Essay Reading
Doris Lessing: Flight - study guide
Introduction
What happens in Flight?
Themes
Characters
The old man
Alice
Lucy
Steven
Setting
The author's technique
Body language
Dialogue
Language
Symbolism
Studying Flight for English literature
Attitudes
The author
Comparisons
Implied meaning
Readers and reading
Studying Flight for English
Subject and implications
Style, structure and narrative craft
Effects of language
Introduction to prose Fiction
Poetry in the Anthology
Introduction
This guide should help you study Flight. It should be useful to students from all parts of the world, though I have written it specifically to support students in England and Wales preparing for GCSE exams in English and English literature. It may also be helpful to the general reader who is interested in the stories of Doris Lessing.
Flight was published in 1957, in a collection of short stories entitled The Habit of Loving.
The author, Doris Lessing was born in 1919, in Khermanhah in Persia (now Iran). Her parents were British. At six years old, she moved to Zimbabwe (then Southern Rhodesia), where she attended a girls' school. In 1949, she moved to London, where her first novel, The Grass is Singing, was published in 1950.
What happens in Flight?
An old man (unnamed) who keeps pigeons, worries about his granddaughter, Alice. He has seen his other granddaughters leave home, marry and grow up, and he is both possessive of Alice and jealous of Steven, her boyfriend. (He disapproves of Steven's appearance and his father's job.) The old man argues with Alice about her behaviour, and complains to his daughter, Alice's mother (Lucy).
At the start of the story the old man shuts up his favourite pigeon, rather than let it fly. But when Steven, the boyfriend, makes him a present of a new pigeon, he is more able to accept what is going to happen, and he lets his favourite go. The ending of the story is ambiguous (it has more than one possible meaning): Alice has
Introduction
What happens in Flight?
Themes
Characters
The old man
Alice
Lucy
Steven
Setting
The author's technique
Body language
Dialogue
Language
Symbolism
Studying Flight for English literature
Attitudes
The author
Comparisons
Implied meaning
Readers and reading
Studying Flight for English
Subject and implications
Style, structure and narrative craft
Effects of language
Introduction to prose Fiction
Poetry in the Anthology
Introduction
This guide should help you study Flight. It should be useful to students from all parts of the world, though I have written it specifically to support students in England and Wales preparing for GCSE exams in English and English literature. It may also be helpful to the general reader who is interested in the stories of Doris Lessing.
Flight was published in 1957, in a collection of short stories entitled The Habit of Loving.
The author, Doris Lessing was born in 1919, in Khermanhah in Persia (now Iran). Her parents were British. At six years old, she moved to Zimbabwe (then Southern Rhodesia), where she attended a girls' school. In 1949, she moved to London, where her first novel, The Grass is Singing, was published in 1950.
What happens in Flight?
An old man (unnamed) who keeps pigeons, worries about his granddaughter, Alice. He has seen his other granddaughters leave home, marry and grow up, and he is both possessive of Alice and jealous of Steven, her boyfriend. (He disapproves of Steven's appearance and his father's job.) The old man argues with Alice about her behaviour, and complains to his daughter, Alice's mother (Lucy).
At the start of the story the old man shuts up his favourite pigeon, rather than let it fly. But when Steven, the boyfriend, makes him a present of a new pigeon, he is more able to accept what is going to happen, and he lets his favourite go. The ending of the story is ambiguous (it has more than one possible meaning): Alice has