CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

“Literature is the art of discovering something extraordinary about ordinary people, and

saying with ordinary words something extraordinary”

-Boris Pasternak

The Literature serves as a medium to communicate the human ideas and thoughts

through words. The English words are rich because that vary in meaning and the

flexibility of English vocabulary. “The best expression of best thought reduced to

writing” was classified by Encyclopedia Britannica Eleventh Edition (1910-

1911).Through expression of ideas and thought of human the writing in English are held.

Any written form of work of art constitutes a part in literature. The writings should have

an artistic or intellectual value. The development of writing that makes an effort to

deliver enlightenment or instruct the readers.

Literature is a form of self-expression. W. H. Hudson rightly stated that, “The

literature deals with great drama of human life and action”. The literature may be any

forms of work of art, all are written in the personal point of view. It may be the past

achievements, people‟s culture and historical periods. Personal experience is the basis of

real literature. The source of literature is found within the life itself. So literature

historically means the work of art with ideas, thoughts and feelings by applying the

aesthetic language. The literature is considered as the writer‟s path to open up their

thoughts and emotions in an impressive way. The work of art may reveal the world we

live and also about the world of imagination through the creative minds of the writers.

The value of literature is measured by its genuineness.

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American literary history begins with the age of colonialism. The writers

originally brought the ideas from the English,which means the early American literature

is based on the literature of England. On the other hand,there were some writers who

explored new topics and helped to shape America‟s own literary tradition. The common

topics in early periods were connected with issues of living in a new land, travelling and

mainly based on religion.

John Smith is considered to be the first American writer. He was an explorer and

a colonialist. A True Relation of Virginia (1607) is said to be the first American book in

English. It describes the problems of colonising the area. Anne Bradstreet wrote lyrical,

religious poetry. Mary Rowlandson gives us the image of women‟s life in colonial

period. Benjamin Franklin is one of the most important figures of the period. He can be

described as a “renaissance man”-a person of many skills. He was a politician, scientist,

philosopher, publisher, humorist, inventor and a writer. His notable work is The Way to

Wealth(1758). Thomas Jefferson was an essayist, lawyer and politician. His contribution

to the history of America is that he is the main author of Declaration of Independence.

He is also the 3rd President of United States of America.

During the period of romanticism in America, the Americans were different from

the English. They had a growing interest towards the Indian and their culture. The topics

were mostly stressed on imagination, nature and individualism. Washington Irving was

the America‟s first professional writer and the founder of short story in the USA. James

Fennimore Cooper was one of the famous writers of America. His series of five novels,

called Leatherstocking Tales(1823). Edgar Allan Poe is one of most important figures of

the American literary tradition. His writings are gloomy and bizarre. Poe is the founder

of modern American horror stories and detective stories. His most famous works

include: The Raven(1845), The Black Cat (1843).

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Ralph Waldo Emerson is a famous writer expresses the transcendentalist ideas.

Henry David Thoreau was the author of a philosophical book, WaldenandCivil

Disobedience(1848). Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote The Scarlet Letter (1850)one of the

most famous and important books in the American literary history. This book criticises

the Puritan morals, prejudice and intolerance. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow is known

for his romantic poems. He wrote a famous collection of poems, Voices of the

Night(1839). His poems are written in a simple language.

Walt Whitman is considered as one of the best American poets of all time. He

introduced free verse-no metrical pattern and no rhyme appear in his poems. Leaves of

Grass (1891-1892)is a collection of poem about freedom. Emily Dickinson is another

poet considered as one of the greatest in American history. Her poems are rarely

published during her lifetime. Herman Melville wrote the famous novel, Moby-Dick.

During the period of realism in America, Novel is the main genre. One of the

prominent writers of this period is Mark Twain. He was a great American novelist, short

story writer and humorist. His famous novels are Adventures of Tom Sawyer(1876), The

Prince and the Pauper(1881). In 20th century writers arise with the thoughts of

modernism and are called as “Modernist writers”. Ernest Hemingway is probably the

most famous representative of this age. His novel The Old Man and Sea (1952) earned

Nobel Prize for him. F. Scott Fitzgerald is well known for The Great Gatsby(1925).

