| Airframe Essay, Research Paper
Airframe, a novel by Michael Crichton was a fairly good book thatbecame very exciting towards the end. It is about the aviation industry and afictional company named Norton Aircraft that manufactures planes. There isonly one main character and the plot of the novel is about a secret plan todestroy the president of Norton. The book gets off to a slow start, but rapidlybuilds up pace in the last hundred pages. The main character of the novel is Casey Singleton. She is a divorcedmother in her mid-forties. She is a vice president of the Quality AssuranceIncident Review Team. Whenever anything goes wrong with a plane that wasmade by Norton, the Incident Review Team finds out what the problem wasand fixes it. The whole book is based on her and her actions. If there had to betwo more supporting characters, one would be John Marder. He is the chiefoperating officer of Norton Aircraft. In other words, he runs the factory. Hehas also been nice to Casey, but he turns out to be a very bad person and ?slyguy.? The third important character in the novel Airframe is Jennifer Malone.She is a reporter for a news show called Newsline. From the descriptions in thebook, this show sounds very much like the news program 20/20. She does a newsstory on the two latest events of the N-22 aircraft that has had unusualproblems lately. She does not understand what the aviation industry is aboutso she has a very bad attitude. As a result, Casey ends up telling her offtowards the end of the book. The plot of Airframe is a very complex and exciting plot. The bookstarts off with a bang with a suspenseful first chapter. An airplane encounterssevere turbulence and many passengers are hurt. Eventually a team at Nortonis put together to find out what the cause of the situation is. The problem putsNorton?s airplane deal with China, for billions of dollars, in serious jeopardy.The team cannot find any leads, and soon the media catches on to Norton’sproblems. The reporters love a story that is bad and makes the viewersconcerned about airline safety. A lot of people are already concerned aboutairline safety. When the media advertises a bad story about manufacturers,everyone will watch it. Casey finds herself in dangerous situations wherepeople are following her and watching her. She knows something is wrong andthere is some kind of secret plot. She figures it out in the last fourth of thenovel but she does not tell the reader until she tells Jennifer Malone in thesecond chapter until the end. It turns out the whole incident was a pilot?s error.The experienced pilot let his own son fly the plane while he went to go get a cupof coffee. The son did not know what to do, so he almost crashed the plane. Before Casey Singleton came to the simple answer above, sheinvestigated many possibilities. One was that the slats on the wing extendedwithout a command. Another was that the plane had counterfeit parts thatsupposedly damaged the plane. She found absolutely nothing. It turns outthat John Marder was supposed to ruin Norton?s current president over thisincident. He thought once a critical news story was shown on Newsline, that thepresident would be ruined as well as Casey Singleton since she was the one thathandled the interview. He had been cooking up a deal with North Korea to selleven more planes than Norton was preparing to sell to China. But he mustbecome president before the deal would go through. Once the Korean sell wasaccomplished, Norton stock would sky-rocket which would make John Marderrich since he owned tons of it. This was all part of his plan but it was allruined since the story did not air because it turned out it had been the pilot?sfault. Obviously, it was not the manufacturer’s fault. No one wanted to hearabout a young kid killing three people and injuring hundreds. It is plain andsimple: it?s not good news. Marder was fired once his plot was uncovered andCasey Singleton took his place. There were many conflicts in Airframe. So many, you could not darecounting them all. Some of the main conflicts were between Casey Singletonand her colleagues. They got into arguments and disagreements all the timebecause they each believed something different caused the accident of the flight. There was a conflict about the men suspiciously following Casey whoturned out to be John Marder employees. The real main conflict in the novelwas John Marder?s cover-up operation that could have easily destroyed HalEdgarton, the president of Norton and Casey Singleton, the vice president ofthe QAR team. The theme or message of Airframe I personally think is that the media isway too powerful and greedy in this modern world. They can say anythingthey want anytime they want about anybody they want. The media is way toopowerful. They don?t always speak the truth! It was definitely man versussociety. Michael Crichton, the author of Airframe, was born in Chicago in 1942but grew up in a suburb of New York. Mr. Crichton attended HarvardMedical School to become a doctor. He always had an interest in writing andhe wrote his first novel ?In Case of Need? under a pseudonym of JeffreyHudson. He has also used John Lange as a pseudonym. Michael has writtenmany novels and has won many awards. Michael Crichton also directs moviesand is the author of the hit TV show ?ER.? His major novels include: Airframe,The Lost World, Disclosure, Rising Sun, Jurassic Park, Sphere, The Eaters ofthe Dead, The Great Train Robbery, The Terminal Man, The AndromedaStrain, and In Case of Need. I would recommend this novel to people who enjoy airplanes andadvanced technology. It is an exceptional novel for people of all ages andshould definitely be read. I think men and women both would like it, becausethe main character is a woman but the book has many manly themes. Overall, Airframe, is a great novel by Michael Crichton. Although it isnot his best work, it is not anything to be ashamed of, either. It is a great novelabout interesting airplanes and a suspenseful plot to ruin a major airlinemanufacturer. This book is the perfect ingredient in a recipe for a rainy, cold,winter?s day.
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