54 pages • 1 hour read
Kenneth OppelAirborn
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2004A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 1-3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary: “Ship’s Eyes”
Matt Cruse, a cabin boy on the airship Aurora, watches the night sky for storms or other aerial ships. The Aurora flies above the Pacifica, and Matt is surprised to see a hot air balloon this far from land. He reports the balloon, the Endurance, to Captain Walken, whom Matt likes due to the respectful way Walken addresses him. When the Aurora hails the Endurance but gets no response, Walken attempts a tricky midair rescue.
Matt is relieved from duty by an officer, but despite the late hour, he is too excited by the imminent rescue to go to bed. An officer named Mr. Rideau reluctantly permits Matt to aid in the rescue. The Aurora workers throw grappling hooks at the balloon, which is slowly sinking. Matt spots an unconscious body in the balloon’s basket. Walken proposes that Matt be dangled to retrieve the unconscious balloon pilot. Matt, unafraid and proud to be of service, agrees. Matt does not consider himself brave; being up in the air feels natural to him.
Matt swings himself into the gondola and begins cutting the balloon free, fearing it will drop into the burner and set the gondola aflame. The rigging he has attached to the gondola threatens to break as Matt and the unconscious balloonist are reeled into the Aurora, reaching the ship just in time. Matt remains calm through the ordeal but feels exhausted once safety is assured. He is proud to have performed well in front of men who knew and admired his father. Walken assures Matt that his father would have been proud.
The next afternoon, Doc Halliday reports that the balloon pilot, named Benjamin Molloy, is ill and unlikely to live. Molloy had been attempting a solo circumnavigation of the world, a feat not yet accomplished. Matt visits the unconscious man, wondering about the sense of connection he has with Molloy. Molloy wakes and asks Matt if he too saw “beautiful creatures” floating in the sky. Matt did not, but he says he did to console the ailing man. Molloy opines that “Kate” would have liked the creatures, then realizes Matt is lying and grows angry. Matt leaves and Molloy dies shortly after. Doc Halliday advises Matt not to worry about Molloy’s strange comments, which he says were born of Molloy’s illness. Matt remains preoccupied with these supposed creatures. On his next watch, he keeps an eye out for extraordinary creatures, somewhat disappointed when he does not find any.
Chapter 2 Summary: “Up Ship!”
A year after the events of Chapter 1, Matt sets off with the Aurora after a week’s leave in his home of Lionsgate City, which he spent with his mother and sisters. Despite his happy visit with his family, he is relieved to return to the air, which feels more like home than the ground. When airborne, he feels closer to his deceased father. As the Aurora rises, preparing for a five-day trip to Sydney, Australia, Matt looks at other rising airships, headed to various places around the world.
Matt marvels at how “hydrium” gas keeps the massively heavy Aurora aloft, which impresses him no matter how many times he witnesses it. He forces himself to attend to cabin boy duties, though he is hopeful he will be promoted after this journey, given the rumored departure of an assistant sailmaker.
An ornithopter, a small aircraft with mechanical wings, twice passes dangerously close to the Aurora. Curious, Matt delivers breakfast to the officers in the control car, eager to find out what the ornithopter is up to. The ornithopter pilot reports having two passengers who missed the Aurora’s departure. Matt is surprised when Walken agrees to let them land but pleased when he is sent to attend to the latecomers, as this will let him observe the aerial landing.
Two women disembark from the ornithopter: Miss Kate de Vries, 15 (the same age as Matt), and her chaperone, Miss Marjorie Simpkins. Miss Simpkins rudely orders Matt about. Kate looks around with interest and Matt feels connected to her apparent fascination with air travel. He leads the two women to the stateroom, the finest room on board. It is registered under de Vries, and he notes that Kate must be wealthy. He fights to avoid sharing a smile with her over Miss Simpkins’s fussiness. Matt leaves them in the stateroom, noticing how Kate peers out at the sky as if looking for something.
Chapter 3 Summary: “Kate”
Matt follows a summons to see the captain, clutching the compass his father gave him before he died. It is engraved “From one sailmaker to another” (49). Matt suddenly frets that he is unprepared for questions the captain might ask about his desired promotion. The captain apologetically reports that Matt will not be the next junior sailmaker, though not through any fault of his own. Walken has been forced to take on the son of the Aurora’s owner for the role. Walken laments that politics interfere with the promotion of experienced but impoverished airmen like Matt. He promises that he will transfer him to another ship that needs a sailmaker if Matt wishes. Matt prefers to remain on the Aurora, which he considers his home. Matt leaves, hiding his disappointment and feeling robbed by the owner’s son. He worries his dream of one day captaining the Aurora is slipping away.
