As Alexie himself recalls, this was truly the character -- or perhaps the concept, and the idea -- that truly germinated into the full novel. The author heard an interview with the flight instructor of one of the men responsible for the September 11th terrorist attacks, and the sense of personal betrayal that this real-life flight instructor felt was made palpable for Zits just as it was made perfectly clear and intriguing to Alexie (NPR 2007). Zits learns that no act of violence is complete in and of itself, and that it does not only make large statements, but instead that some of its most important and lasting effects are deeply personal and often unpredictable. Violence is inherently a lack of control, and so one cannot control its effects nor limit them simply to the people that the violence directly affects.

The last personality that Zits occupies is that of...
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