William Faulkner is one of the most important writers of American South. His work is

The Sound and the Fury (1929). Sinclair Lewis was a satirist. He is the first American

writer to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. John Steinbeck is one of the best

known socially critical writers of all time. Tennessee Williams wrote psychological

plays. His plays are one of the most quoted American plays ever written.
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Arthur Miller is a writer belonging to two different centuries from twentieth to

twenty-first century. He wrote Death of a Salesman(1949). Saul Bellow is an American

Jewish writer. He was a Nobel Laureate. He is a towering figure of 20th Century

Literature. His work is To Jerusalem and Back (1975).

Barbara Kingsolver was named the most important writers of 20th Century by

Writer’s Digest. During 1980‟s Kingsolver emerged on the American Literary History.

Her literary career was about three decades. Throughout her literary career, she followed

her own progressive ethics of society during her times. Kingsolver‟s themes of writing

include Feminism, Environmentalism, post-colonialism. The themes are all arise from

the life lived in the pursuit of social justice. She is very sensitive to women‟s feelings

and experiences. The class communities in her works make her writings unique. Barbara

Kingsolver‟s literature fits into the category of South Western American Literature. Most

of works sets in the location of American Southwest.

Barbara Kingsolver was born on April 8, 1955 to Doctor Wendell R. Kingsolver

and Virginia Henry Kingsolver, in Annapolis, Maryland. Her father was a physician in

rural Kentucky. She grew up in Carlisle, Kentucky, a tobacco-growing region of

Appalachia. Here Kingsolver observed the great discrimination between the rich and the

poor. In 1964, when Kingsolver was seven years old, her family moved to Belgian

Congo and lived there for a year. In Congo Barbara Kingsolver learned what it meant to

be a complete outsider. Her experience in Congo was found in one of her works, The

Poisonwood Bible. She was a shy child and always buried herself into books. She was a

tall and skinny during her adolescent age. Kingsolver chose her college career at

DePauw University in Indiana. She won the scholarship to study music because she is a

pianist. Later she changed her major to Biology.

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In 1977, she was graduated from DePauw University with magna cum laude.

During her college days she was involved in Demonstration against American

involvement in the war in Vietnam. She followed the path in which her parents had set

her by stressing the importance of a life that was lived for principles and services. After

pursuing her degree at DePauw University, she went to Europe for two years. This was

the time of freedom and experimentation of Barbara Kingsolver. She attempted various

jobs and dissatisfied with that and finally learned that her life was different from what

she had known in Kentucky and Indiana. She returned to American and settled in

Tucson, Arizona in 1970. She joined in a Master‟s Degree program in Ecology and

Evolutionary Biology at the University of Arizona. In 1981, she received a Master of

Science Degree.

She started up the doctoral studies in Evolutionary Biology. But she discontinued

the studies because she felt disappointed with the academics. Then she became a writer

of Science write-ups in the office of Arid Land Studies at the University of Arizona. Her

continuing and deep interest in the natural world and in Biology isexposed in her works.

Her writings reflect animal imagery and keen descriptions of natural phenomena. Her

scientific training later had an impact in her writings. She started writing curiously like a

research scientist. As a process of experimentation it leads to the discovery of new

learning in the case of a scientist. Kingsolver‟s treatment of writing led her to the

discovery and development of the new perceptions. Kingsolver‟s self-education as a

writer began as a scientific writer. She was an activist in the Sanctuary movement for

refugees in Central America and also in Ecological and Humanitarian movements. In

1983, she developed curiosity in freelance journalism work reporting against the Phelps

Dodge Copper Mining Company in Southern Arizona.

