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Interpretation
Literaturwissenschaft

Kuban State University - Krasnodar

2019

Christian I. ©
3.10

0.04 Mb
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ID# 80810







His First Flight

Liam O’ Flaherty (1896-1984) was an Irish novelist and a short-story writer whose work combine brutal naturalism, psychological analysis, poetry, and biting satire with an abiding respect for the courage and persistence of Irish people. He was considered to be a leading figure of the Irish Renaissance.

He also was a participant of the world war I. O’Flaherty was a keen observer of sea life and he believed that man has a lot to learn from nature. He has given a humane touch to the seagull’s plight so that the reader is reminded of the nervousness he too might experience before doing something new.

His First Flight” is about a young seagull who looks down desperately at the sea beneath his ledge. He is hungry. His parents along with his brothers and sister have flown away. He tries to fly but he becomes afraid even though his parents tried to help him. Suddenly, he sees his mother approaching him with food.

But she halted, keeping the fish just out of his reach. Maddened by hunger, he dived at the fish. A monstrous terror seized him, but the next moment he realized that he was flying.

In the setting of the story we meet the seagull in his nest, he is alone and hungry. Abandoned by his family and being afraid to make his first flight, the bird stays on the ledge. The atmosphere of the story is rather fearsome, desperate, one can feel the bird’s regret on his family, his hunger (that is, by the way, a great motivation to move).

HFF” is narrated from the 3d point of view, limited omniscience. Such kind of narration presupposes an objective description, so the author wants us to see the actual matter of the story. The compositional form of “HFF” is narration interlaced with descriptive passages.

Thus, the main principle of text organisation is incomplete representation.

The protagonist of the story – the bird in the nest – is supposed to be a flat character pretending to be round as he doesn’t surprise the reader but he changes throughout the story (he now knows how to fly). In the text there presented an inner struggle of the protagonist between fear to fly and desire to eat.

The story is permeated with symbols, such as the sea (that symbolizes freedom), the air (danger), the cliffs (obstacles, solidity). To render the bird’s feelings the author uses epithets (monstrous terror), contextual hyperbole (maddened by hunger; devour it [the fish]).

A great attention is paid to the image of the cliff: besides the symbolical side of it the author resolves to personification (cliff laughing at his cowardice) and metaphor (cliff face). Polysyndenton helps to show the smoothness of the first flight (and commenced himself to dive and soar), detachment is used to render the speed (He could hear nothing.

The main idea of the text is that the only thing we should fear is the fear itself (F.D. Roosevelt)

This story is an allegory, its objective to teach some kind of a
moral
lesson.
As the message for us, L.O’Flaherty highlights the importance of independence, self-belief and confidence, and the need for motivation to attain goals. Necessity is always the mother of invention, but it sometimes needs an initial spark from outside.

The title is ironical. The ability to fly for birds is inborn, so it shouldn’t be a big deal to be afraid of something that is natural. The author uses verbal irony by the last line of the text, “He had made his first flight.”


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