Departure Literary Elements

Fantasy

The action takes place in the present and also in the year 2147 in London.

The novel has to narrators, Harper and Nick who present the events from a subjective point of view.

Tragic, frightful, dramatic

The protagonist is Nick and the antagonist is Nicholas, his future self.

The major conflict is between Nick and his future self, Nicholas. The conflict is a result of Nicholas’s desire to bring Harper into his time without caring how many people will have to die in the process. While Nick also cares about Harper, he tries to make sure that the others passenger who were on the plane will be able to enjoy life as well.

The story reaches its climax when Harper and Nicholas die.

In the beginning of the novel, Harper describes the first class section of the plane as being another world that travels through time. Her statement foreshadows the fact that she and the other survivors will eventually end in the future after the strange plane crash.

Soon after the plane crashed, some survivors began to think about the possibility that they were somehow transported into the future. For some however, this idea seems impossible and they vocalize their opinion and one of the passengers even tells the others that it is impossible that something like that could happen. His statement proves to be an understatement and the idea that some things are impossible proves to be untrue.

The author includes some allusions to his own life in the novel. Just like Harper, the author had a steady job before beginning to write fiction. At one point, he was put in the position of deciding whether he wants to risk his steady job for something that may or may not work.

The image of the crashed plane is the predominant imagery in the book. Apart from having a great impact on the main characters, the image is also used on the cover of the novel, thus highlighting its importance.

Nick’s relationship with his future self is a paradox because in the beginning, Nick believes that he wants to become what Nicholas has but then he realizes that Nicholas represents everything Nick stands against.

The novel presents a clear parallel between Nick and Nicholas. The parallel has the purpose of showing how drastically a person can change and how certain events can affect a person and change completely who they used to be.

In the novel, the term Titan is used as a metonomy and it refers to a group of people who changed the world through their inventions and actions. The term first appears in the classic Greek mythology and just like the original Titans, the Titans from the novel Departure were overthrown in the end.

This joyous land that pops into and out of existence like an alternative universe has its own strange customs and rituals.