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Kingsolver‟s professional career began as a Journalist. The political activism she

had practiced had mingled with her life as a writer. In 1985 Kingsolver married Joseph

Hoffman, a chemist. During the period of her first pregnancy she had suffered with the

problem of insomnia. Due to her continuous trouble of insomnia, she began to write her

first novel, The Bean Trees.Her first daughter, Camille was born in 1987. Later she

divorced Joseph Hoffman in 1993. Later she married Steven Hopp, an Ornithologist in

1994. In 1996, her younger daughter Lily is born.

Kingsolver‟s first novel, The Bean Trees,was published in 1988.In this novel, the

protagonist Taylor‟s narrative is akin to Kingsolver herself. Kingsolver traces her own

experience and transforms them into the kinds of adventures that her characters undergo.

The Bean Trees won American Library Association Award in 1988. This success

encouraged her to complete her work, Holding the Line Women in the Great Arizona

Mine Strike of 1983. It is a non-fiction work that is published in 1989. This work

presents the women‟s bravery and the determination to protest against the copper mining

company in Southern Arizona. In the same year 1989, she published a collection of short

fiction Homeland and Other Stories. As the title suggests, its theme is about the

community and the place and it focuses mainly on females.

Kingsolver‟s second novel is Animal dreams, it was published in 1990. This

novel describes the story of women‟s search for self and belongingness. It covers

Kingsolver‟s familial areas including the American government‟s policy in Central

America, feminism, environmentalism, class structure, and racial issues. Barbara

Kingsolver‟s first collection of poetry is Another America/Otra America in 1992. It

reveals the sense of being a citizen of the world. Her third novel, Pigs in Heaven is

published in 1993 and it was an outcome of her first novel, The Bean Trees. It was her

First National Bestseller.

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In 1995, she published her collection of essays, High Tide in Tucson: Essays from

now or never. This was inspired by Kingsolver‟s life experience. In 1998, she published

her fourth novel, The Poisonwood Bible. With this novel, Kingsolver‟s literary career has

attained a new stage. The Poisonwood Bible is a complex novel that treats political issues

of worldwide significance. This novel is written in multiple female perspectives.

Kingsolver has published her fifth novel, Prodigal Summer in 2000. It handles with the

problems of inherited sense of land complicates the family‟s acceptance of an outsider

who marries into a rural agricultural family. This novel is set in the South western

Appalachia. A book of essays, Small Wonder was published in 2002. It retreats

Kingsolver‟s concern for ordinary events, writings, and patriotism. In the same year

2002, she served as an editor for The Best American Short Stories. Along with

photographer Annie Griffiths, Kingsolver wrote the book, Last Stand: America’s Virgin

Lands published in 2002.

Kingsolver‟s non-fiction work, Animal Vegetable, Miracle: A year of Food

Life,was published in 2007.This work is co-written with Steven and Camille. This work

is about farming and food economies framed by a memoir of our family‟s year of

producing or procuring our food locally. In 2009, Barbara Kingsolver‟s sixth novel The

Lacuna was published. The Lacunais the survey of history, collective memory, the

American identity. Ittells the story of a man who has been caught between two worlds.

His search for his identity takes the readers heart to set in the most turbulent events in the

twentieth century. Kingsolver‟s seventh novel, Flight Behaviour is published in 2012.

This novel brought her back to her home Appalachia where she saw a growing mistrust

between rural and urban cultures. Here in this novel, it depicts the perspectives on

globalisation, science, religion, and especially the alarming climate change.

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The novel presents the life of a young woman, DellarobiaTurnbow whose life

transforms and takes flight when she learns the real problems of the world in which she

spreads her wings. This novel tells about the strong fact about the climate change in the

world. It also tells about the media exploitation and political opportunism that lie at the

root of what may be our most urgent dilemma.It portrays the alarming new weather

pattern that hits the regular migratory patterns of Mexican Monarch Butterflies. There

are no heroes or demonic villains. This novel responds to the local effects of the global

climate crisis. Kingsolver‟s eighth novel Unsheltered was published recently in October

2018.

