Jonathan Livingston Seagull Page 1
Richard Bach
Jonathan Livingston Seagull
To the real Jonathan Seagull,
who lives within us all.
Part One
It was morning, and the new sun sparkled gold across the ripples of a gentle sea. A mile from shore a fishing boat
chummed the water. and the word for Breakfast Flock flashed through the air, till a crowd of a thousand seagulls
came to dodge and fight for bits of food. It was another busy day beginning.
But way off alone, out by himself beyond boat and shore, Jonathan Livingston Seagull was practicing. A hundred
feet in the sky he lowered his webbed feet, lifted his beak, and strained to old a painful hard twisting curve through
his wings. The curve meant that he would fly slowly, and now he slowed until the wind was a whisper in his face,
until the ocean stood still beneath him. He narrowed his eyes in fierce concentration, held his breath, forced one...
single... more... inch... of... curve... Then his featliers ruffled, he stalled and fell.
Seagulls, as you know, never falter, never stall. To stall in the air is for them disgrace and it is dishonor.
But Jonathan Livingston Seagull, unashamed, stretching his wings again in that trembling hard curve - slowing,
slowing, and stalling once more - was no ordinary bird.
Most gulls don't bother to learn more than the simplest facts of flight - how to get from shore to food and back
again. For most gulls, it is not flying that matters, but eating. For this gull, though, it was not eating that mattered, but
flight. More than anything else. Jonathan Livingston Seagull loved to fly.
This kind of thinking, he found, is not the way to make one's self popular with other birds. Even his parents were
dismayed as Jonathan spent whole days alone, making hundreds of low-level glides, experimenting.
He didn't know why, for instance, but when he flew at altitudes less than half his wingspan above the water, he
could stay in the air longer, with less effort. His glides ended not with the usual feet-down splash into the sea, but
with a long flat wake as he touched the surface with his feet tightly streamlined against his body. When he began
sliding in to feet-up landings on the beach, then pacing the length of his slide in the sand, his parents were very much
dismayed indeed.
"Why, Jon, why?" his mother asked. "Why is it so hard to be like the rest of the flock, Jon? Why can't you leave low
flying to the pelicans, the albatross? Why don't you eat? Son, you're bone and feathers!"
"I don't mind being bone and feathers mom. I just want to know what I can do in the air and what I can't, that's all. I
just want to know."
"See here Jonathan " said his father not unkindly. "Winter isn't far away. Boats will be few and the surface fish will
be swimming deep. If you must study, then study food, and how to get it. This flying business is all very well, but you
can't eat a glide, you know. Don't you forget that the reason you fly is to eat."
Jonathan nodded obediently. For the next few days he tried to behave like the other gulls; he really tried, screeching
and fighting with the flock around the piers and fishing boats, diving on scraps of fish and bread. But he couldn't
make it work.
It's all so pointless, he thought, deliberately dropping a hard-won anchovy to a hungry old gull chasing him. I could
be spending all this time learning to fly. There's so much to learn!
It wasn't long before Jonathan Gull was off by himself again, far out at sea, hungry, happy, learning.
The subject was speed, and in a week's practice he learned more about speed than the fastest gull alive.
From a thousand feet, flapping his wings as hard as he could, he pushed over into a blazing steep dive toward the
waves, and learned why seagulls don't make blazing steep power-dives. In just six seconds he was moving seventy
miles per hour, the speed at which one's wing goes unstable on the upstroke.
Time after time it happened. Careful as he was, working at the very peak of his ability, he lost control at high speed.
Climb to a thousand feet. Full power straight ahead first, then push over, flapping, to a vertical dive. Then, every
time, his left wing stalled on an upstroke, he'd roll violently left, stall his right wing recovering, and flick like fire
into a wild tumbling spin to the right.
He couldn't be careful enough on that upstroke. Ten times he tried, and all ten times, as he passed through seventy
miles per hour, he burst into a churning mass of feathers, out of control, crashing down into the water.
The key, he thought at last, dripping wet, must be to hold the wings still at high speeds - to flap up to fifty and then
hold the wings still.
