The story “Flight” by  Edwidge Danticat connects the 9/11 terrorist attack to the Haiti Volcano Eruption and describes the aftershock and the inundation of feelings that come along with the events. 

The central motif of the remains of bones, representative of the destruction and chaos that had ensued, is used to highlight insight into the author’s thoughts of how these people coped in their final few moments and the jolt of emotions that would have gone through their consciences before meeting the unfortunate death. The author chooses to narrate this true story through her own perspective, and this is important as it contributes to our understanding of the main senses of emotion that he went through in those precise moments. For example, her description of taking a bus a few days after the horrible event into blue skies highlights the seemingly impossible nature of the event and the irony of the biggest and most famous megacity in the world being stricken and brought to its knees.

The gruesome metaphors of the fire and flames encapsulate how powerful non-fiction stories can be, and how we can perceive them as fictional stories at times, blurring the lines between the two types of stories. Death is almost synonymous with one’s legacy from the author’s point of view and her reflective tone further suggests how death brings people together, especially in the description of how everyone on the bus was “tearing up” as a result of the attack.

The piece is structured quite like an article as opposed to a short story, and this was one of the gut reactions that I caught upon reading it the first time. This is because there is not much plot and the story consists of fragmented recollections of the 9/11 aftermath along with facts and discussion of the topic, before ending off by mentioning how the author is scared to fly on planes to this day. I think this serves to represent how this is something that could happen to anyone, and therefore this story has a driving aspect of realism.