Jonathan Livingston Seagull
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Wikipedia-Article "Jonathan Livingston Seagull"
Jonathan Livingston Seagull (ISBN 0380012863), written by Richard Bach, is a fable about a seagull learning about life and flight, and a homily about self-perfection and self-sacrifice. First published in 1970 as “Jonathan Livingston Seagull — a story”, it became a favourite on American university campuses. By the end of 1972, over a million copies were in print, Reader’s Digest had published a condensed version, and the book reached the top of the New York Times bestseller list where it remained for 38 weeks. It is still in print as of 2006.
Plot summary: The eponymous central character of the book, Jonathan Seagull, discovers that he can only be truly happy by being true to himself and his dreams and by spreading his passion to others. His journey from disappointed seagull to experienced flier to learned teacher forms the central plot.
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Plot
The novel tells the story of Jonathan Livingston Seagull, a seagull who is seized by a passion for flight. He pushes himself, learning everything he can about flying, until finally his unwillingness to conform results in his expulsion from his clan. An outcast, he continues to learn, becomes increasingly pleased with his abilities and leads an idyllic life.
One day, Jonathan is met by two seagulls, who take him to a “higher plane of existence”, where he meets other gulls who love to fly. He discovers that his sheer tenacity and desire to learn make him “a gull in a million”. Jonathan befriends the wisest gull in this new place, named Chiang, who takes him beyond his previous learning, teaching him how to move instantaneously to anywhere else in the universe. The secret, Chiang says, is to “begin by knowing that you have already arrived”.
Not satisfied with his new life, Jonathan returns to Earth to find others like him, to bring them his learning and to spread his love for flight. His mission is successful, gathering around him others who have been outlawed for not conforming. Ultimately, one of his students, Fletcher Lynd Seagull, becomes a teacher in his own right and Jonathan leaves to continue his learning. In some ways, this section is as much a story of Fletcher’s realization as of Jonathan’s continued learning.
Interpretation
The first part
Several early commentators, focusing mainly on the first part of the book, see it as part of the American self-help and positive thinking culture, epitomised by Norman Vincent Peale and by the New Thought movement. Some have described it as having Christian-anarchist characteristics. It has also been compared to the children’s tale The Little Engine That Could. But while Jonathan Livingston Seagull may take the form of a traditional animal fable, and can be enjoyed by young children at that level, its attraction has extended beyond this group.
In 1972, before “postmodernism” had evolved from an architectural term into a cultural buzzword, Beverley Byrne noted,
No matter what metaphysical minority the reader may find seductive, there is something for him in Jonathan Livingston Seagull. [...] the dialogue is a mishmash of Boy Scout/Kahlil Gibran. The narrative is poor man’s Hermann Hesse; the plot is Horatio Alger doing Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. The meanings, metaphysical and other, are a linty overlay of folk tale, old movies, Christian tradition, Protestantism, Christian Science, Greek and Chinese philosophies, and the spirits of Sports Illustrated and Outward Bound [...] This seagull is an athletic Siddharta tripping on Similac, spouting the Qur’an as translated by Bob Dylan [...] One hopes this is not the parable for our time, popular as it is — the swift image, all-meaning metaphor that opens up into almost nothing. (Byrne, B., 1972. “Seagullibility and the American ethos.” Pilgrimage. 1:1, pp 59–60.).
One doubts that Byrne would approve, but her analysis has turned out to be almost prophetic. Twenty-first century society — at least as much of it as we at its beginning can see emerging — is multicultural, tolerant of cognitive dissonances, constantly seeking new ways of re-appropriating the old. Even our conservatism now carries a multiplicity of meanings.
Today, this multiple layering of meaning, not to mention the ransacking of sources to construct a new playful non-ultimate meaning, is precisely what lends a book appeal. Indeed, there is no longer a single way to look at life, or at a book, and Jonathan Livingston Seagull was, in retrospect, a marker on the road from the 20th to the 21st centuries, from the certainties of modernism to something we call postmodernism.
One could not claim that it is a deep book in the sense that Crime and Punishment is deep. But it has width, scope, and above all, spirit. It may start off with a paean to progress, but by the end of the book, progress has subsided into no-gress, into the realisation that all is as it must be. It soon escapes from any conceptual framework in which we try to put it. Contrary to Byrne’s hopes, it has indeed become a parable for our time.
The second part
In the second part, Jonathan joins another society called “Fans of Flying”. He is only capable of this after practicing hard alone for a long time (described in the first part). In this other society, real respect emerges as a contrast of the coercive force that was keeping the former “Breakfast Flock” together. The learning process, linking the highly experienced teacher and the diligent student is raised into almost sacral level, suggesting that this may be the true relation between human and the Good. The author surely thinks that human and Good, regardless of the all immense difference, are sharing something that is rather difficult to define, but due its great importance can bind them together: “you’ve got to understand that a seagull is an unlimited idea of freedom, an image of the Great Gull.”
The third part
The introduction to the third part of the book are the last words of Jonathan’s teacher: “keep working on love.” In this part Jonathan understands that the spirit cannot be really free without the ability to forgive, and the way to progress leads through becoming a teacher — not just through working hard as a student. Jonathan returns to the Breakfast Flock to share his newly discovered ideals and the recent tremendous experience, ready for the difficult fight against the current rules of that society. The ability to forgive seems to be a mandatory “passing condition”. “Do you want to fly so much that you will forgive the Flock, and learn, and go back to them one day and work to help them know?” Jonathan asks his first student before getting into any further talks. The idea that the stronger can reach more by leaving the weaker friends behind seems totally rejected. According to some, this contradicts interpretations aligned with the New Age ideology [1] which were later supported by Bach.
Bach’s authorship
Richard Bach has claimed that he is, in a sense, not the author of Jonathan Livingston Seagull. He has stated that the words came to him in visions, and he merely wrote them down. [2] [3] He has made no such claims for any of his other writings.
The authorship of Jonathan Livingston Seagull is discussed in The Nature of Personal Reality written by channelling Jane Roberts, whom Bach had previously visited.
Derivative and referencing works
Bach’s Jonathan Livington Seagull has inspired the production of a motion picture of the same name, with a soundtrack by Neil Diamond. The film was made by Hall-Bartlett Productions many years before computer-generated effects were available. In order to make seagulls act on cue and perform aerobatics, Mark Smith of Escondido, California built radio-controlled gliders that looked remarkably like real seagulls from a few feet away. [4]
There is also a ballet based on Jonathan Livingston Seagull.
Jonathan Seagull is mentioned in the James Gang song “Ride the Wind.”
References
- Jonathan Livingston Seagull (1970), ISBN 0380012863
- Jonathan Livingston Seagull at the Internet Movie Database