Sanchez 1 Neil Sanchez

Newman

English 101: Rhetoric

29 October 2013 Fear can be an irrational and omniscient presence that resides underneath the rationale in a persons day. The emotion of fear can feel unnerving and inhuman to those who experience it yet, every being experiences it makes it not only a human emotion, but a universal emotion that is felt and understood by all .In Sherman Alexies Flight Patterns it is stated that the main character William had slept poorlyhe had always slept poorly although this statement may seem like a small bump in the events that occur in the story, it shows the effects of Williams irrational fear of flying and leaving his family behind undermine his way to the airport. This irrational fear of leaving his family behind to fly in a plane that would possibly lead to his death could be Williams own growing anxiety as a response to the September 11th terror attacks. Many people feared this after the attack on the World Trade Center, most if not all airports increased their security measures to ensure and prevent any type of attack on their airliners. William rebuffs this type of fear in himself stating that hes more afraid of flying than he is of terrorists and claims that hijacking is no longer a useful weapon (52), for any type of terrorists to hide up their sleeve .But still, Williams fear of little brown guys who reeked of fundamentalism (52), persists causing him to scan for these brown guys(52), within the airport and in his flight; him dreaming up scenarios of what he and his fellow passengers would do if such an occasion ever arose is another

Sanchez 2 byproduct of his anxiety. This fear is most almost impossible to not tie to the attacks of September 11th and also causes a ripple effect to his unconscious by reinforcing his fears. One of the more justifiable fears that William conveys in the short story is his fear for his familys safety while he is gone. He explicitly states that while traveling his nightmares concerned strangers breaking into the house (53), and usually would violently and sexually assault both his wife and daughter. And as his business excursions would begin to increase in length the anxiety would build, causing his fear to begin to escalate and would become more violent and end with him saving his family while mutilating the rapists and eating them (54), as his wife and child showered him with victory fanfare. Although, his fear of strangers assaulting his household can be viewed as a rational fear due to Williams view of himself as the breadwinner and protector of his family have to leave them to do without him for an uncertain period of time. Yet it could stem from his fear of strange men randomly targeting his plane and trying to use it as a weapon to take lives and spread fear. The thought of being thousands of miles in the air, packed into tight corridors with several hundred people and no help in sight if an accident occurs, theres not much of a surprise that the fear of flying is a common phenomenon. Williams own fear of flying is brought up multiple times and is a problem for him while he rides in the taxi to the airport; although this anxiety could be accredited to Fekadu having a lengthily conversation which disrupted his ritual to meditate in the taxi on the way to the airport and to listen to a tape hed made of rock stars who died in plane crashes (55), this would go against the idea that his fear of flying was caused by the incident at the World Trade Center.

Sanchez 3 The feelings that course through ones body may be a reaction to something that has affected the person regardless if it was direct or indirect. Yet fear can be an untamed and free-running emotion that can be triggered by a multitude of reasons whether that be a conversation on the way to the airport, leaving behind the people someone loves behind for extended periods of time, or a biased opinion on a person because of a stereotype about their ethnicity. Williams fear was most likely stemmed from the terror attacks on September 11th at the world trade center, yet that wasnt what caused Williams anxiety while driving to the airport. Sherman Alexie does a great job of creating a multi-faceted character whose fear and anxiety is caused by a multitude of variables, the most common one deriving from terrorists commandeering his plane and taking him down with them. Although it may have not been Alexies intention Flight Patterns does a great job of exploring the fears and doubt that a person can experience in their normal routine.

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Works Sited Alexie, Sherman. "Flight Patterns." 2003. The Norton Introduction to Literature. Ed. Alison Booth, J. Paul Hunter, and Kelly J. Mays. 9th ed. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2005. 49-61. Print. Tyson, Lois. Critical Theory Today: A User-Friendly Guide. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1999. Print.