Analysis of Champagne Flight

Analysis of Champagne flight

Setting;

The time setting is not mentioned in the story. However, as the story was published in 1982, we can assume that Jill Norris probably wanted the text to be read as contemporary to the time of publishing. Still, the events depicted in the text might as well take place nowadays. The time setting also indicates that the events span over the course of a few hours, from the time the girl had boarded the plane to the moment when she reached her stop-over in Chicago (a city famous for its nightlife). Before the plane episode, the girl has spent a few weeks with her neighbors.

The physical setting is mainly the airplane, where the young girl meets Serena Sinclair. Secondary physical settings are the house of the Widness family and the room in which Serena is treated by a nurse.  

The young girl is probably in middle class, because her father is in the military and because of the clothes she wears. Her father pays for her plane tickets which are expensive.

The social setting is probably the most important one in the story. For one, the young girl’s appearance, with her hair combed back, reminds readers of the 1980s, when hairstyle was a big deal for teenagers who looked upon celebrities and wanted to imitate them. Serena’s looks and her obsession of being “short of a face-lift and body surgery” indicates that the society back then was more concerned with looks rather than intellect. In a shallow society such as that in which Serena works, the way in which one looks is very important. Serena has probably lost some of her advantages because younger girls have taken her place. Now, she is happy that she can do her job “where the lights are low”

2: Analyze the characters (the narrator and Serena)

The young girl

The young girl in the story is also the protagonist and narrator.

Outer characterization

The story reveals that she is “sixteen and trying to be older”.

She is quite young, but she dates several boys during the weeks in which she lives with her neighbors. However, there is no sign that she is in a relationship.

Her looks show that she looks more grown-up than she is:

Actually, I did think I looked grown-up. I was wearing my first real suit – a grey, pleated skirt and a boxy jacket. My hair was brushed back from my face, because a friend had told me it made me look older. Oh yes, I felt definitely grown-up! 

Inner characterization,

Her inner characterization reveals her conflicting state of mind. On the one hand, the girl wants to look older than her age. For this, she pays a lot of attention to the way in which she dresses or wears her hair. On the other hand, her thinking reveals that she is still a child, unprepared for maturity: “Suddenly I felt very young. I wanted to order a soft drink, but that would have pegged me as a teenager and I wasn’t quite ready to lose the feeling I had of being grown-up.”

To prove herself that she is mature enough, she accepts drinking red wine with her lunch, although she is not used to alcohol. She doubts when Serena Sinclair offers her champagne: “I don’t know if I should” Still, she wants to look older, and she finally accepts joining the woman and drinking with her. The girl reveals that she is proud and somehow ashamed that she is so young, so she lies about her trip: “… and asked why I was going to Washington. Then… to make myself sound grown up I lied. “I have a job there.”

The girl is quite innocent, as she does not suspect that her companion mixes alcohol and medicine: “She also rummaged in an enormous cream-coloured bag and found something which she popped into her mouth. (…) I thought maybe she was hungry.”

Her innocence also emerges when the girl cannot immediately understand what Serena’s job is. The concept of “show business” does not make her think of striptease, but of singers: “”Oh, you’re a singer, I said.” She didn’t seem to hear.”

Moreover, she does not even realize that Serena is offering her a stripper job: “Say… I could even get you a job… you’d be real good. They like them young.”

In the end, her concept of maturity is shattered by seeing Serena in an awful state. The woman has mixed pills with alcohol and has created an unpleasant situation both for her and the flight attendants. When the woman reveals that she is a stripper, the young girl becomes “glad to get back to being sixteen”. She is a typical teenager, worrying about her reputation and looks, which makes her a stereotype and also quite cliche. She does develop throughout the story, she changes her view on the adult life and at the end of the story she feels lucky to be young and still a child.

Serena Sinclair

At first, Serena is described directly by the narrator – the young girl: “… I saw that a woman in the seat opposite was also smiling… at me. She looked quite old, I thought – maybe even forty! Her hair had that brassy gold tone to it that had plainly come out of a bottle.”

Outer characterization

The girl does not reveal her opinion of Serena Sinclair; we do not know whether the girl considers her beautiful or not. We know about her that she had been married three times, but that only the first marriage really mattered. Her husband was killed “in that fancy car of his” suggesting that Serena was left a widow in a dramatic manner.

Inner characterization

Serena’s inner characterization reveals that she is a troubled woman. On the one hand, she is depicted while heavily drinking champagne in the middle of the day. The woman does not realize that the young girl pretends to be older, so she offers her champagne. Her gesture of approaching the girl reveals that Serena is alone and in search of a friend, of someone to listen and understand her.

She also reveals that her name is not her real one: “I had to change my name. The real one was just awful… but Serena Sinclair does have a nice ring to it… like a Hollywood star… I could have been a star once, you know.”

The above fragment indicates that her past is a source of her feelings of regret. The fact that she is in “show business” makes readers immediately think of strippers, but she does not openly reveal her job to the young girl. This might be because of a feeling of shame or because the woman still has a grain of optimism left. As she