Essay Questions

What are some key features of a fable?

John Livingston Seagull is often referred to as a "fable." A fable is a short story that conveys a moral and uses some key features. The most important feature of a fable is the moral of the story. In John Livingston Seagull, the moral is to go against the crowd and to follow your own desires despite what others think.

Typically, characters are animals in fables, whose characteristics and behaviors are then used by the author to tell us something about human nature. For example, Jonathan's desire to fly rather than eat represents the human desire to be individualistic. Fables often also have a rural, outdoor setting. This is true of Jonathan Livingston Seagull, which is set on a beautiful coast: "It was morning, and the new sun sparkled gold across the ripples of a gentle sea."

How does this tale promote individuality?

Johnathan dreams of being able to fly better than any other seagull, but in doing so he faces rejection and exile from his pack. He first tries to act like the other seagulls, which made him feel better for a short time: "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." However, he soon begins to find this life mundane and unfulfilling. He again devotes his time to flying, sharing his enthusiasm with his pack, who don't understand.

After his exile, Jonathan meets two skillful seagulls, who invite him to learn with them. He follows them and finds a community of birds just like himself, who love flying. As such, this tale is about following your own inclinations and passions and encourages being individualistic. If Jonathan would have followed the pack and ignored his own passions, he wouldn't have found happiness and other like-minded seagulls.

How does Bach depict the mundane life of the other seagulls?

Bach emphasizes the mundane life of the other seagulls, which helps us to understand why Johnathan is interested in flying. The narrator describes the other seagulls in the following passage, depicting the gulls as being obsessed with eating, and concerned with nothing else: "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." Their life is depicted as being monotonous, boring and stagnated, which emphasizes the difference between Jonathan and his pack.