To read a Barbara Kingsolver
novel is to enter a well-described world with memorable and flawed characters
rooted in a sense of place. Having read The Bean Trees and The Poisonwood Bible,
I knew I'd be in the hands of a capable storyteller whose narrative would
masterfully evoke a deeper meaning. Flight Behavior is a book about so many
things--environment, family, loss, dreams, and experience--but all those things
seem to fall under one big thing: change.
I wanted to read Flight Behavior because of its plot about
the environment, and the book was surely an elegant way to tell a literary
story with an important message about nature, both in the sense of flora and
fauna as well human nature. The main character, Dellarobia, really becomes
quite the heroine as she works through her personal issues and
changes that parallel the environmental change that occurs on their land. At
first, when a monarch butterfly population uncharacteristically migrates to Dellarobia's hometown,
it is seen as a blessing, and while in some ways the opportunities the
butterflies create for Dellarobia and her family are a blessing, the more
Dellarobia learns about the butterflies, the more she realizes this change in
migratory direction puts the survival of the butterflies at risk. And so it
goes that we see how one change in course, one variance in flight behavior, can
gain problematic momentum if the course is not readjusted. This is true for
Dellarobia, who struggles to find her true course and struggles to come to grips
with the consequences (good and bad) that changes may have. The novel suggests that this, too,
is true for the environment, for as the global community continues on its unnatural
course, the realities and consequences of global warming only accumulate and
the chance to correct the course becomes more difficult and the possibility of
doing so less optimistic. However, I think what we are meant to learn from our heroine Dellarobia is that, no matter how difficult, it is not too late to try
to correct where you went wrong and to try to make the world, and your own personal
world, a more thriving place, and at the very least set an example for those
around you.
Kingsolver, Barbara. Flight Behavior. New York: Harper / HarperCollins, 2012.
