Download Jonathan Livingston Seagull

Jonathan Livingston Seagull
By Richard David Bach
Author, Richard David Bach
• Born in the year 1936 in Oak Park,
Illinois.
• Said to be related to Johann Sebastian
Bach, a well-known German
composer
• He attended Long Beach State College
(California State University, Long
Beach) in 1955.
• Since he was 17 years old, he pursued
flying as an interest.
• Bach married Bette Franks and had six
children. (One is named Jonathan)
Divorced and remarried, currently
married to Sabryna NelsonAlexopoulos.
Richard David Bach
• United States Air Force (USAF) as a jet pilot. Afterwards, he worked a
variety of jobs, including
• Technical writer for Douglas Aircraft and contributing editor for Flying
magazine. He served in the USAF
• He served as a reserve deployed in France in 1960. He later became a
barnstormer/stunt pilot. Most of his books involve flight in some way.
• Jonathan Livingston Seagull was published in 1970 and was a bestseller.
• It was adapted into a movie in 1973.
The Plane Crash
• In the year 2012 (August), he was severely injured because his aircraft
clipped some power lines and crashed upside down when landing at
Friday Harbor. He was hospitalized for four months and eventually
discharged. Because of his near-death experience, he got inspired to
finish the fourth part of his book, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, which
was originally published in only three parts.
Facts about the book
• It was first published in 1970 as "Jonathan Livingston Seagull — a
story."
• By the end of 1972, over a million copies were in print, Reader's
Digest had published a condensed version, and the book had reached
the top of the New York Times Best Seller list, where it remained for
38 weeks.
• In 1972 and 1973, the book topped the Publishers Weekly list of
bestselling novels in the United States.
• In 2014 the book was reissued as Jonathan Livingston Seagull: The
Complete Edition, which added a 17-page fourth part to the story.
Jonathan Livingston Seagull
• Protagonist is Jonathan Livingston Seagull- Jonathan is a rebellious
seagull who wants to live life by flying as fast as he can. He does not
want to be like other gulls who spend their time following boats to
find fish to eat.
• The antagonist of this story isn’t really a single individual character,
but a group of many.
• The group is the flock of birds that made Jonathan an outcast when he refused to live a
simple life of just “getting by”.
Characters
• Old Chiang is wise and mystical.
• Fletcher Lynd Seagull is young and eager to learn about flying.
• Sullivan Seagull Jonathan’s instructor who teaches him about transcending
through lives by learning.
• Martin William Seagull is a cripple who overcomes his handicap through
the power of his mind and learns to fly.
• The Council Flock The governing body of the seagull Flock, the
unchallengeable Council Flock condemns Jonathan for reckless
irresponsibility and violating the dignity and tradition of the Gull Family
after his historic aeronautic flight. It exiles the new Outcast to the Far Cliffs.
Settings
• The Council Beach
• The area where the Council Flock deliberates and condemns Jonathan to exile for
his experiments in aerodynamics is called the Council Beach. On this beach,
Jonathan, returned from heaven to gather and teach Outlaw disciples, vindicates
his teachings and begins proclaiming his message of the gulls' freedom to be
more than the rulers allow them to be.
• The Far Cliffs
• The traditional place of exile for Outcasts from the Flock, the Far Cliffs lie west of
Council Beach and are where Jonathan gathers his first six followers.
• The Fishing Grounds
• The offshore waters where the Flock mass at meal times to scavenge for fish.
• The Sky
• Where Jonathan feels free to be himself.
Fable
• Fable is a literary genre: a succinct fictional story, in prose or verse,
that features animals, mythical creatures, plants, inanimate objects,
or forces of nature that are anthropomorphized (given human
qualities, such as verbal communication) and that illustrates or leads
to an interpretation of a moral lesson (a "moral).
Themes
• Following your dreams
• Forgiveness, kindness, and peace
• Love of learning
• Personal freedom
• Giving back to future generations
• Nature as an escape
• Individualism
• Reaching God through
Transcendentalism
• A loose collection of eclectic ideas. (About literature, philosophy,
religion, social reform, and the general state of American culture.)
• An idealistic philosophy, spiritual position, and literary movement
that advocates reliance on romantic intuition and moral human
conscience.
• A belief that humans can intuitively transcend (go above) the
limits of the senses and of logic to a plane of “higher truths.”
• Something different for each person involved in the movement.
Beliefs
• The intuitive faculty (instinct), instead of the rational or logical,
became the means for a conscious union of the individual soul to
the world around it.
• Value spirituality (direct access to a benevolent God, not organized
religion or ritual), divinity of humanity, nature, intellectual
pursuits, and social justice.
Divine Soul or Over Soul
• Man, universe, and nature are intertwined, thus an individual
is the spiritual center of the universe, and in an individual can
be found the clue to nature, history and, ultimately, the
cosmos itself.
• The transcendentalists also believed that all people possessed a
piece of the "Over-soul" (God)
Nature
• Transcendentalists accepted the concept of nature as a living
mystery, full of signs; nature is symbolic –a guide to higher
understanding. Open yourself to nature.
Self Reliance
• A core belief was in the inherent goodness of both people and
nature. Transcendentalists believed that society and its institutions
ultimately corrupted the purity of the individual, and had faith that
people are at their best when truly "self-reliant" and independent.