Absurd chronology
The novel features details that are wildly anachronistic, breaking the imagery of time into fragments and rearranging them. For instance, Raven gets to fly like his name suggests, but he has to fly on an airplane. This raises an interesting question. How did he find an airplane to take him north four decades before the invention of the airplane? The anachronistic absurdism continues to explain the Lincoln assassination, and other outrageous plot details.
Slavery
The most absurd aspect of the novel is not the wild deviations from reality. Unfortunately, the issue of slavery as depicted in the novel is perfectly literal and historical, but no less absurd. Slavery is depicted as a moral conundrum, which is always was, and also as a serious threat against the health and happiness of the people afflicted by slavery. The slaves desperately try to escape north, as the title implies. The Canadian border is a symbol for America's brokenness.
Death and ghosts
The deaths of important people cast a long shadow on the novel. Lincoln's assassination is a horrifying symbol to the freed slaves that the country is not ready to treat them as equals. Then, Swille's strange behavior with the skull of his dead son raises important symbolic considerations, perhaps leading to his being haunted by a ghost. It is his sister whose ghost awakes from its slumber to tell everyone that Swille knows that when she was alive, they were incestuous together.
History and fate
The novel doesn't belong in the proper historical framework, because it includes details that are wildly anachronistic and absurd, but that chaotic departure from reality makes the similarities between Flight to Canada and history into a fateful imagery. The novel includes the Lincoln assassination and the publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin, although the title is changed to "Uncle Robin." Notice that the book starts and ends with the same seven letters: u-n-c-l-e ...-i-n. Also, a Robin is a bird like a Raven. In other words, this novel's reality is a slight variation on reality, designed to underline the fatefulness of certain events.
