The folklore of blacks can fly comes from slavery era. In the pursuit of freedom, the folklore gradually becomes sustenance. Since slaves are peddled to America, liberty became a luxury, let alone spiritual, political, economic independence. Therefore, black people hope they could fly back to their own homeland.

There are different versions of flying legends. One of them is that a black people from the African continent are forced to be slaves in South Carolina. One black man is son of a doctor. “He has supernatural power which learns from his ancestors, he can’t bear his compatriots are abused by a white person. Therefore, he decided to teach them the flying spell and helping them go home” (Ba Yang, 2010:80).

And another story about flying is that a woman working in the fields. She suddenly stretches her arms and speaks the spell in a low voice and then she flies back to Africa. All these stories reflect the desire of black people, who suffer pain in brutal slavery, longing for freedom and bright. 来.自/吹冰论|文-网www.chuibin.com/

People in this novel accept human flight as a natural. For example, in page three of the book, “Wearing blue silk wings and promising to fly off the hospital roof, the formerly nondescript insurance agent draws a crowd of forty or fifty mostly African-American town residents” (Lei Fang, 2008:3). People in that town are not taken Robert Smith’s behavior as a suicide. On the contrary, some people even incite him to do that. The residents of that town believe that the flight actually occurred.   

When Milkman finds that he can’t fly, he feels disappointed and even loses interests in everything. Therefore, Milkman starts a new journey. In his journey, he finds his grandfather Solomon who has the ability to fly leaves his wife and children. Everyone costs price to flying including Milkman.