Jonathan Livingston Seagull
Richard Bach, 1970
While the whole flock fights over fish by the boat, one seagull learns to fly. Richard Bach, a military pilot, wrote a short parable about how life is more than the search for food, and about the price people pay for their own path. You will learn how Jonathan turned exile into freedom, what perfect speed is, and why a true teacher does not want to be a god.
Who it is for
For those who find it not enough to simply live as everyone else does, and who feel they can do more. And for those who once heard that it is time to stop dreaming and get to work.
Don't believe your eyes. They show you only the chains that limit your freedom.
One Seagull Apart from the Boat
Picture a morning at sea. A fishing boat is hauling in its net, and above it a whole flock circles and screams: every seagull wants a scrap, by cunning or by force. But off to one side, all alone, another seagull is doing something strange. He slowly drops toward the water, hangs in the air, and tries again and again. His name is Jonathan Livingston, and what he loves most of all is not food but flight.
That is how Richard Bach's parable begins, written in 1970. Bach was a pilot himself: he flew fighters and wrote about aviation. His book about a seagull is very short, and you can read it in one evening. Several publishers turned it down, but by the end of 1972 it had been printed in runs of more than a million copies, and it had become one of the best-known books of its time.
The main idea of the parable is simple and uncomfortable. Life is more than food and a place in the flock. There is work you love for its own sake, and a drive to do it better and better. But the road has a price: the incomprehension of family, condemnation, loneliness. And anyone who has come far will sooner or later have to decide what to do with what they have found.
There are six chapters ahead. You will see Jonathan argue with his parents and with his own limits, how the Council casts him out of the Flock, what he learns in the other world from the wise Chiang, and why, when he returns to teach, he is most afraid that they will make him a god. Let us start in the morning, when everyone is flying to the boat and he is not.
All Skin and Bones for the Sake of Flight
The seagulls of the Flock know about flying exactly as much as they need to reach the boat and come back. For them, flying means getting food. Jonathan is built differently. For hours he practises slow flight over the water, tries diving from a height, falls, and starts again. He eats little and grows thinner before everyone's eyes.
His parents watch with worry. Their son has become, as they put it, feathers and bones. They ask him to eat more and to keep with the Flock, since winter is coming. For them, flight is needed only to get food.
Jonathan does not want to upset them, and he honestly tries. For several days he behaves like everyone else: he flies with the others to the boats and fights for food. And all the while he feels he is wasting his time. A life in which there is only food seems meaningless to him. Soon he flies out to sea alone again.
At this point the parable touches almost everyone. Jonathan's parents are not cruel. They want their son to survive, and in their way they are right: winter will indeed come. Their care is like a sturdy fence around a garden. It shelters from the wind, but beyond it you cannot see the sky. Bach does not argue that one must eat. He argues with the thought that there is nothing but this.
How can you apply this to your own life? That is already our application of the parable, not the author's advice. Think about which work you do not for money or approval, but because it pulls you. Perhaps people called it a waste of time too. The parable does not call you to quit your job and starve. It suggests not letting that work wither: leave it a place in your week, as Jonathan kept the sea for himself.
About the author
Richard Bach is an American writer and pilot, born in 1936. He served as a fighter pilot and wrote for the aviation magazine Flying, and Jonathan Livingston Seagull made him famous.
All books by this author: Richard Bach
Terms from the book
- Parable
- Sullivan
- Fletcher
- Flock: In Bach's parable, a society of seagulls with its own laws and customs, capitalised. An image from the book, not a term about bird behaviour.
- Council: The assembly of the Flock in the parable, at which the Elder decides the fate of an individual seagull.
- Chiang: The Elder of the Flock in the other world, Jonathan's wise teacher. He teaches him perfect speed and, when he leaves, advises him to learn love.
- Elder: The oldest and most respected seagull, head of the Flock. In the parable there are two: the Elder of the earthly Flock who banished Jonathan, and the wise Chiang in the other world.
- Far Cliffs: The place in the parable where exiled seagulls are sent, far from the home shore.
- Outcast: What the parable calls a seagull whom the Council has driven out of the Flock. No one may speak to it.
- Maynard: Kirk Maynard, a seagull with an injured wing from the earthly Flock. He takes off after Jonathan tells him he is free.
- Great Gull: The highest being in the beliefs of the seagulls in the parable. Part of the Flock decided that Jonathan is her son.
All terms
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