18 pages • 36 minutes read
John Gillespie Magee, Jr.High Flight
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1942A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Literary Context: John Gillespie Magee Jr. and His Inspirations
Magee’s body of literary work is small due to his short life span. Only four of his poems—“Sonnet to Rupert Brooke” (1938), “Brave New World” (1939), “High Flight” (1941), and “Per Ardua” (1941)—are widely available, with “High Flight” considered the most publicly significant and aesthetically memorable. According to Roger Cole, who worked extensively with Magee’s family on his biography, Magee’s headmaster at Rugby School, Hugh Lyon, directed him toward emulating poet Rupert Brooke, whose work had been in vogue during the Edwardian period (Cole, Roger. High Flight. Fighting High Publishing, 2013). Magee took artistic inspiration from Brooke, admiring his World War I poems.
Magee also drew from the work of Romantic poets, particularly imitating their emphasis on nature and contemplations of the sublime. Both Brooke and the Romantics worked widely in the sonnet form. From all accounts, Magee was thrilled to have won the Rugby School prize for “Brave New World” in 1939, especially since Brooke had won the same prize at the school 34 years before. In “High Flight,” Magee’s youthful enthusiasm and sense of special purpose in serving echo Brooke’s sentiments as a soldier early in World War I.
The lasting impact of “High Flight” has provided inspiration for poems about war and those about flight, aviation, and heavenly ascension since its publication. The poem’s last two lines remain especially popular and are quoted often.
Historical Context: The Spitfire Fighter Plane
To fully understand “High Flight,” it helps to know the kind of aircraft familiar to John Gillespie Magee Jr. as a member of No. 412 squadron of the RCAF. He flew a Spitfire fighter plane, which was the most popular and most “strategically important British single-seat fighter of World War II” (See: Further Reading & Resources). The fact that it was a single-seater clarifies the isolated experience of the pilot when flying in “High Flight.”
As a pilot, Magee was part of high-altitude testing, meaning he was among the men who experimented with exactly how high the Spitfire plane could fly. Magee himself reached a height of 33,000 feet—an event that inspired “High Flight”—but the Spitfire’s capacity was another 1,000 feet beyond that. The aircraft were built as high-performance fighter planes, and eight machine guns were mounted on the wings.
The contrast between the plane’s purpose and the beauty Magee’s speaker pilot sees is not something many may be aware of when reading the poem. Invented in 1935, the Spitfire began to be used by air force units in the summer of 1938. To counter technological advances in German fighter planes, a better version was built and tested in 1941. The Spitfire regained the advantage and became central to Allied victory as a reconnaissance aircraft. Due to its ability to reach such high altitudes, it was able to easily dodge detection and interception during battle. Magee regularly flew Spitfires as part of his duties while serving in the patrol convoy.
