Flights of FancyChapter 15

Key Points:

● Icarus and Daedalus

● Flying was one of the temptations of Christ

● Symbolically: escape, freedom, the flight of the imagination, spirituality,

return home, love

● When flight is interrupted, it normally is a bad thing

● Most of the time it is not literal flying, but may use images of flight such

as birds.

Quote #1“It’s really pretty straightforward: flight is freedom.”

Quote #2“What about characters who don’t quite fly or whose flights are interrupted?

Since Icarus, we’ve had stories of those whose flights end prematurely. In

general, this is a bad thing, given what is the opposite of flying. On the other

hand, not all crashes end disastrously.”

Quote #3“These flights of fancy allow us, as readers, to take off, to let our imaginations

take flight. We can sail off with characters, freed of the limitations of our tuition

payments and mortgage rates; we can soar into interpretation and speculation.”

Examples:● Peter Pan● E.T.● The myth

Daedalus and Icarus