“Flight” first appeared in Steinbeck’s short story collection The Long Valley in 1938, and describes the maturation process of a young Mexican-American boy named Pepe Torres. Although he is nineteen years old when the story opens, Pepe is relatively immature for his age. Unfortunately, despite the fact that Pepe spends most of his time playing with his dead father’s switchblade and entertaining his younger siblings Emilio and Rosy, Mama Torres, who has been a widow for ten years, still relies on him to fulfill the role of dependable masculine figure for the whole family. Nevertheless, as she compares him to a wide variety of animals including a lazy cow, a lazy coyote and a foolish chicken, Steinbeck’s text also …
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Citation: Meyer, Michael J.. "“Flight”". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 08 November 2008 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=25291, accessed 25 November 2024.]
