Matt Cruse

Character Analysis

Intrepid Cabin-Boy Extraordinaire

One of Matt's defining characteristics is his love for the Aurora. There's no job too small or task too daunting: if it benefits the Aurora, or the illustrious Captain Walken, sign Matt up. Need someone to jump between floating objects while hovering at 800 feet? Ask Matt. Need someone to clean up after the wealthy patrons trash the lounge? Call Matt. Need someone to risk his life to save the ship and everyone on it? Matt's your man.

A lot of this undying loyalty is a type of misplaced love that originated when his father suddenly and tragically died while working as a sailmaker three years ago. Left facing the responsibility of providing for his mother and two younger sisters, Matt pleaded with Captain Walken to be taken on as a cabin boy in the same ship that decided his father's fate. Ultimately, the Aurora (and Captain Walken as the personification of the ship) become a pseudo-father figure to which Matt pledges his undying loyalty:

I'd never been able to tell my mother how comforting it had been to work aboard Dad's old ship. Everyone knew about my father, and they were all very kind to me, especially Captain Walken. Baz took me under his wing right away—the older brother I never had. I felt like I'd discovered another family aloft. And my father always felt nearby, visiting me often in my dreams. (11.112)

Matt uses this love to his advantage. When there's something interesting going on he always finds a way to be nearby, watching and learning. He knows the ship's anatomy like the back of his own hand—which ends up being pretty darn helpful during the pirate adventures.

To a certain extent though, this obsession with being emotionally and physically attached to the ship is a sign of weakness. Matt is using the Aurora to outrun the pain of the loss of his father, and it isn't until he goes to the Airship Academy that he's forced to reconcile his love for flying with the inadvertent link it had to his inability to grieve:

It had not been easy. When I'd first started at the Academy there'd been many bad, sleepless nights. I missed my bunk on the Aurora, and Baz and Captain Walken and all the crew. I missed being in motion. And I missed my father, more acutely than I ever had before. There'd been plenty of times I'd been so lonely and miserable I'd wanted to quit and return to the Aurora. But then, unexpectedly, one night I'd dreamed of my father, even though I was landlocked. I was flying alongside the Aurora, and he'd come and joined me, and when I woke up that morning, everything was different. As long as I could still 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: on the Aurora, or here in Paris, or back home with Mom and Isabel and Sylvia.

I Believe I Can Fly

A large part of Matt's identity is tied to his belief that somehow, he really can fly. He loves to refer to the fact that he was born in the air (on an airship, of course), and his discomfort on land just supports his idea that he belongs to the sky:

It was not bravery on my part, simply a fact of nature, for I was born in the air, and so it seemed the most natural place in the world to me. I was slim as a sapling and light on my feet. The crew all joked I had seagull bones, hollow in the center to allow for easy flight. […] Because deep in my heart, I felt that if I were ever to fall, the air would support me, hold me aloft, just as surely as it did a bird with spread wings. (1.106)

Obviously Matt doesn't have bird bones—he's a human boy, just like the other guys on the ship. But here Oppel uses a popular literary tool called magical realism. It's a method of writing that incorporates fantastic or mythical elements into otherwise realistic fiction so that something unbelievable seems almost possible. Matt likes to believe that he can fly so hard that it seems like if he was forced to fly, he could. It certainly doesn't help that every night he dreams he is flying alongside his father and the Aurora. Ever have a dream so many times that it feels real? Yeah, that's what's going on here.

Of course, this is yet another response to the tragic death of his father. Everyone has a different way of coping with traumatic death, and Matt's method is to believe that his father lives on in his dreams. Part of the problem, you see, is lack of closure. His father's body was never found, so when young Matt heard that he'd fallen he came up with the alternate scenario that instead of plunging to the ocean he simply opened his arms and took flight.

When Matt is engaged in his final flight with Szpirglas he gets shoved off the ship and begins to fall—just like his father:

It was the most natural thing in the world. I knew it would be like this. […] I would soar clear over the horizontal fin on the starboard side. Then I would fall free of the ship, and it would be just me and the air. If my father could do it, I could do it. I was born in the air. (20.52)

But then comes disappointment, and a major turning point for Matt:

I could not fly. I had crashed. I was not lighter than air after all. I'd fallen, and a great shame seeped through me. I was heavy as stone. All my life I'd told myself I was light and could soar free of things. I was light and could outrun sadness. I could fly away and keep flying forever. But I could never catch up with my father. (20.56)

This marks the beginning of Matt's acceptance that he can't use the Aurora to outrun the pain of his father's death anymore; and this journey continues when he goes to Academy and realizes that he can dream of his father flying even while landlocked. But he knows then that it is just a dream, he can't really fly, and that's okay.