Happiness... Where Are You?

“Why do you need to fly so much?” she asked.

“If I don’t, it’ll catch up with me.” The words just came out.

“What will?”

I took my hands from my face, panting. I stared out at the storm.

“Unhappiness.” (269)

Everyone knows what unhappiness looks like. It is the bill that comes in the mail the same day you lose your job. It is the tension that has wiggled its way into your marriage and transforms itself into divorce. It is the neverending emotional imbalance that threatens your very sanity. It’s the illusion that stillness is the enemy and movement our companion. So we keep moving. We all run from unhappiness, and yet, there is no safe hiding place. But… I wonder, where are we running to? What happens if we stop running? Where IS happiness?

Ever since his father’s tragic fall from a zeppelin in the sky, Matt Cruse, one of the main characters in Airborn by Kenneth Oppel, has been running away (or rather, flying away) – from his family, from his fears, and from himself. The death of his father shakes his security, and he worries that he may never be happy again. Born in the sky, however, Matt finds comfort amidst the clouds and birds upon the airship Aurora, and for the last three years, the ship has served as his home. It’s the harbor that shelters him from the storms of life. When a real storm threatens to damage the Aurora, which is already beached on an island, Matt spills the contents of his heart to Kate: “’I need the ship,’ I said. ‘If it’s wrecked, nothing’s good anymore. I can’t stand still. I’ve got to keep flying’” (268). Upon land, Matt feels suffocated and insecure. He doesn’t dream of his father, like he does in the air. So, he must keep flying. There is no other choice. Unhappiness might catch up with him.

While exploring ideas about happiness and sense of self, Airborn also contains qualities that ring true to the fantasy genre. Matt Cruse and Kate de Vries are characters that battle pirates and searches for mystical creatures on an uncharted desert island. They remain believable characters whether they are eating dinner, running along the hallways of an airship, or wrapping up the bones of a mysterious winged animal in ladies undergarments. Rich details and a map of the Aurora contribute to the visual images created for the reader. The story opens up as Matt is in the crow’s nest, observing a “sky pulsed with stars” (1) and the “distant flicker of a freighter” (2). Beautiful imagery takes the reader into the sky alongside the Aurora. At times, however, the level of detail regarding the ship appears to go beyond the scope necessary for the reader to understand the setting. I found myself often lost, distracted, and eager to move beyond the aerial jargon – mooring mast, ballast board, and keel catwalk – to the story.

After all of the pirates have been slain or thrown overboard and the cloud cats have been photographed and admired, what remains is the question about happiness. Where is it? Unexpectedly Matt stumbles upon a sense of well-being within the loneliness and misery he experiences when first at the Academy. He dreams of his father: “As long as I could dream about him, I knew everything would be all right. I didn’t need to be aloft to find happiness. It could find me wherever I was” (495-496). He learns that when we stop running from UNhappiness, happiness has a chance to catch up. The game of hide and seek is over. Happiness wins.