54 pages • 1 hour read
Airborn
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Symbols & Motifs
The Aurora
Throughout Airborn, Matt assigns meaning to the Aurora, which he sees as a home, a friend, and an avenue for escape. Though his tendency to use feminine pronouns for the ship adheres to nautical conventions, the way he thinks about the airship mirrors personification. When the Aurora is damaged, Matt wants to “heal” her; when she sags from lack of hydrium, Matt too feels his spirits fall. At various points in the text, Matt sees the Aurora as providing a connection to his late father and constituting a means of escape from his feelings. He projects his future onto the ship, as well, as his dream is to one day be her captain. Given these many, ever-shifting resonances of the Aurora in the novel, the ship emerges not as a symbol of any one specific thing, but rather as a reflection of Matt’s present-moment thoughts, desires, or fears. His decision to leave the Aurora at the end of the novel to pursue education at the Air Academy thus represents an emotional maturity that lets him chart his own way without relying on the ship’s symbolism to decode his wants for him.
Cloud Cats
As Matt and Kate learn more about the “beautiful creatures” that Molloy documents before he dies, the cloud cats take on various significances. For Matt, they begin as a source of wonder; even if he does not fully heed Molloy’s dying words, he looks to the skies for undiscovered creatures, as the skies represent, to Matt, endless possibility. For Kate, meanwhile, the rumors of the creatures provide a way to feel close to her beloved grandfather after death, even as she seeks to satisfy her own professional and intellectual goals by chasing them.
Once Kate and Matt discover the living cloud cat, however, they discover that, as a living creature, the cloud cat is both more open to serving as a symbol and resistant to classification according to human thoughts and feelings. Matt marvels at the majesty of the cloud cat as Kate sentimentalizes it. They personify the creature, assigning it curiosity and viciousness. Repeatedly, however, the cat behaves contrary to the characters’ assumptions. When they believe the cat is susceptible to capture on camera, it suddenly attacks, showing its danger. When they believe it to be an enemy, a danger in the final standoff against the pirates, it emerges as a deus ex machina, destroying the duo’s enemies just as all seems lost. Thus, the cloud cat ultimately represents the eternal possibility of new discovery.
Matt’s Compass
Though Matt’s long service on the Aurora has left him able to tell cardinal directions without consulting any instrument, he regularly carries his father’s compass. Though he keeps the item primarily as a reminder of his father, it takes on the greatest resonance in the novel when he gives it to Kate. He does this twice, even though she fails to return it both times; the first time, they merely get distracted in the hectic return to the ship and Miss Simpkins’s frantic claims that Matt is corrupting Kate. She returns the compass the next day. The second time, however, Kate keeps the compass for the full six months that she and Matt are separated after the events on the Aurora. Though she claims she intended to return it earlier, he is not unhappy she has had it for so long; on the contrary, he sees it as proof that they still have a connection, even when they are far apart and not in communication with one another. The compass thus emerges as something that charts courses not between locations but between people, especially people that one worries may be lost.
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By Kenneth Oppel
