The 2007 novel of American literature, Flight, is the story of a hopeless foster child, yet the unique approach of Sherman Alexie (Spokane/Coeur d'Alene) makes it anything but an ordinary Bildungsroman. Unlike a conventional Bildungsroman where readers witness the protagonist gain maturity with difficulty, time travel forces readers to question their own prejudices and foundations to realize what's important. The first-person protagonist narrator Zits was born as a mixed-race Native American, but believes he has no race, no home, no family, which he considers the main components of someone's identity. Zits is sent on a time journey to learn about Indian settlements in contemporary America, historically reliable through understanding Alexie's life on a reservation because she grew up on a reservation (Spokane/Coeur d'Alene). Zits fails to realize in that moment that his travel education will transform him into a new person, or indeed, the person he was inside all along. Zits transforms not only externally by ridding himself of the acne that gave him his name, but also emerges from time travel regardless of who was on the first page. His time travels bring Zits into contact with the violence of people of different skin colors, how such anger stems from misconceptions about people, and how Zits has misidentified the people around him, as well as himself. The ability to see conflicts from both sides – American and Indian – opens the door to the idea that no one is defined by their cultural identity, but more importantly by their actions and behaviors throughout their lives. This shows that there is not such a big difference between Indians and Americans, which is crucial for Zits to determine what kind of life he will live. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Flight is a narrative with a community of diverse voices, each embodying a different representation of the past that Zits does not initially have accurate knowledge of. The first authentic account takes place in the mid-1970s, when Zits finds himself in the white body of an FBI agent on the Red River Indian Reservation. Since Alexie selectively chose historical occasions that would sound familiar to the reader, it would not be out of the ordinary for him or her to connect the first meeting with the infamous battle between IRON, the Indigenous Rights Now! Movement and HAMMER, the traitorous tribal government officials who later collaborated with the FBI. In this section, Zits plays Hank Storm and witnesses his fellow agent's racist attitude towards the Indians: "I wish Custer had killed a few more of these damn creepers" (43). Zits is confused to see that his partners are friendly with Elk and Horse, two Indians supposedly part of IRON. These two get an Indian named Junior out of the trunk of their car, and to make a long story short, Hank's partner Storm shoots Junior without batting an eye when the prisoner refuses to talk. What is significant about this scene is that Zits does not witness Junior's death without taking a hit himself. The white man wants to leave the corpse to rot, while Elk supports the morally right action he has been taught: "He's a traditionalist...his soul won't go to Heaven if we don't bury him the Indian way" (52) . Basically, Elk and Horse torture and kill Junior and then moments later give him a proper burial. Zits discovers how closely violence and compassion are related, but he is baffled. It is normal that thenarrator feels nauseated at seeing someone die, but it is a sign of maturation in his journey that he identifies how useless violence is even if it is still perpetrated by many. It's interesting to see both the native and white sides shine through Zits in this scene, as he observes the native burial culture while feeling the guilt of a white man after killing an Indian. Zits plays the role of good and evil - of compassion and violence - gaining the guilt needed to understand where the racial inconsistencies come from and diminishing the gap of the us versus them scenario that has kept him from identifying. Zits learns of the violence capable of all people, but time travel deepens this concept by suggesting that misconceptions are often the cause. To say that Zits is the average teenager would be unfair, given his divided struggle between the native ethnology and the hostile white world. His Irish mother died when he was young, his Indian father left his son before they met, and, as Zits became more aware of the atmosphere in which he lived, he began to actively resent white people who constantly stereotyped him. He was stereotypical for an Indian race that he didn't even believe was his, because he linked abandoning his father with abandoning his Indian identity. Given his frustration resulting from mislabeling, Zits' anger stems from misconceptions in contemporary America about Native Americans technically like him, which are prevalent throughout history. As an illustration, one of his bodily migrations is into a thirteen-year-old Indian boy, who is presumed to be during Custer's last stand at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876. At the end of the battle, the Indian boy's father freezes a young white soldier and insists that Zits wants revenge on him and must give the white soldier what he deserves; what he deserves for the brutal actions of a totally different white man towards the Indian boy. Generalization comes into play here as the Indian boy's father associates all white people as enemies. The innocent young soldier has done nothing directly to the Indian boy, but the sight of his white face provokes a desire for revenge in his father, causing Zits to wonder, "Revenge is a circle within a circle all inside a circle?" (77) The pressure from his father “to be a warrior” forces Zits to face his feelings of revenge (78). After the anguish that whites have historically caused Indians, such as the theft of perfect lands and extraordinary brutality towards them, Zits could have virtually taken this as an opportunity to exact revenge. Hand. He hesitates and the scene ends with him at a crossroads about what to do, where he finally closes his eyes and is carried outside. Alexie suggests that Zits not kill this soldier for the sake of the guilt he would have. Given his lifelong hatred of white people and his destructive intentions at the beginning of the novel in the bank, readers would initially predict that Zits would have no regrets about killing this boy. However, the guilt Zits endures simply considering murder motivates him to measure the value of revenge when resolving difficult situations. At the end of the novel, Alexie reevaluates how the costs of revenge outweigh its benefits, and, now inclined to this analysis, Zits wants to live a life not motivated by the resentment of the people before and around him, a life in which he renounces violence. The last person Zits incarnates is his father, around the same time the novel begins, and this is where time travel shows Zits that everyone has their own internal conflicts: after all, we're not all, 2007.