Night flight

For this review, I went and re-read “Night flight” by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, who is most famous for his novella “The Little Prince”. I read “Night flight” for the first time when I was 17 years and in my memory, it was at least 150 pages long. It actually is only 58! It is not an accident that my memory tricked me because this little novel has tremendous substance. It is like “Notes from underground” or “Of mice and men” the small length might fool you in thinking they are an easy read, but in reality, these are concentrated pieces of art.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry was a pioneer aviator in the early 20^th century. Night flight depicts the journeys of postal planes as they fly above South America during the night. It is hard to imagine the great risk behind such flights, since radio connections were very basic, they had limited fuel supplies and were highly dependent on the whims of the weather. Furthermore, orientation during the night proved very difficult, since the pilot had limited tools on his dashboard and relied heavily on his own vision.

The novel is all about emotion and character. Exupéry does an amazing job of quickly introducing complex characters and explaining to the reader what they are going through. The danger and beauty of flying by night is present throughout the book as well as the responsibility and duty of not only the pilots but of the whole organization. This is based on Exupéry own firsthand experience working for the “Aeroposta Argentina airline”, in Buenos Aires.

The setting is situated mostly in the airlines office, in the pilots’ cabin as they are flying in the night and for just a couple of pages in the home of one of the pilots. There is a constant contrast between the world of the pilot alone in the night sky and that of the workers in the office. These two worlds are strongly interconnected yet separated by a great gap.

The most interesting character is by far that of Rivière, the director of the airline. In one chapter, he states that the pilots are far more admiral men then him and the inspectors, yet they must mold them and be strict and harsh employers. A policy of Rivière is to fine the pilots if they are delayed because of bad weather. They do not have control over the weather, yet if it were not for these fines the pilots would start being grateful for bad weather that delays the take off.     

Rivière is also the one who promotes the notoriously dangerous night flights, where the pilots’ lives are at even greater risk just for the sake of delivering mail and the occasional passenger faster. But make no mistake Rivière is not an antagonist, Exupéry depicts him as an admirable character. One who is solely devoted to his work and cause, does not have a family and does not enjoy the common pleasures of life.

Untimely it is up to the reader to decide whether the character of Rivière is cold and heartless or a compassionate person, whether he is a workaholic or a man devoted to his cause, whether he is a man who has wasted his life or one who has lived it fully. Go read the book for yourself and see if it is easy to make these decisions.

The pilots are also depicted in a rather interesting way. In fact, they are heroes who constantly tackle the unknown that is the night sky. Yet Exupéry does not portray them romantically. They are afraid of the solitude, uncertainty and darkness of the night, they feel fatigue, anger and detachment from the world.

I love one particular part of the novel when a pilot caught amidst a storm sees a crack in the clouds where he can see stars. Even though this is a bad move, he ascends towards the stars, striving in the direction of the light, any light no matter how weak or distant. Then the plane reaches the sky above the storm clouds, where:

“He was astonished: the light was so strong that it blinded him. For a few moments, he had to close his eyes. He would have never thought that the night sky might dazzle someone with its radiance. But the full moon and all the constellations made the tops of the storm clouds look like waves of light.”

The book tackles the subjects of heroism, facing the unknown, the duties in life against mist out joys and pleasure, but mostly weather human lives are worth sacrificing for the “greater cause”. The beauty of the book is that it provides few if not any answers to the questions it only states the questions. I guess Exupéry gives his own opinion to the last question at the end of the novel, but I dare not spoil it for you.

Who should read “Night flight”?

Obviously, this meager review falls far short of the real thing so go and read “Night flight”. If you love classical literature of the 20^th century then the works of Exupéry in general are a must. Also if you work in a creative field where you develop characters you should definitely study “Night flight” in detail. I suggest this because Exupéry’s complex characters are introduced and developed with just a limited amount of word.

Finally, people of power, directors and managers should definitely read this book and carefully and wholeheartedly put themselves in the position of Rivière. The question of how to lead and manage people that are braver and more admirable then yourself is a profound one. This is precisely what the leader of “Aeroposta Argentina airline” Rivière asks himself throughout the book.