Barbara Kingsolver‟s personal life is revealed in most of her works. Her personal

life is centred on marriage life and motherhood, but her personal life and political

leanings can never be separated. Her works represents Southern Appalachia, her

hometown in most of her works. We can able to notice this location Appalachia in her

two famous novels, Prodigal Summer and Flight Behaviour. Her works have been

translated into more than a dozen languages. Kingsolver‟s works have been adopted into

the core literature curriculum in high schools and colleges throughout the nation. She has

contributed to more than fifty literary anthologies and also her reviews and articles have

appeared in most major U.S. newspapers and magazines. At present she lives with her

family in south western Virginia.

Barbara Kingsolver was honoured with many awards for her works and for her

dedicated literary career. She was honoured with American Library Association Awards

for The Bean Trees and Homeland and Other Stories. Animal Dreams won Edward

Abbey Ecofiction Award in 1991. This work also got the PEN / Faulkner Award for

fiction in 1991. In 1998, Kingsolver established the Bellwether Prize for fiction.
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In 1999, she received the Patterson Fiction Prize for The Poisonwood Bible. She

received the National Humanities Medal in 2000 for her commitment to writing and the

humanities. This was the America‟s highest honours for service through the arts. She

won the National book award of South Africa. She got International IMPAC Dublin

Literary Award for Prodigal Summer. Kingsolver‟s achievements include the Enoch

Pratt Library Lifetime Achievement Medal in 2005. In 2010, The Lacuna got Orange

Prize for fiction. In the same year 2010, Animal, Vegetables, Miracle won numerous

prizes, including the James Beard Award. Kingsolver has also received honorary

doctorates from DePauw University and Duke University.

In the period of contemporary women‟s fiction, the hunt for trustworthy female

self is the central theme. The search includes both environmental and psychological

aspects. It involves the terms with multiple social and cultural forces external as well as

internal that leads individual female‟s life. The very subject of Barbara Kingsolver‟s

novels is woman‟s subsequent attempts to re-examine her life and shape it in accordance

with her feminist consciousness. Kingsolver‟s narratives are so effective as to portray the

process of self-development or self-evolution. Self-evolution brings about a change in

the individual and makes her in cooperation with other individuals. It enables the

recognition of human potentials.

Barbara Kingsolver was a strong feminist. In her feminist writings, she manages

to choose women who make the most important commentary on issues like social and

political in nature. Kingsolver‟s works participate in the genre of bildungsroman

especially female bildungsroman. The female protagonists in her novels grow by

learning from life itself and speak in their own voices. However, once discovers her

identity, place in the society, begin to develop. In her novels female protagonists

establishes a new image.

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Flight Behaviour is Barbara Kingsolver‟s seventh novel published in 2012. This

novel is beautifully written and compelling account of working people responding to the

local effects of a global crisis. This novel is an impressive exploration of climate change.

It is a captivating and deeply human story touching on class, poverty and climate change.

It explores the truth we live by and the complexities that behind them. This novel is set

in Appalachia, a region to which Kingsolver returned often in both acclaimed fiction and

non-fiction. Its suspenseful narrative traces the unforeseen impact of global concerns on

the ordinary citizens of a rural community. As environmental, economic, and political

issues unite, the residents of Feathertown, Tennessee, are forced to come to terms with

their changing place in the larger world.

DellarobiaTurnbow, a female protagonist was born and raised in Feathertown,

Tennessee in the Southern Appalachian Mountains. She is a bright and attractive 28-year

old woman. She feels trapped in her rural life and an unexpected marriage life. Her

husband, Cub, whom she married, is kind and passive man whose life is dominated by

his parents. She is a mother of two young children, Preston and Cordelia and feels

trapped in the rural poverty. Breaking out from her despairing daily routine and the

unfulfilled existence, On November, she finally feels ready to throw away her family for

an affair with a young telephone repairman. And so she climbs the mountain on the back

part of the family farm to meet her lover. She sees the magnificent vision of orange

covering the trees and flying into the sky across the valley on another edge. Without her

glasses she can‟t she what it is, but her religious upbringing makes her to think it is a

sign that she is making a bad decision and she returns home to her husband and young

children. Dellarobia and Cub share their property with Cub‟s parents, Hester and Bear.

