27 pages • 54 minutes read
Richard BachJonathan Livingston Seagull
Fiction | Novella | YA | Published in 1970A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Nature of Perfection
Jonathan Livingston Seagull begins as a story about Jonathan’s quest to become the most perfect flier he can. In the process, he teaches himself several aerobatic maneuvers, but his goal is probably best encapsulated by his attempts at high-speed flying; after “set[ting] a world speed record for seagulls” (20) during a 90 mile per hour dive, Jonathan goes on to reach a speed of 214 miles per hour—terminal velocity, and thus the maximum speed possible for him on Earth. By maxing out in this way, Jonathan achieves a kind of perfection, although this does not stop him from continuing to learn and grow in other ways throughout his life:
He learned more each day. He learned that a streamlined high-speed dive could bring him to find the rare and tasty fish that schooled ten feet below the surface of the ocean […] He learned to sleep in the air, setting a course at night across the offshore wind, covering a hundred miles from sunset to sunrise (35-36).
Jonathan’s commitment to continuously transcend his prior limitations suggests that perfection is as much a process or state as it is a goal, and one that has more to do with self-growth than external boundaries or barriers. Indeed, this is in large part what Jonathan learns after leaving Earth for a higher plane of existence. Dismayed to find that—in a place he initially believed to be heaven—there are still limits to how fast he can fly, Jonathan reaches out to Chiang, who advises him to stop thinking in terms of maximum speeds: “[A]ny number is a limit, and perfection doesn’t have limits" (55). Expanding on this, Chiang teaches Jonathan to stop thinking of himself as bounded by “a limited body that had a forty-two-inch wingspan and performance that could be plotted on a chart" (58). Through Chiang’s tutelage, Jonathan gains the ability to move anywhere in time and space instantaneously, but even this power is ultimately less important than the metaphysical realization behind it: that the self is infinite and exists “everywhere at once across space and time” (59). This, then, is what Bach ultimately depicts as perfection: a mystical oneness with the “perfect invisible principle of all life” (61).
Individuality and the Role of the Community
Bach wrote Jonathan Livingston Seagull in the late 1960s—an era characterized in the U.S. by the emergence of a counterculture loosely connected to campaigns like the Civil Rights and Anti-Vietnam War Movements, and more generally at odds with the various racial, religious, sexual, national, and economic dogmas of the day. The post-WWII years had been an especially conformist period in American history, and Part 1 of the novella in particular is best understood against this backdrop, as a kind of parable about the importance of remaining true to oneself in a highly conformist society. Jonathan’s father in particular echoes mainstream American culture when he advises his son to, in effect, focus on earning a living: “If you must study, then study food, and how to get it. This flying business is all very well, but you can’t eat a glide, you know" (15). Ultimately, Jonathan’s love of flying and desire to push his limits make him a pariah in his community, but no matter how hard he tries to settle for an ordinary life, he finds himself drawn back to his solo pursuits; he recognizes that he is not and should not settle for anything less.
In Parts 2 and 3, however, Bach complicates the idea that the pursuit of individual freedom and self-expression is an end in and of itself. After a solitary life spent perfecting his skills, Jonathan is taken to a new Flock in a new world. Here, he finds himself in a new kind of community—one in which respected leaders like Chiang don’t use their authority to stifle individuality, but instead use their wisdom and experience to encourage younger gulls in their self-exploration. As a result, Jonathan not only learns new skills, but also rediscovers a part of himself he hadn’t had the opportunity to exercise while on Earth: his natural desire to teach others. This ultimately leads Jonathan to return to Earth over the doubts of his fellow gulls, who feel he is unlikely to accomplish anything there. In proving them wrong—that is, in passing his knowledge on to a new generation of gulls—Jonathan further illustrates the importance of community. As Chiang puts it, “the most difficult, the most powerful, the most fun” form of knowledge is to “know the meaning of kindness and of love” (60); it isn’t simply that our attempts to grow will be limited as long as we are learning on our own, but rather that learning to love others is an important part of our growth, and one that can only be developed and practiced amongst others.
Learning Love and Kindness
Closely related to Bach’s depiction of both the quest for perfection and the place of the individual in the community is his depiction of the importance of love and kindness. In fact, Bach portrays love as the final and most vital skill both Jonathan and Fletcher must learn—the culmination of all their earlier training. Chiang’s final words to Jonathan, for example, are to “keep working on love” (61). The challenge implicit in this becomes clear when the Flock, frightened by Fletcher’s apparent return from the dead, tries to attack Jonathan. As Fletcher notes, it’s hard to understand how or why they should love those who have persecuted and even threatened to kill them.
Jonathan responds by drawing a distinction between the gulls’ actions and their potential: “You don’t love hatred and evil, of course. You have to practice and see the real gull, the good in every one of them, and to help them see it in themselves” (91). The significance of this lies in the idea that all gulls (that is, all people) share a common nature: the infinite or unlimited selfhood that Chiang expounds upon in Part 2. As a result, no quest for self-improvement can be complete if it continues to see the self as detached from others; this false sense of isolation is itself a barrier to be transcended in the journey towards perfection, which “doesn't have limits" (55). The practical implication is that the search for individual fulfilment must be undertaken in conjunction with a commitment to help and forgive others. This is why Jonathan initially warns Fletcher against holding on to his anger at the Flock, and later praises him for rejoining them; no matter how skilled a flyer Fletcher might have managed to become on his own, he would simply have been “building his own bitter hell” (91) if he failed to forgive the Flock for having cast him out.
