Jonathan Livingston Seagull short summary & analysis

Jonathan Livingston Seagull - Richard Bach

Jonathan Livingston Seagull Analysis

Jonathan Livingston Seagull was written by Richard Bach in 1972, it was like a tale, but it was a story. It narrates a story of an extraordinary seagull, who is unlike its fellows who are running after food only, and does not fight with others, named Jonathon Livingston. Jonathan Livingston Seagull has an important place in literature, and it criticizes human kind, and also is didactical.

Jonathan Livingston Seagull Short Summary

Seagull, Jonathon Livingston, sees himself different from his other friends. Their only purpose is to feed themselves. But for Jon food is not important, flying is. He likes flying passionately. His family reacts to this situation. His mother says that, flying from low is albatross job and he is getting weaker and has to find food for himself. However, Jon does not listen to his family and continues practicing flying. He fails and decides he is going to be an ordinary seagull. But one day he tries flying in the dark. Because it is known that seagulls can’t fly in the dark. He tries couple of times and he decides to not join the pact and fly freely. Jonathan is now the only seagull in the world who can fly acrobatically. When he joined the pact on the beach, it was nearly midnight. “There are a lot of reasons to live. We can defeat ignorance, we can find ourselves with using our talent and intelligence, we can be ourselves. The most important of all is that we can be free!” he thinks. But the happenings are not what he expected. The Seagull Congress gathers, and they kick Livingston from the pact because he is reckless and irresponsible. Even though he says, “Give me a chance, I can show you what I’ve learnt!” Jon is now a lone seagull. When he was flying freely at midnight, he sees two seagulls who are beaming. He likes their flying style a lot. These two seagulls say that they are in the same family and they say that Jonathan can come along with them, together they fly away high in the dark sky.

In the second part of the book, it describes a life in a different planet of Jonathan. Now he has beaming wings as well and he thinks this place as heaven. In this new place, he thinks that he will learn more things than what he has learnt in earth. In here seagulls are different too. All of them are improving themselves and experimenting different things. In here, he learns a lot of things from Sullivan and Chiang. He decides that he is a perfect seagull who has not any restrictions. However, he thinks that, there could be one or two seagulls that are open to learn. Though Sullivan disagrees, Livingston goes back to earth to find new student to teach what he learnt.

In the third part of the novel, John’s adventure with his students in the earth is being told. Fletcher is also kicked out from his pact and he is the first student of Jon. When day passes, he has more students. One day Jon goes to the place where Congress meeting was held with his students. Even though his pact turns their back on him, he continued the flying and everyday one or two seagulls would join Jon’s. One day Fletcher crashes into a rock in order to not hit a baby seagull. Everyone thought that he was dead, but Fletcher wakes up as if he was dreaming. Four thousand seagulls think that, this is a work of devil and attacks him. In the meantime, Jon and Fletcher runs away thousand meters. Fletcher is surprised about this. Jon asks how this happened, like he used to do, he says with work. The next morning Jon says, “You don’t need me anymore. You need to find yourself. Try to find out and learn from it.” Not long after, Jonathan’s body gets transparent and he disappears. Fletcher sees his student as they are for a moment. Smiling he thinks no restrictions Jonathan. Learning competitions is started again.

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