The family‟s collapsed economy and terrible weather that ruined the year‟s hay

crop, the farm is falling under an equipment loan. Bear signs a contract with a logging
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company to clear-cut the mountains where Dellarobia curiously urges Cub to check out

the mountain before they strip it in case there is something more valuable than trees up

there. The family takes a look and discovers that the trees and mountain are covered in

Monarch Butterflies. In church the following Sunday, Cub states to Pastor Bobby Ogle

that Dellarobia had a “vision” that led them to discover the butterflies.

The small community is divided on whether the butterflies are some kind of gift

from God, but Bear is determined to long anyway, desperate for the money so the

Turnbow won‟t lose their entire farm. News of the butterflies slowly spreads, and

Dellarobia is unexpectedly visited by an immigrant family from a small town in Mexico

where the monarchs usually spend their winters before a recent flood and mudslide that

destroyed the entire community. Dellarobia is visited by reporters who want to hear her

miraculous story and also by a scientist named Ovid Byron, who has studied the

migratory patterns of monarchs for the length of his career, and she sees their mysterious

settling in Tennessee, miles away from their usual routine, as awarning sign of climate

change.

The differences in ecology and temperature between Mexico and Tennessee

could lead to the death of the monarchs before winter is over. Ovid sets up a camp with

assistants to study the butterflies in the Turnbow‟s barn, but often finds the local narrow-

mindedness about science and global warming to be astonishing. After the arrival of

Ovid, Dellarobia realised a fact that her son, Preston was so much interested in nature,

animals and about Science. Ovid declares that he might be a Scientist in future.

After the National news report mistakenly claims Dellarobia saved from a suicide

by her vision of the butterflies. Dellarobia finds that she was becoming uncomfortably

famous and wishes to have her privacy back.Dellarobiabecomes more attached to Ovid

when she begins to work with him in the data collection for his experiments. Ovid offers
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a new job to Dellarobia to work with him in his experiments about the Monarch

Butterflies. Nevertheless Hester and Dellarobia usually don‟t have the best relationship.

Hester insisted Dellarobia to urge Cub to stand against the Bear‟s logging decision.

Hester‟s deep-rooted faith leads her to continue in the idea that the Butterflies have come

straight from the God himself.

As Ovid induced Dellarobia about the threatening facts about the climate change

and the risks of flooding and mudslides that logging would bring to their property.

Dellarobia readily agrees with her mother-in-law, Hester, but Cub is harder to get in

convinced with the facts about the dangers about Global warming. The more she

attracted to Ovid, the more she realised her marriage to Cub. She married Cub

accidentally, as a high school girl with pregnancy that later ended in miscarriage. Hester

once revealed a fact that she always maintains a distance with Dellarobia because she

believed that she would leave at any point of time. Hester remained too smart and

ambitious for her son.

At that point of time, Ovid‟s wife Juliet arrived to their barn and Dellarobia is

forced to admit her own faults that she could have a future with the scientist. According

to Dellarobia‟s opinion,her marriage is an accident for both Cub and her. She once

revealed to Cub, the truth about her visit to the mountain top to run off from their

marriage life. With the help of Pastor Bobby Ogle, Bear draw back his contract for

logging the forest, saying that God must have sent the Butterflies for a reason and they

should respect God‟s creation without destroying them.

The butterflies come through a strange, mild winter and begin to make

movements towards living in their now usual migratory schedule. After a week, a spring-

like weather came up with a mild warm temperature in the atmosphere, that helped the

butterflies to break from their diapauses, that they had underwent during the winter
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season and begin to mate each other. Suddenly a terrible snowfall all over the area makes

Ovid and Dellarobia feel that the total monarch population will be lost. Yet Dellarobia

witnesses some fractions of monarchs continuing their flight pattern.

