Use this activity to engage all types of learners, while requiring that they refer to and incorporate details from the text over the course of the activity.

“On the Page: Character Analysis Booklets”

In this activity, students will create a physical or digital booklet detailing the characters Zits inhabits in Flight to determine how they impact his character development.

At the beginning of Sherman Alexie’s Flight, the protagonist, who identifies as Zits, is struggling with trauma, self-image, and self-worth. As he travels in time and inhabits numerous characters, his perception of his self changes, so much so that he reveals his true name, Michael, by the end of the novel. Which characters’ lives, histories, and experiences have the greatest impact on Zits’s character development? Which characters impact him the least, and why? Analyze the characters Zits inhabits in Flight and then create a page for each character that includes the character’s name, an illustration or photograph, a relevant quote, important background information, and an explanation of how the character impacted Zits. Consider the following as you create your physical or digital character analysis booklet:

• What time periods, locations, and historical events occur during Zits’s time inhabiting each character?
• How does each time travel experience change or reveal more about Zits, and how does the character he inhabits during this time affect him?
• How does each character connect to one or more of the text’s themes: Violence, Revenge, and Justice; Family: The Desire for Love and Stability; and Ancestry and Identity?

Place the characters in order of who has the strongest impact on Zits’s character development, with 1 having the least impact and 5 having the most impact. Share each other’s finished booklets in small groups and then write a reflective paragraph. Did you notice any patterns between booklets? After reading your peers’ character analyses, has your understanding of Zits or the other characters changed? Why or why not?

Teaching Suggestion: It may be helpful to explore Zits’s character arc in more detail prior to beginning the activity. For example, you might ask the class to create a before and after profile of the protagonist to help identify the ways the character has changed from the beginning to the end of the novel. This could include the character’s temperament, traits, behavior, and relationships, as well as subtler details, such as use of language.

Differentiation Suggestion: Advanced students who work quickly may be interested in creating additional pages for the other characters in the novel, while students who struggle with organization and direction may benefit from a template.

Use these essay questions as writing and critical thinking exercises for all levels of writers, and to build their literary analysis skills by requiring textual references throughout the essay.

Differentiation Suggestion: For English learners or struggling writers, strategies that work well include graphic organizers, sentence frames or starters, group work, or oral responses.

Scaffolded Essay Questions

Student Prompt: Write a short (1-3 paragraph) response using one of the bulleted outlines below. Cite details from the text over the course of your response that serve as examples and support.

1. In Flight, Zits time travels to a variety of specific moments in history and embodies a diverse range of individuals.

• What is significant about the historical moments Zits travels to and the people he embodies? (topic sentence)
• Consider the various times, places, and people that Zits experiences over the course of the novel and then choose two of Zits’s time travel experiences to analyze. Why does the author choose these specific moments? How do they each connect to Zits in different ways? Cite direct evidence from the text to support your thoughts.
• In your concluding sentences, consider how Zits’s experiences connect to the theme of Ancestry and Identity.

2. Throughout Flight, fathers and father figures appear in a variety of forms.

• How are fathers presented in Flight, and what is Zits’s relationship to them? (topic sentence)
• Analyze the role that fathers and father figures play in the novel. How are fathers portrayed in both nurturing and difficult ways? How does Zits’s experiences with different father figures, including his own biological father, impact his character development? Include three direct quotations from the novel to support your thoughts.
• In your concluding sentences, consider how these various father figures help develop the theme of Family: The Desire for Love and Stability.

Full Essay Assignments

Student Prompt: Write a structured and well-developed essay. Include a thesis statement, at least three main points supported by text details, and a conclusion.

1. Analyze the presence of guilt and shame in Flight. How and why does Zits carry guilt and shame? How does the novel grapple with the ways guilt and shame can be passed down and inherited? How do Zits’s experiences not only expose these emotions but also offer a way to heal from them? Consider the final chapter of Flight and evaluate Zits’s journey with his own guilt and shame. As you compose your essay, cite at least three direct quotations from the novel to support your claims.

2. Evaluate the concepts of fate versus free will in Flight. In many ways, Zits lacks agency and control as he is transported from moment to moment and identity to identity. However, within these experiences, there are moments in which Zits and other characters are able to assert their own free will and effect change. What point is Alexie making about the role of the individual and the relationship between fate and free will? How might this concept connect to and develop the unit’s themes? As you compose your essay, include specific evidence from the novel to support your thoughts.

