Jonathan Livingston Seagull

It is morning, and the sun is sparking across the calm sea. A mile from shore, a fishing boat trawls through the water, and a crowd of a thousand seagulls comes to pick and fight for bits of food. Far away from all the action, however, Jonathan Livingston Seagull  practices his flight skills by himself. Most gulls only learn the “simplest facts of flight,” and use the mechanics of flying only in pursuit of food. Jonathan Livingston Seagull, however, is different—he loves to fly “more than anything else.”

Because of how different he is from the other birds, Jonathan Livingston Seagull is not popular among his flock, and even his parents are disappointed by his preoccupation with flight. His mother and father beg him to be like the rest of the flock—they want him to stop flying and eat more, as he has grown thin and wan. Despite their warnings that winter will come soon, and food will be harder to come by—not to mention that the only reason to fly is to eat—Jonathan cannot manage to behave like the others, try as he might. Every time he joins the flock in searching for food, he can’t stop himself from thinking that he is wasting time he could be using to perfect his flight skills.

Jonathan is practicing “blazing steep power-dives,” gathering speed as he plunges towards the ocean. With each dive, however, he finds that he loses control right as he reaches a high speed. Each time, his left wing stalls, causing him to fall into a “wild tumbling spin.” After ten failed attempts, Jonathan decides to try a new technique, and hold his wings still at high speeds. He tries once more to dive from a height of two thousand feet, and though his new technique takes tremendous strength, it works—in just ten seconds he reaches a speed of ninety miles an hour, and is proud that he has set a “world speed record for seagulls.”

Jonathan’s pride in his victory, however, is short-lived; as soon as he begins his pullout from the dive, he “snap[s]” into the uncontrollable disaster of a tumble, and smashes out of the sky into the “brick-hard” ocean. When Jonathan regains consciousness, he finds himself floating in moonlight on the ocean’s surface. He feels like a failure and wishes that he would drown. At the depth of his misery, he tells himself that he is “limited by [his] nature,” and is not meant to learn about flying after all. He decides to fly home to his flock and try to be content, knowing that attempting normalcy will make everybody else happy. He pushes out of the water and flies low and slow back to shore, promising himself that he will, from now on, fly like every other seagull.

As he flies, Jonathan feels good about his decision to be just another one of the flock. His life will be free of challenges, and he will be able to stop thinking so much about flying and just do the bare minimum to get from place to place. As he powers toward shore, however, a voice inside tells him that seagulls never fly in the dark—if he were meant to fly in the dark, he’d have the wide eyes of an owl and the short wings of a falcon. In an epiphany, Jonathan’s resolutions dissolve, as he realizes what he is missing—short wings.

Jonathan flies up once again to two thousand feet, and “without a moment for the thought of failure and death,” he burrows his wings close to his body, leaving only the wingtips extended. He then descents into another dive. He climbs to an enormous speed of one hundred and forty miles per hour, but barely feels the effort—he is completely in control. He feels “guiltless” about breaking his promise to himself to rejoin the flock, and renewed in his own belief that he is extraordinary.

At sunup, Jonathan is back to practicing, now flying up to five thousand feet before diving. From such great heights, the swarming Breakfast Flock looks like “a faint cloud of dust motes.” As Jonathan plunges through the air, he reaches a speed of two hundred and fourteen miles per hour. He knows that if he loses control and spreads his wings at this speed, he will be blown apart—but it is worth the risk to him. The feeling of speed is “power,” “joy,” “and pure beauty.”

At one thousand feet above the sea, Jonathan pulls out of his dive, but finds that he is about to fly right into the flock of gulls. He cannot stop—he does not know how to navigate at such a high speed—but knows that collision means “instant death.” Jonathan shuts his eyes and prepares for impact, but by some miracle manages to fly directly through the center of the flock, slowing to a hundred and sixty miles per hour, and then twenty. Relieved that he was able to avoid disaster, Jonathan congratulates himself on his triumph of reaching terminal velocity—“the greatest single moment in the history of the Flock.”

Jonathan returns to his lonely practice area and begins practicing diving from eight thousand feet, with the goal of learning to turn. As he experiments with lightly extending one single wingtip feather at a time, he slowly learns how to turn and perform aerobatics—the first of any seagull anywhere in the world to do so. Jonathan flies until the sun goes down, learning loops, slow rolls, and spins, not pausing or taking time to talk to any other members of his Flock.

That night, when Jonathan joins his Flock on the beach, he is dizzy and tired, but delighted. He can’t stop thinking about how the Flock will be “wild with joy” when they hear about his breakthrough. He thinks they will be excited to follow his lead and learn about the joys of flying for themselves. However, as Jonathan approaches the Flock, he sees that they have convened a Council Gathering, and are waiting for him.

The Elder Gull calls Jonathan to Stand to Center—a command which Jonathan knows signals either great shame or great honor. As he takes his place in the Center, he humbly thinks that he does not want to receive any honors; he only wants to share what he has learned. As Jonathan takes his place, the Elder commands him to Stand to Center—for Shame.

Jonathan’s knees go weak, and he feels as if he has been hit by a board. He knows that his fellow gulls do not understand him. As the Elder Gull condemns Jonathan for his “reckless irresponsibility,” and for “violating the dignity and tradition of the Gull Family,” Jonathan know he will be cast out of gull society and banished to live on the Far Cliffs. As a final reminder, the Elder tells Jonathan that the only point to life is to eat, and stay alive as long as one possibly can. Jonathan raises his voice and speaks back to the Council Flock, though such a thing is never done—he begs them to see that he is in fact being responsible, as there is nothing more responsible than seeking a higher purpose in life. The Flock, however, will not hear his words—they turn their backs and cast him out.

Jonathan flies out beyond the Far Cliffs. His sorrow does not come from his newly imposed solitude, but the fact that the other gulls cannot see the glory of flight. He wishes the other would open their eyes and see the things he has seen. He continues to practice diving and flying, learning new things every day, and eventually learns new, more efficient methods for catching the tasty fish that swim several feet below the surface of the ocean. He is able to fend for himself now and no longer has to rely on fishing boats for survival. He learns how to sleep in the air, and how to ride the winds inland to hunt for insects.

Jonathan had hoped he’d be able to help the Flock discover all of these tricks, but he now resigns himself to using and perfecting them alone. He is not sorry for the price he has paid—he realizes, now that he is free, that boredom, fear, and anger are the things that make a gull’s life so short. Free of these entrapments, Jonathan goes on to live a long, fine life.

One evening, as Jonathan is gliding peacefully through the sky, two gulls “pure as starlight” appear at his wings. There is a gentle, friendly glow about them, and they fly skillfully, just like Jonathan himself. Noticing their expertise, Jonathan decides to put them to a test—one no gull has ever passed. He drops into a high-speed dive, and the other gulls dive with him. He twists into a roll, and the other gulls roll, too. Pleased with the others’ skill, Jonathan slows down, and asks who they are. They respond that they are from his own Flock—they have come to take him higher and take him home.

Jonathan replies that he has no home or Flock because he is an outcast. He also confesses that he is flying at his peak, give or take a few hundred feet, and can lift his “old body” no higher. The other gulls insist, though, that Jonathan can go higher—“one school is finished, and the time has come for another to begin.” Jonathan finally understands—it is indeed, he realizes, time to fly higher and go home. He looks across the sky one last time, and then says aloud that he is ready. He rises with the two other gulls and disappears into the dark sky.