Dellarobia plans a different world for her children and for her. She plans to move

off from her farm and have a separate life with her children along with her friend,

Dovey, leaving Cub alone in his farm and decided that the children will visit him once in

a weekend. She returns to join college and later she planned to work as a scientist in any

lab. But it is less possible that both the butterflies and she will survive.

After the heavy snowfall, the next day was a sunny day, sun was at its highest

beam that made the snow to melt and cause a heavy flood in the forest. Dellarobia was

alone in the home, waiting for the arrival of her family members. The heavy flood rushed

into the farm and there was a heavy downpour from the mountains that made the whole

farm and the land completely immersed in the flood. Dellarobia climbed over the fence

to save her life, at that moment she watched the most horrifyingscene. Her house was

completely submerged into the water and the layout of her home is totally wiped out. She

could see a blur vision of orange cloud on the sky and it was the flight of monarchs not

as individuals but may be a million, that reflected in the surface of water that seems like

a shine of a floating oil, it is more like a lava flow. Their numbers astonished her, she

could not look up for very long, instead she looked the fire bursting wings of the

monarchs in the water that seems like the fire and flood at the same time, they are taking

flight to a new earth.

Flight Behaviour deals with the themes of science, religion, poverty, climate

change. This novel explores the conflict between the rural and poor, uneducated and

college-educated people, wealthier and urban people. It dealt with the problems in the

attitudes of the two different people towards the climate change. In this novel, we can see
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a clash between the people of two different perspectives towards the migration of the

monarch butterflies. Some people view them in a scientific point of view that the

migration of these butterflies is due to the changes in the climate and new weather

patterns collapsed their regular migratory pattern. Some others think it in a religious

point of view, that God had sent those butterflies to this forest and believes that was their

gift from God. In the opening of the novel, Dellarobia sees the vision of the butterflies as

a sign from God that she could not go through with the affair that she is to have. Later

Ovid enters the story and explains it is due to the changing climatic conditions, still

Hester believes it as a sign from God. The novel enfolds both the science and the faith as

parallel beliefs.

Media exploitation is also treated in this novel. The media people also focused on

the religious side of the migration of the butterflies, constructing a story that Dellarobia

was saved from suicide by the vision of these monarchs. Media people never come with

a fact that the climate changes are the original reason for the shifting migratory pattern of

these butterflies. Each chapter in this novel is titled in such a way, the life of a single

person is related to the global level focus and then back to the single person‟s life. In the

opening of the novel Dellarobia is known only for the small town people where she lives.

When she discovers the butterflies on their farm she becomes very famous. She is known

worldwide and many people and news crews from many different places came to visit

her farm and ask her about the sudden arrival of these butterflies.

The character of the protagonist, Dellarobia is changed with the development of

the novel. At the opening of the Dellarobia she sees herself as a strong and independent

woman who thinks herself as smart woman so as to leave her husband and to start an

affair. Throughout the book, her image of herself is destroyed and a new one is formed.

When Ovid Byron and the scientists come to Turnbow farm makes her to see how little
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she actually knows about this world and the things going on it. While she initially saw

herself as strong, she notices that instead of being brave and strong and getting out of

marriage that she has hated from almost the day it began. She has nestled herself into the

safety of staying with Cub. She also fooled herself around with other men than Cub. By

the end of the book, many of the things that she initially thought as false have become

true. After spending many hours in lab with Ovid, she has learned a huge amount of

information about the butterflies, politics, climate change and the world as a whole. She

eventually has courage to leave Cub and ends up living on her own. She started to make

money on her own. She has become a better person overall.

