraph (“Po-tee-weet?”), arguably inserted to symbolize the meaninglessness of everything that’s been said, reverberates ominously throughout the novel and undercuts the optimism that the ending suggests. One may invariably ask: is the happy ending of Flight effected by Zits ultimately choosing to turn a deaf ear to history and to focus instead on the here and the now? Certainly, Zits gaining access to the American mainstream (via his newfound family) can be read as a positive move and perhaps an expected closing with Flight’s bildungsroman format. Nonetheless, I aim to interrogate if Native American narrative is yet again placed in the danger of being erased, distorted, and re-appropriated by the dominant discourse as Zits transforms into Michael and moves rather facilely from the periphery to the center and how Flight’s take on history is implicated in this problematic process.
