JonJonathan Livingston Seagull is a very short read. The version I had included beautiful photography of seagulls, which took up at least half of the 127 pages. I read the whole thing in less than an hour.
Jonathan is a seagull who just wants to learn to fly better. He practices flying in ways other seagulls are not meant to. After being told to stop for a while, his community kicks him out as an outcast. This doesn’t deter him. He keeps practicing different maneuvers and fast speeds meant for birds like falcons. He keeps getting better and better and grows old. He then dies and gets carried away to heaven by two other seagulls who are even better than him. They ask him to be taught by them. He becomes so good his new mentor teaches him to fly faster than light, and pretty soon he can teleport anywhere he wants. His mentor dies or kind of fades away, and then he begins teaching other heavenly birds until he decides to go back to his flock that abandoned him. He brings other students with him.
His old flock is so impressed with the skills he knows that they are eager to learn from him. They start calling him the son of the Great Gull or God. He continues to teach them until he dies again, but this time just fades away. The flock and community start worshiping him with rituals and explaining how he came back from the dead. They pay more attention to the rituals than learning how to fly. Hundreds of years go by until one of his followers begins to learn to fly as Jonathan did in the beginning, and he dies, and Jonathan appears to take him to heaven. End of story.
This was one of the most heavy-handed, “hidden” Christian messages I have ever read. This makes the lion, the witch, and the wardrobe seem subtle. It is basically saying that it doesn’t matter how you practice; as long as you believe in Jesus, you are better than everyone who doesn’t. It might have been a good message if it stopped before the death and transportation and reincarnation.
My message to my readers is: Just learn to fly.
1 out of 5 stars.
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