In this dissertation, I would take up the consequence of climate change as the

main concept of Flight Behaviour. The varying climatic conditions and their effects on

living beings, is clearly depicted in this novel. Kingsolver has confidently attempted this

work, so as to bring awareness about the climate changes and the dangers about the

global warming. Kingsolver has created the fictional characters, landscape and settings in

order to create the atmosphere of varying climatic conditions and the catastrophe it has

brought at the end of the novel. From the beginning of the novel itself, we can notice the

characters are involved in the troubles of climate changes. Kingsolver has undergone a

series of scientific facts about the climate change to warn about the catastrophic

conditions in the particular monarch species in her novel.

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CHAPTER II

THE BIOTIC CONSEQUENCES OF CLIMATE CHANGE

Nowadays we lack in the conceptof novels that depicts the awareness about

climate change. This dissertation ponders the ways that climate change affects the lives

of biotic community. The reasons are various and it is a vast and global concern. No one

is directly responsible for it, yet everyone has contributed to it. The field of eco criticism

lacked significant discussion of its most serious issue, climate change.Climate change is

persistently a complex topic. A new type of novel is needed to address the new type of

reality. A new genre is essential to discuss about the alarming facts about the changing

climate to bring awareness to the people in this world. “Climate Fiction” or “cli-fi”, this

term was coined in 2007 by the Taiwan-based North American activist and

bloggerjournalist Dan Bloom, who actively continues to promote it. “cli-fi”has been

particularly prolific in recent North American literatures and cultures.

Climate change is a super wicked problem and it is a frightening and depressing

subject. It stimulates the fear of the severity of consequences and their implications for

our future life, guilt over our own actions and failure to take action, and the feelings of

helplessness and inefficiency. This threatens the individual‟s sense of how the world is

and the meaning of life, and their faith in progress. “cli-fi” narratives may function not

only to raise awareness on climate issuesbut also to open up new ways to affectively

andethically connect these global matters to one‟s privatelife. “cli-fi” relates to global

climate in danger of trespassing boundaries of human safety. Even though cli-fi tends to

treat climate change as a global threat, narratives often remains on a local level when

exploring the impacts of natural disaster.

The climate fiction is set in the very near future or even in the present itself. The

contemporary authors are retrieving from their literary tradition and adapting to their
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depictions of the risk involved in global warming and thus causes the climatic changes.

The main aim for the authors of the climate fiction is to bring awareness about the

changing climatic conditions and to warn them about the global warming and their

contribution to this dangerous situation with some fictional narratives in their novels.

As a global population, inclusive of humans, flora and fauna, we are each subject,

though unsuitably in form, to the risks associated with our planet‟s changing climate.

These changes are largely caused by our constant expulsion though changing CO2

emissions into the atmosphere. Our globalized world and economic activities have

largely caused the burning of fossil fuels. The average global temperature has increased

by 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit (0.8 degrees Celsius) over the past hundred years. More

extreme weather events such as droughts, snowstorms and rainstorms are to be expected

with significant shifts in wind patterns, annual precipitation and seasonal temperature

variations

The 2014 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change states that

to diminish the worst effects of climate change, which means keeping warming below

2°C, we need to achieve emissions scenarios relative to pre-industrial levels.Without

such reductions we can expect substantial species extinction, increased food insecurity,

frequent extreme precipitation events, continued warming and acidification of the ocean,

global mean sea level rise, and more frequent and longer lasting heatwaves. Responding

to this means collective action at a global level. The impacts of climate change we can

reflect on what current and future ecological destruction might involve.

The Arctic has warmed at about twice the rate of the global average since 1980.

Retaining the Arctic sea ice is also important for moderating the planet‟s climate, as it

acts like its „air-conditioning.‟ Yet, it is considered to be a matter of years before the

Arctic Sea will be completely ice-free during the summer months. This also results in
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rising sea levels. By the end of the 21stcentury it is forecast that 70% of the coastlines

worldwide will have undergone sea level change. If the current trends continue, many

coastal areas where roughly half of the Earth‟s human population lives will be flooded.

