Word: gull
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Jonathan occasionally sounds like a Boy Scout leader, a jet-fighter pilot and St. Paul, but, at least in Part 1, he is really just the gull next door. He yearns to learn to fly better and faster than any other gull. His mother urges him to act like the other gulls and eat better ("Son, you're bone and feathers!"). His father tells him that life is hard. Jonathan can't help himself. He keeps practicing highspeed dives but fails to pull out properly because of his long wings. Temporarily, he gives up: "I am a seagull...
...incredible breakthrough. But the Flock is blind to the bright future Jonathan has opened to knowledge and perfect flight. They cast him out. Alone now, Jonathan improves his flying-night navigation, slow rolls, loops, the gull bunt. Eventually two radiant gulls who can fly precise formation with him appear and take him to what he (and the reader) at first thinks is heaven...
...Free. Studying up there with gulls named Sullivan and Chiang, Jonathan carries his quest for the joy of perfection to unimaginable flight skills and speeds. He finally learns to move from here to there instantly, just by thinking of it. He also learns that there is no heaven and no death. Existence is simply an infinite possibility of self-perfection through many different levels of consciousness. When he wonders why there are so few gulls at this level, he gets a heavy message from Sullivan. Unlike Jonathan, most gulls are interested only in eating, and so do not progress. "Learn...
...saying I can fly?" squeaks poor little Maynard Gull...
...free," says Jonathan. Maynard flies. The Flock talks of miracles and says that Jonathan is the son of the Great Gull himself. Jonathan is distressed. It is only the idea of perfection that has done the work. Then Jonathan leaves, counseling his disciples to love...