3. Analyze the significance of memory in Flight. As Zits travels through time, he experiences others’ memories. How do these memories help Zits better understand history? Consider Zits’s own personal and familial history as well as the collective societal history. How do these acquired memories provide Zits with a sort of inheritance and offer ways for him to heal his own trauma? As you compose your essay, include at least three specific details from the novel to support your claims. 

Multiple Choice and Long Answer Questions create ideal opportunities for whole-text review, exams, or summative assessments.

Multiple Choice

1. In which point of view is Zits’s story told?

A) First person

B) Second person

C) Third person limited

D) Third person omniscient

2. What is the tone of Zits’s response to the social worker who asks if he knows how to tie a necktie?

A) Curious and hopeful

B) Sad and dejected

C) Resentful and angry

D) Confused and hesitant

3. Which of the following passages best shows what Zits admires about Junior’s character in Chapter 5?

A) “Elk and Horse hold Junior’s arms. He doesn’t fight back.”

B) “It’s peaceful and defiant at the same time.”

C) “Maybe I could save Junior if I knew.”

D) “Poor Junior barely even reacts.”

4. What detail best supports the conclusion that Hank the FBI agent has participated in killings like Junior’s before?

A) Art’s concern about Zits’s confusion

B) Zits’s willingness to participate in the violence

C) Zits’s vocal opposition to Junior’s execution

D) Elk and Horse’s reaction to Zits vomiting

5. What two characters’ similarities in Chapter 6 prompt Zits to wonder, “How can you tell the difference between the good guys and the bad guys when they say the same things?”

A) Art and Justice

B) Elk and Horse

C) Justice and Officer Dave

D) Hank and Art

6. What best describes Zits’s emotions when he realizes he is on the cusp of the Battle of the Little Bighorn?

A) Confusion

B) Anger

C) Desperation

D) Fear

7. What literary device is used to show the way Zits struggles to make sense of his father’s command that he kill the young white soldier in Chapter 9?

A) Similes and metaphors

B) Rhetorical questions

C) Personification

D) Repeated imagery

8. What example from the plot in Chapter 10 best shows the tension between fate and free will?

A) When Zits-as-Gus decides to follow Small Saint and Bow Boy and try to help them

B) When Zits realizes that Gus has an Irish accent and Zits himself has Irish ancestry

C) When Gus’s memory of the slaughtered white settlers becomes Zits’s memory

D) When Zits tries to steer Gus and the other soldiers away from the Native camp

9. What literary device does the following passage from Chapter 13 contain? “He rocks back and forth. The small plane bounces. Abbad is happy turbulence.”

A) Metaphor

B) Simile

C) Personification

D) Foreshadowing

10. Who does Zits compare Jimmy the pilot to after he finds out Jimmy is having an affair?

A) Officer Dave

B) Justice

C) Zit’s father

D) Custer

11. What best describes how Jimmy feels toward Abbad?

A) Confused

B) Betrayed

C) Angry

D) Dejected

12. What detail from Chapter 15 best shows the racism and prejudice Native Americans face in the present day?

A) The lack of awareness of Zits’s father’s injuries from others on the street

B) The man’s eventual willingness to tell Zits’s father a story in order to show respect

C) Zits’s realization that he has teleported into his own father’s existence

D) Zits’s father’s awareness that the ambulance won’t show up for a homeless Native man

13. Why does Zits’s father leave the hospital while Zits is being born?

A) His past trauma convinces him that he cannot be a father.

B) He does not have any interest in becoming a parent.

C) He is suffering from too many addictions.

D) He decides to seek treatment before participating in parenthood.

14. Which of the following lines from Chapter 20 is the best example of juxtaposition?

A) “Tears are rolling down his big cop face.”

B) “Dave wipes his face. He’s embarrassed by his tears.”

C) “He says each syllable like it was a cussword. Or a prayer.”

D) “It’s cold water now. Ice cold.”

15. What is the name Zits shares with Mary at the end of the novel?

A) James

B) Michael

C) Murray

D) Thomas

Long Answer

Compose a response of 2-3 sentences, incorporating text details to support your response.

1. What is the significance of Zits’s own personal memories as he travels to other times, places, and experiences?

2. Why does Officer Dave tell Zits the story of the two children? How does this story help lead Zits’s story to a conclusion?