From two thousand feet he tried again, rolling into his dive, beak straight down, wings full out and stable from the
moment he passed fifty miles per hour. It took tremendous strength, but it worked. In ten seconds he had blurred
through ninety miles per hour. Jonathan had set a world speed record for seagulls!
Jonathan Livingston Seagull Page 2
But victory was short-lived. The instant he began his pullout, the instant he changed the angle of his wings, he
snapped into that same terrible uncontrolled disaster, and at ninety miles per hour it hit him like dynamite. Jonathan
Seagull exploded in midair and smashed down into a brickhard sea.
When he came to, it was well after dark, and he floated in moonlight on the surface of the ocean. His wings were
ragged bars of lead, but the weight of failure was even heavier on his back. He wished, feebly, that the weight could
be just enough to drug him gently down to the bottom, and end it all.
As he sank low in the water, a strange hollow voice sounded within him. There's no way around it. I am a seagull. I
am limited by my nature. If I were meant to learn so much about flying, I'd have charts for brains. If I were meant to fly
at speed, I'd have a falcon's short wings, and live on mice instead of fish. My father was right. I must forget this
foolishness. I must fly home to the Flock and be content as I am, as a poor limited seagull.
The voice faded, and Jonathan agreed. The place for a seagull at night is on shore, and from this moment forth, he
vowed, he would be a normal gull. It would make everyone happier.
He pushed wearily away from the dark water and flew toward the land, grateful for what he had learned about work-
saving low-altitude flying.
But no, he thought. I am done with the way I was, I am done with everything I learned. I am a seagull like every
other seagull, and I will fly like one. So he climbed painfully to a hundred feet and flapped his wings harder, pressing
for shore.
He felt better for his decision to be just another one of the Flock. There would be no ties now to the force that had
driven him to learn, there would be no more challenge and no more failure. And it was pretty, just to stop thinking,
and fly through the dark, toward the lights above the beach.
Dark! The hollow voice cracked in alarm. Seagulls never fly in the dark!
Jonathan was not alert to listen. It's pretty, he thought. The moon and the lights twinkling on the water, throwing
out little beacon-trails through the night, and all so peaceful and still...
Get down! Seagulls never fly in the dark! If you were meant to fly in the dark, you'd have the eyes of an owl! You'd
have charts for brains! You'd have a falcon's short wings!
There in the night, a hundred feet in the air, Jonathan Livingston Seagull - blinked. His pain, his resolutions,
vanished.
Short wings. A falcon's short wings!
That's the answer! What a fool I've been! All I need is a tiny little wing, all I need is to fold most of my wings and
fly on just the tips alone! Short wings!
He climbed two thousand feet above the black sea, and without a moment for thought of failure and death, he
brought his forewings tightly in to his body, left only the narrow swept daggers of his wingtips extended into the
wind, and fell into a vertical dive.
The wind was a monster roar at his head. Seventy miles per hour, ninety, a hundred and twenty and faster still.
The wing-strain now at a hundred and forty miles per hour wasn't nearly as hard as it had been before at seventy,
and with the faintest twist of his wingtips he eased out of the dive and shot above the waves, a gray cannonball
under the moon.
He closed his eyes to slits against the wind and rejoiced. A hundred forty miles per hour! And under control! If I
dive from five thousand feet instead of two thousand, I wonder how fast..
His vows of a moment before were forgotten, swept away in that great swift wind. Yet he felt guiltless, breaking
the promises he had made himself. Such promises are only for the gulls that accept the ordinary. One who has
touched excellence in his learning has no need of that kind of promise.
By sunup, Jonathan Gull was practicing again. From five thousand feet the fishing boats were specks in the flat blue
water, Breakfast Flock was a faint cloud of dust motes, circling.
He was alive, trembling ever so slightly with delight, proud that his fear was under control. Then without ceremony
he hugged in his forewings, extended his short, angled wingtips, and plunged direcfly toward the sea. By the time he
passed four thousand feet he had reached terminal velocity, the wind was a solid beating wall of sound against which he
could move no faster. He was flying now straight down, at two hundred fourteen miles per hour. He swallowed,
knowing that if his wings unfolded at that speed he'd be blown into a million tiny shreds of seagull. But the speed was
power, and the speed was joy, and the speed was pure beauty.
