How do you feel about this prospect? Is it scary, or exciting or both? The characters in the story This should make it a very suitable story for young people preparing for exams: Alice’s situation will be one that you face now or will face soon. Sometimes this kind of story is described in the phrase “rites of passage” – which fits narratives about growing up, moving on and life-changes. They can be alarming, but they are natural and almost inevitable. But is this all? Or does this outward or surface narrative lead into another? Leaving home and becoming independent are things which most people face sooner or later. Is this a story about an old man who receives a present from his granddaughter’s boyfriend? In one way, of course it is. And we do not know if they are tears of joy or sadness or some other feelings. But we do not know if they are for him, for Steven, for herself or for some other cause. The ending of the story is ambiguous (it has more than one possible meaning): Alice has tears on her face, as she stares at her grandfather.
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. At the start of the story the old man shuts up his favourite pigeon, rather than let it fly. (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). 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. What happens in Flight?Īn old man (unnamed) who keeps pigeons, worries about his granddaughter, Alice. In 1949, she moved to London, where her first novel, The Grass is Singing, was published in 1950. At six years old, she moved to Zimbabwe (then Southern Rhodesia), where she attended a girls’ school. The author, Doris Lessing was born in 1919, in Khermanhah in Persia (now Iran).
Flight was published in 1957, in a collection of short stories entitled The Habit of Loving. It may also be helpful to the general reader who is interested in the stories of Doris Lessing. 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.
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