Multiethnic Literatures in the U.S.

Aloft, a novel by Chang-Rae Lee starts up with the main character, Jerry Battle, flying over the Long Island area. The first chapter sets up the book and just talks about Jerry Battle and focuses a little bit on how he started flying and how he acquired his airplane.
The first thing that I notice is that flying for Jerry Battle is an escape from reality. Even when in the first couple of pages he talks about what he sees. He describes a couple of things and it looks almost like chaos on the ground and a complete opposite in the air, peace, comfort, and order in a way. He needs something to get away from all of it, just like everyone else. We all tend to look for something peaceful, something that takes the world chaos and makes it peaceful, it is just what people like to do in their free time, many people do sports, listen to music, and a lot of other things. This separation from the real world makes life easier to go by, at least in my opinion. Jerry Battle in general doesn’t seem to be worried about anything anymore, and for some reason I think that everyone would want to live his life, not worrying about anything. He gets up in the morning and does whatever he wants throughout the day. However, it is almost like a dream, it is almost impossible for a regular person in the middle class society to retire in the late 40, maybe even late 50, and do whatever they want without carrying about the world around them. But Chang-Rae Lee shows that kind of life. However, on the other hand is that Jerry Battle does not seem to appreciate what he has. I think that if someone was striving for the kind of life he has, they would act in a different way.
Also Jerry Battle seems to be like any other person in real life. He might be considered to be in a higher social class because of where he lives, because he is already retired and is only in his late forties, and some other things. He seems to be like any other person in our world in the upper-middle class or maybe even in the upper class of society. He can buy a plane, he has put his kids through the Ivy League school, and he has also been taking care of his dad’s business. Jerry Battle’s wealth could be because of his dad’s successful business, which was passed on to Jerry. It seems that even nowadays a lot of people become rich due to their parent’s wealth which got passed on. There are very few people who actually become wealthy out of nowhere.
I think that Chang-Rae Lee tries to set up the book in the way that the main character is both like us and at the same time different from the ordinary man, however, ordinary might be different for everyone.