He began his pullout at a thousand feet, wingtips thudding and blurring in that gigantic wind, the boat and the
crowd of gulls tilting and growing meteor-fast, directly in his path.
He couldn't stop; he didn't know yet even how to turn at that speed.
Collision would be instant death.
And so he shut his eyes.
It happened that morning, then, just after sunrise, that Jonathan Livingston Seagull fired directly through the
center of Breakfast Flock, ticking off two hundred twelve miles per hour, eyes closed, in a great roaring shriek of
wind and feathers. The Gull of Fortune smiled upon him this once, and no one was killed.
By the time he had pulled his beak straight up into the sky he was still scorching along at a hundred and sixty miles
per hour. When he had slowed to twenty and stretched his wings again at last, the boat was a crumb on the sea, four
thousand feet below.
His thought was triumph. Terminal velocity! A seagull at two hundred fourteen miles per hour! It was a
breakthrough, the greatest single moment in the history of the Flock, and in that moment a new age opened for
Jonathan Livingston Seagull Page 3
Jonathan Gull. Flying out to his lonely practice area, folding his wings for a dive from eight thousand feet, he set
himself at once to discover how to turn.
A single wingtip feather, he found, moved a fraction of an inch, gives a smooth sweeping curve at tremendous
speed. Before he learned this, however, he found that moving more than one feather at that speed will spin you like a
rifle ball... and Jonathan had flown the first aerobatics of any seagull on earth.
He spared no time that day for talk with other gulls, but flew on past sunset. He discovered the loop, the slow roll,
the point roll, the inverted spin, the gull bunt, the pinwheel.
When Jonathan Seagull joined the Flock on the beach, it was full night. He was dizzy and terribly tired. Yet in
delight he flew a loop to landing, with a snap roll just before touchdown. When they hear of it, he thought, of the
Breakthrough, they'll be wild with joy. How much more there is now to living! Instead of our drab slogging forth
and back to the fishing boats, there's a reason to life! We can lift ourselves out of ignorance, we can find ourselves
as creatures of excellence and intelligence and skill. We can be free! We can learn to fly!
The years ahead hummed and glowed with promise.
The gulls were flocked into the Council Gathering when he landed, and apparently had been so flocked for some
time. They were, in fact, waiting.
"Jonathan Livingston Seagull! Stand to Center!" The Elder's words sounded in a voice of highest ceremony. Stand
to Center meant only great shame or great honor. Stand to Center for Honor was the way the gulls' foremost leaders
were marked. Of course, he thought, the Breakfast Flock this morning; they saw the Breakthrough! But I want no
honors. I have no wish to be leader. I want only to share what I've found, to show those horizons out ahead for us all.
He stepped forward.
"Jonathan Livingston Seagull," said the Elder, "Stand to Center for Shame in the sight of your fellow gulls!"
It felt like being hit with a board. His knees went weak, his feathers sagged, there was roaring in his ears.
Centered for shame? Impossible! The Breakthrough! They can't understand! They're wrong, they're wrong!
"... for his reckless irresponsibility " the solemn voice intoned, "violating the dignity and tradition of the Gull
Family..."
To be centered for shame meant that he would be cast out of gull society, banished to a solitary life on the Far
Cliffs.
"... one day Jonathan Livingston Seagull, you shall learn that irresponsibility does not pay. Life is the unknown
and the unknowable, except that we are put into this world to eat, to stay alive as long as we possibly can."
A seagull never speaks back to the Council Flock, but it was Jonathan's voice raised. "Irresponsibility? My
brothers!" he cried. "Who is more responsible than a gull who finds and follows a meaning, a higher purpose for life?
For a thousand years we have scrabbled after fish heads, but now we have a reason to live - to learn, to discover, to be
free! Give me one chance, let me show you what I've found..."
The Flock might as well have been stone.
