Flights

As the main narrator and author of the novel’s fictional vignettes, the narrator of Flights is characterized by deep self-knowledge, love of movement, and the desire to preserve the humans she observes during her travels through writing. She was born in Poland and briefly studied as a psychologist but found personality profiling too static for her. She believes in movement and describes herself as “personality unstable, or not entirely reliable” (8). The narrator moves between jobs and countries without becoming attached to one place or set of people.

Her curiosity compels her first to travel and then to begin writing about the strangers, ideas, and settings she encounters. She is a dynamic character whose identity constantly interacts with those around her in ways that fuel her writing; many of her fictional vignettes explore some aspect of her own identity that she has just revealed. Though generally tolerant of and empathetic towards those she meets, the narrator is judgmental about the ways that people travel, freely using the word “coward” to describe people who travel only on vacation or those who travel by train.

The narrator strives to be an anonymous observer: “I never have to be in any particular place at any particular time.