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.
Part 2Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 2 Summary
Alongside the two gulls, Jonathan arrives in what he takes to be heaven, finding that his own body is now bright and glowing as well; what’s more, it’s capable of speeds beyond anything he could achieve in his former life. After parting ways with his guides, he eventually arrives at a shoreline but is puzzled to find that there are very few gulls in his new world.
Over the next few days, Jonathan finds that what gulls do exist here share his own beliefs about the importance of perfecting one’s flying capabilities; in fact, those with more advanced skills help teach the others. When Jonathan asks his own teacher Sullivan why there are so few gulls, Sullivan explains that only gulls who reached perfection in their world come here: “[W]e choose our next world through what we learn in this one” (54). Sullivan tells him that most gulls have to pass through 1,000 lives before it even occurs to them that there might be something beyond the routine life of the Flock.
One evening, Jonathan approaches the “Elder Gull,” Chiang, and asks where he is if he isn’t in heaven. Chiang explains that heaven is not a place, but rather the state of perfection, and that Jonathan can begin to understand it when he realizes that he isn’t bound to any particular speed. At that moment, Chiang disappears only to reappear in a different place instantaneously; he then explains that he can travel to any place or time he chooses.
Chiang agrees to teach Jonathan how to do the same: “The trick was to know that his true nature lived, as perfect as an unwritten number, everywhere at once across space and time” (58-59). Jonathan struggles for some time but eventually succeeds in traveling with Chiang to a seashore on another planet. After Jonathan perfects this skill, he moves on to learning how to travel in time until the day Chiang vanishes, exhorting Jonathan to keep practicing “love” (61).
After Chiang leaves, Jonathan finds himself thinking more about his prior life, wishing he could return and teach any gulls on Earth who were willing to learn. Sullivan urges him to remain where he is to help newly arrived gulls, but Jonathan is unable to put the thought aside. Eventually, he uses the skills Chiang taught him to return to his former world, where he finds a young gull named Fletcher Lynd Seagull, who has been made Outcast for doing a barrel-roll. Jonathan speaks to Fletcher telepathically, urging him to forgive the Flock for their lack of understanding. He then asks Fletcher whether he wants to fly, and whether he agrees to one day teach what he knows to the Flock; Fletcher agrees, accepting Jonathan as his teacher.
Part 2 Analysis
Part 2 significantly complicates the relatively straightforward story Bach tells in Part 1. To begin with, it becomes clear in this section that community membership is not necessarily at odds with individual freedom. In fact, being part of a supportive community can actually foster personal growth:
Jonathan saw that there was as much to learn about flight in this place as there had been in the life behind him. But with a difference. Here were gulls who thought as he thought. For each of them, the most important thing in living was to reach out and touch perfection in that which they most loved to do, and that was to fly (53).
In this new Flock of gulls that share their skills with one another and encourage each other’s dreams, Jonathan’s abilities quickly come to surpass anything he could have achieved on his own.
The shape that those abilities take is also significant. In Part 1, Bach positions Jonathan’s desire to excel in flight in opposition to the purely material concerns of the rest of the Flock; however, it is in this section that the spiritual nature of flight clearly emerges. The physical limitations Jonathan worked to push past in Part 1 pave the way for his lessons with Chiang, which teach him to quite literally transcend his physical nature—or rather, to understand that his nature isn’t truly physical to begin with. Flight thus becomes synonymous with a state of heightened, “perfect” consciousness that allows Jonathan to move about freely through space and time. Here, Bach borrows heavily from the Eastern philosophies and religions that enjoyed a surge in popularity in 1960s and ‘70s America. For instance, Chiang’s description of the self as infinite bears a strong resemblance to the Hindu idea of moksha (sometimes also called “nirvana”), which is a state of oneness with everything in the universe.
Lastly, this section of the novella also brings the question of love to the foreground. Chiang likens this to flight as well; in fact, he suggests that love is the highest form of flight, telling Jonathan that one day he “will be ready to fly up and know the meaning of kindness and of love” (60). The analogy rests on the idea that anger or hatred divide the self from others and in this sense constitute yet another limit that must be overcome in the pursuit of perfection. To reach his fullest potential, Jonathan must therefore let go of any lingering resentment he feels towards the Flock that made him an Outcast.