Only Kate appears for the ship’s tour, which Matt conducts, distracted by his recent disappointment. Kate is impressed by the Aurora. Matt grows enthusiastic again when Kate appears impressed with the workings of the Aurora, which most passengers disdain. He explains how the gas cells keep the airship aloft and is sorry he must deny Kate’s request to see the crow’s nests, which are only open to the crew. Kate opines that Matt “seem[s] born to this” (60), and he confirms he was born on an airship. Though his familiarity with the young passenger shocks him, at Kate’s prodding, he tells her about his father’s history as an airman and the stories he brought home to Matt.
Kate shares that her grandfather was the main storyteller of her childhood, but that she is excited to have been given this trip as a birthday present from her parents—though she laments the presence of dour Miss Simpkins. They both seem reluctant for the tour to end. Kate asks questions about the Aurora’s usual route to Sydney, then inquires about the incident with the damaged balloon. She reveals that Molloy was her grandfather. Cautious of upsetting her, Matt tells Kate of Molloy’s comments about the creatures, and she tells him she has come aboard the Aurora to try to see these creatures.
Chapters 1-3 Analysis
The opening chapters of Airborn introduce the novel’s concern with the question of identity and destiny, both of which are tied to the idea of the location of Matt’s origin. Location in Airborn is primarily distinguished in two ways: whether one is aloft or aground, and whether contact with the outside world is possible or not. The Aurora is the sole setting in the novel that can move between all four of these locations. “In the air,” in Airborn, is a place from which one can derive one’s identity; Matt is born aboard an airship, making him a native of the air. He feels he is destined to pilot airships, and the novel questions whether this is destiny or self-fulfilling prophecy. Matt’s belief that he is meant to be in the air emerges manifests as both confidence and unusual facility with dangerous airborne maneuvers, such as the rescue of Molloy, which leads the crew to comment that Matt is “lighter than air,” an epithet that becomes central to Matt’s identity. This identification then generates greater confidence, reinforcing his feeling that being in the air is his destiny. Later in the novel, however, Matt will have to face the limitations of this ability.
These early chapters also introduce what will become a central ideological question of the novel: how social Class Divides and classism shape individuals’ experience of the world. In Chapter 3, when Captain Walken informs Matt that he will not be promoted to junior sailmaker because the role has instead been given to Bruce Lunardi, son of the Aurora’s owner, Walken describes the ways classism and nepotism have robbed people like Matt of opportunities:
It’s all changed since I started out. Forty years ago, if you didn’t have money—and my family had none—you began as a cabin boy. I did it, just like you. But then you could rise by dint of hard work and honesty and skill. Now there is the Air Ship Academy—and getting in takes not just skill but money or connections, or both (52).
Walken’s allusion to the the possibility of movement in rank 40 years prior implies that there has been an ossification of social structures since the new technology of airships emerged decades earlier. Though airships had once opened new vistas—literal and figurative—to anyone with the interest and bravery to pursue them, now that structures of power and money have formalized the industry, such opportunities are controlled by and funneled toward the rich. The emergence of the Air Ship Academy, accessible only to the elite, suggests an artificially imposed structure that is designed to reserve careers in air travel for that elite. Schooling, Walken’s framing suggests, is an unnecessary institution designed to disempower the poor. Walken likewise implies that those privileged few who attend the Academy lack the “hard work and honesty and skill” as well as the “character” and “mettle” of those who rise through the ranks from poverty (52). Walken disdains knowledge gained in the “musty classrooms” of the Academy (52). This dichotomy between the educated man and the adventurous one has a long history in adventure stories. Herman Melville wrote in 1851, for example: “A whale-ship was my Yale College and my Harvard” (Melville, Herman. Moby Dick. 1851. Signet Classics Ed., 2013. 128.)
The novel’s depiction of class tensions is more nuanced than Walker’s disdain of the upper classes suggests, however. Though Walken is framed as a reliable source in the novel—Matt admires and respects the man greatly—his viewpoint is challenged by Matt’s growing friendship with Bruce. Despite the nepotism that landed Bruce his position, he proves to be skilled. Later, Matt will join the Academy himself, becoming a part of the classist educational structure that Walken decries. Still, Walken’s passionate defense of Matt and lamentation of the disadvantages that Matt faces due to his humble origins make Walken a mouthpiece for class justice in the novel. He serves as a foil to Kate, who will later fail to fully understand or respect.
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By Kenneth Oppel
