Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver

Posted for Teya James

Cli-Fi Midterm Book Report: Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver

In this story of a colony of butterflies and a young, unhappily married woman that has
strayed from their optimal flight paths, Barbara Kingslover uses a creative mix of characters to
point out how we are all major contributors in the global climate change and the high price future
generations will have to pay. The main character, Dellarobia Turnbow, a twenty eight year old
woman, born and raised in Feathertown, Tennessee which is located in the eastern Appalachians,
finds herself in a boring and unfulfilling marriage and feels trapped by her familial
responsibilities.
One day, she decides to have an affair with the local telephone repair man, but on the
way to meet him she is stopped in her tracks, in what she believes to be a miracle or divine
intervention. "The forest blazed with its own internal flame. ‘Jesus,' she said, not calling for help,
she and Jesus weren't that close, but putting her voice in the world because nothing else present
made sense. The sun slipped out by another degree, passing its warmth across the land, and the
mountain seemed to explode with light. Brightness of a new intensity moved up the valley in a
rippling wave, like the disturbed surface of a lake. Every bough glowed with an orange blaze.
'Jesus God,' she said again. No words came to her that seemed sane. Trees turned to fire, a
burning bush." As she gazes in frightening awe, scripture flows into her mind and causes her to
turn back, thinking it is God showing His disapproval. She was not wearing her glasses, but
whatever it was, it’s a miracle of “unearthly beauty”. To Dellarobia, it looks like the “inside of
joy”. The vision turns out to be of such enormous consequence that the world will soon arrive on
her doorstep, the large orange blur in the sky, unknown to her at the time, is actually a massive
migration of monarch butterflies.
Dellarobia runs off to tell her family about the miraculous thing she just witnessed and
her family want to tell local reporters what was found – but Dellarobia was reluctant and urges
her family to wait and have it investigated. As her and her family ascend to the mountainside,
they discover an unbelievable sight: millions of butterflies – monarch butterflies covering all of
the trees and shrubs, everything in sight. After telling their congregation at their church on the
following day, the Turnbow’s realize how much the butterflies arriving will financially impact
their lives, they try to exploit this strange phenomenon. However, this enrages Dellarobia and
asks herself why everyone was talking past each other, not listening to one another or even
questioning why the butterflies are there. They are all just hearing what they want to hear and
trying to find the best way to cash in. “There were two worlds here, behaving as if their own was
all that mattered. With such reluctance to converse, one with the other. Practically without a
common language”.