"The Brotherhood is broken," the gulls intoned together, and with one accord they solemnly closed their ears and
turned their backs upon him.
Jonathan Seagull spent the rest of his days alone, but he flew way out beyond the Far Cliffs. His one sorrow was
not solitude, it was that other gulls refused to believe the glory of flight that awaited them; they refused to open their
eyes and see. He learned more each day. He learned that a streamlined high-speed dive could bring him to find the
rare and tasty fish that schooled ten feet below the surface of the ocean: he no longer needed fishing boats and stale
bread for survival. He learned to sleep in the air, setting a course at night across the offshore wind, covering a
hundred miles from sunset to sunrise. With the same inner control, he flew through heavy sea-fogs and climbed
above them into dazzling clear skies... in the very times when every other gull stood on the ground, knowing nothing
but mist and rain. He learned to ride the high winds far inland, to dine there on delicate insects.
What he had once hoped for the Flock, he now gained for himself alone; he learned to fly, and was not sorry for
the price that he had paid. Jonathan Seagull discovered that boredom and fear and anger are the reasons that a gull's
life is so short, and with these gone from his thought, he lived a long fine life indeed.
They came in the evening, then, and found Jonathan gliding peaceful and alone through his beloved sky. The two
gulls that appeared at his wings were pure as starlight, and the glow from them was gentle and friendly in the
high night air. But most lovely of all was the skill with which they flew, their wingtips moving a precise and constant
inch from his own. Without a word, Jonathan put them to his test, a test that no gull had ever passed. He twisted his
wings, slowed to a single mile per hour above stall. The two radiant birds slowed with him, smoothly, locked in
position. They knew about slow flying.
He folded his wings, rolled and dropped in a dive to a hundred ninety miles per hour. They dropped with him,
streaking down in flawless formation.
At last he turned that speed straight up into a long vertical slow-roll. They rolled with him, smiling.
He recovered to level flight and was quiet for a time before he spoke. "Very well," he said, "who are you?"
"We're from your Flock, Jonathan. We are your brothers." The words were strong and calm. "We've come to take
you higher, to take you home."
"Home I have none. Flock I have none. I am Outcast. And we fly now at the peak of the Great Mountain Wind.
Beyond a few hundred feet, I can lift this old body no higher."
"But you can Jonathan. For you have learned. One school is finished, and the time has come for another to begin."
Jonathan Livingston Seagull Page 4
As it had shined across him all his life, so understanding lighted that moment for Jonathan Seagull. They were
right. He could fly higher, and it was time to go home.
He gave one last look across the sky, across that magnificent silver land where he had learned so much.
"I'm ready " he said at last.
And Jonathan Livingston Seagull rose with the two starbright gulls to disappear into a perfect dark sky.
Part Two
So this is heaven, he thought, and he had to smile at himself. It was hardly respectful to analyze heaven in the very
moment that one flies up to enter it.
As he came from Earth now, above the clouds and in close formation with the two brilliant gulls, he saw that his
own body was growing as bright as theirs. True, the same young Jonathan Seagull was there that had always lived
behind his golden eyes, but the outer form had changed.
It felt like a seagull body, but alreadv it flew far better than his old one had ever flown. Why, with half the effort, he
thought, I'll get twice the speed, twice the performance of my best days on Earth!
His feathers glowed brilliant white now, and his wings were smooth and perfect as sheets of polished silver. He
began, delightedly, to learn about them, to press power into these new wings.
At two hundred fifty miles per hour he felt that he was nearing his level-flight maximum speed. At two hundred
seventy-three he thought that he was flying as fast as he could fly, and he was ever so faintly disappointed. There
was a limit to how much the new body could do, and though it was much faster than his old level-flight record, it was
still a limit that would take great effort to crack. In heaven, he thought, there should be no limits.
The clouds broke apart, his escorts called, "Happy landings, Jonathan," and vanished into thin air.
He was flying over a sea, toward a jagged shoreline. A very few seagulls were working the updrafts on the cliffs.
Away off to the north, at the horizon itself, flew a few others. New sights, new thoughts
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