Part One

1

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 hold 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 feathers 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!

2

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 be pushed over into a

blazing steep dive toward the waves, and learned why seagulls don't make blazing

steep 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!

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 brick hard sea.

3

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, and 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.

4

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 directly 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 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 little 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.

5

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 eyes and turned their backs upon him.

6

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