The Flying Bus as a Ship of Fools Image

The Flying Bus

Make a Connection

This quote from Luis Rafael Sanchez’s “The Flying Bus” sums up well the chaotic discordance that emanates from Puerto Rican literature: “The flying bus fizzles, oscillates between a tumultuous atmosphere and the gravity of a chimera, between the aggressiveness of a will to succeed and an atavic burden of self-pity or charity, Ay bendito” (19). The flying bus (the plane) represents the Latin American people, as they are pulled between two worlds—one Western and one uncertain because of the mixed nature of its past. This tug of war is seen in stories like “Guanina” and in the articles on race like “Black and Latino” by Roberto Santiago. There is a sense in all these stories of the same things bubbling up again and again: the theme of being more than one thing at one time and a conflict seemingly breaking out on all sides as a result.

The conflict and tension on the flying bus is like that conflict and tension in “Guanina” and in the context of the situation that inspired Santiago to write “Black and Latino”—there is just too much going on in the head-space (and in the air space in the “Flying Bus”) for reason, logic, and love to prevail in any measure. Violent and arrogant passions subdue loving passions in “Guanina,” and the same arrogant and antagonistic passions prompt Santiago to assert himself in an effort to restore reality for those who seem to miss it in “Black and Latino.” The Flying Bus brings these impulses together in a transport like the proverbial ship of fools—only here it is a flying machine that is taking Puerto Ricans from NYC to the island and back again, as though these people were spinning tops that can never come to rest. There is no rest for anyone in this literature because of the tension, the constant heaving to and fro, the passion, the misunderstanding, and the lack of centeredness.