He is flanked in flight one evening by two gleaming gulls who invite him to ascend with them to a higher plane of existence. After many years pass, Jonathan has lived a long but solitary life. Jonathan had hoped to share his new flight methods with the Flock, and show them how different methods of flight would make it even easier to find fruitful food sources in the ocean, but resignedly accepts that he will be a loner for the rest of his life. That night, when Jonathan rejoins his Flock up on the beach, he is called into the center of a Council meeting and singled out for Shame by the Elder Gull before being Outcast and banished to the distant Far Cliffs. After he experiences a breakthrough in flight, though, and successfully executes a complicated dive from a height of five thousand feet, he is more determined than ever to devote his life to studying flight. He struggles with being different-he is sad to disappoint his parents, and he briefly considers trying hard to be just another member of the Flock. Jonathan, however, loves practicing airborne acrobatics and testing the limits of his speed and form. Most gulls only know the “simplest facts of flight,” and use flight as a utilitarian mode of transportation and as a way to get food. Jonathan Livingston Seagull is different from the other birds in his Flock.
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