This comprehensive set of notes delves deeply into The Theory of Flight by Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu, offering detailed insights into the novel's key themes, symbols, and character which are all relevant for students preparing to write literary essays for paper 2. All of my notes have been extracted fr...
Blends magical elements with everyday life seamlessly, in literature. It is treated as normal
and not extraordinary like traditional fantasy. Ndlovu uses magical realism as a tool to
capture life’s limitless potential through grounding the unreal in the real.
FLIGHT (self belief):
The novel is centred around one's ability to gain ‘flight’. Although it is a theory with no
physical proof, it is a realisation of a certain knowledge. One that seems to liberate the
hearts and minds of the characters within the novel. ‘Flight’ is through a choice to believe in
the knowledge of flight, characters are able to see the beauty in the ugly.
● When Golide experiences the elephants crossing the Zambezi river, he gains the
“kind of knowledge that finally quiets you. It is the kind of knowledge that allows you
to fly.”
● He comes to understand what happens when you possess a true belief in yourself,
you are capable of anything.
● Therefore, if people saw him build a “giant pair of silver wings”, then they too would
believe that they could ‘fly’.
, The Sunflowers (liberation):
The sunflowers’ death and rebirth allow Genie and Marcus to acquire a certain
philosophical knowledge, “ the possibility of the seemingly possible”, that has the ability to
liberate our minds and allow us to ‘fly’. The season cycles.
● People may live and die, and a country may be named and renamed but a land’s
history is continuous across those changes.
● AKA Life does not end with us - it will continue moving forward
● Representing Genie's internal transformation as she has a deep connection with the
sunflowers, she “strongly suspected that she had once upon a time been a
sunflower.” - Learning to nourish her own soul and find the strength to redefine her
own destiny
● Genie chooses to die in the sunflower fields, with her toes buried in the red soil.
They become aware of their place in the world early on within the novel - an awareness of
the knowledge that after every “death there is another beginning”.
Golden Egg (liberation):
Genie’s birth is one of extraordinary, ethereal in a sense.
● Golide’s vision of Elizabeth hatching their daughter, Genie, from a “golden egg”
implies that Golide has birthed a new era of possibilities for everyone in the
community, from shooting down the plane.
● Genie, herself represents the idea of a liberation of one’s mind and thinking, with
her flying away at the end of the novel on her own pair of “silver wings”.
Genie’s name (Imogen Zula Nyoni)
- In a literal sense, her name only adds to the magical element that is her life
- ‘Genie’ conveys her as a form of magical spirit, representing her as ephemeral
[lasting for only a short time; transitory; short-lived] - unable to be pinned down.
These are qualities which come as a result of the liberation in her mind and the gaining of
the knowledge that allowed her to finally fly.
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