Importance of The Flying Ship

The flying ship is one of several symbols of paradox throughout the story. When we first encounter the flying ship, it is viewed as a symbol of science and a feat of the natural world because it is one of Professor Lucifer’s many inventions. When we last see the ship, it is flying over the burning asylum and purported to be manned by Lucifer himself, the fallen angel, thus it becomes a religious symbol as well, granting it the simultaneous statuses of natural and supernatural.