The Wright Brothers Literary Elements

Biographical novel

The action takes place starting at the end of the 19th century and then up until the middle of the 20th century. The action also takes place in America, in various states and cities.

The story is narrated from a third person objective point of view. At times, the narrator includes letters written by the brothers or by other family members or close friends and those letters are written from a first person subjective perspective.

The tone used is detached and neutral.

The protagonists are the two Wright brothers but there are no antagonists in the real sense of the word.

The major conflict was between the two Wright brothers who wanted to come up with a flying device and the skeptics who could not believe that a flying device would have any practical purpose.

The story reaches its climax when the brothers are successful in building a flying apparatus in December 1903.

When the author talks about Ohio and mentions it as being the birthplace of many great thinkers, he foreshadows the way in which the Wright Brothers will rise to fame and will become known all over the world for their invention.

When Admiral George Melville and Simon Newcomb claimed flying would have no real purpose was an understatement as it was later revealed how useful it was and how much humans benefited from it.

It is alluded that the head of the Smithsonian Institute wanted to recruit the two Wright brothers to help him build a flying machine but the allusion remains unconfirmed.

In the first chapter of the second part, the narrator presents another experiment carried by the head of the Smithsonian institute. He funded a flying machine which had a motor but after flying only 1000 feet, it crashed into the river. The next day, the newspapers mocked the experiment, calling the airship a submarine. The image of the headlines makes the reader understand just how ruthless the media was and how quick they were to judge someone who has failed.

One of the paradoxes in the book is how the brothers succeeded in building a successful flying machine without depending on funds from the outside. In comparison with many people who had their experiments funded, the brothers insisted they pay for everything themselves. Surprisingly, despite this, the brothers succeeded in building a successful flying machine while the rest failed to do so.

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The term glider is used in a general way to make reference to any type of device built for flying. The term would later be replaced by various other more specialized terms and words.

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