The submerging of coasts is one of the more obvious ways in which climate change

destroys place so entirely.

Oceanacidification is another major consequence for our waters. The increasing

levels of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels and other human activities are

largely absorbed into the ocean water, which then forms carbonic acid, increasing the

ocean‟s acidity. Ocean surface waters have become thirty percentage more acidic over

the last 250 years and this ocean acidification makes water more acidic, reducing the

capacity of marineorganisms with shells or skeletons made of calcium carbonate (such as

corals, oysters, clams, and crabs) to survive, grow, and reproduce, which in turn will

affect the marine food chain. Acid in the oceans is dissolving the calcium shells of

juvenile oysters and they are unable to be cultivated to adulthood.

The global perspective of species extinction tells us that one half of the earth‟s

plants and one third of animals from their current range are expected to be made extinct

by 2080. Additionally, a report commissioned by the World Wildlife Fund has found that

animal populations have declined by 52% in the last 40 years. Such statistics are

astounding. There is no doubt that such rates of extinction will alter howwe relate to

places,especially in terms of naming the environment as flora and fauna.

There are many social effects of climate change, such as famine, civil unrest, and

political instability. According to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, between

2008 and 2014, 102 million people globally were moved from their homes due to

flooding. A further 25.8 million were shifted due to earthquakes, 53.9 million due to

storms and 958,000 as a result of extreme temperatures. A brief look at the movement
 19

maps produced by the organisation highlight shows how dreadful some climatechange

events have been.

For instance, Hurricane Sandy displaced 776,000 in the USA and a further

343,000 in Cuba. Displacement is usually further complicated by political issues, such as

difficulties accessing land due to discrimination against vulnerable and marginalised

groups. We find that most long-term displacement occurs in low and middle-income

countries, although the effects of Hurricane Sandy in the US were nonetheless severe.

Displacement is usually long term. The 2015 Global Estimate Report suggests that many

of affected people live in prolonged displacement for up to 26 years. Climate change is

already impacting upon lives and ways of existing in relation to the land.

Climate change involves both huge - a tsunami for instance and ones that are

barely observable, such as molecules of carbon dioxide. Climate change trespasses the

existing borders, and the locations of its effects are unpredictable. It cannot always be

known by our senses, and it remains abstract until it manifests itself in disasters. Climate

change is abstract in nature. Public concern tends to be driven by unusually hot summers,

mild winters, early springs, drought, and extreme weather occurrences such as

hurricanes. These cannot individually be directly attributed to global warming. And

while a rise of half a degree centigrade in the global average temperature over a decade

may be hugely significant, it is not detectable by the individual.

It is difficult to grasp the current impact or imagine the future consequences of

something whose expressions in our daily life are irregular and which principally affects

others in far-away countries. For these reasons, people in industrialised countries are

reluctant to accept the necessity for rapid transition from the fossil energy-based

economy to post-fossil sustainability, and to embrace the changes in lifestyle which

diminishing global warming demands. In consequence, the traditional information deficit

 20

model of communication, which depends on simply conveying factual information to

change people‟s awareness and behaviour, is not working. The climate novel allows

science to enter into an imaginative and exploratorydialogue with the climate change,

allowing for strengthened comprehensionof it.

Recent climate novels are becoming more innovative in order to include political

and ecological degrees and complexities. The most striking feature of novels written in

the last several years is that they have sought to explore the complex economic and

social adaptations necessary in a period of anthropogenic global warming. They are

becoming better at articulating climate change by describing the troubling of familiar

systems and the reformation of human ecology, wherein species, weather, social groups

act on their own terms and allow the reader to integrate more concerns when considering

the Anthropocentrism.

These novels help us imagine climate change, but they can also inform the spirit

expressed in our responses to the risk impact, and outcome of eco-catastrophe. The

narratives in the novels can shape how we respond to and recover from calamites. They

determine whether our responses are geared toward maintaining current systems,

relations, and practices or whether they are transformative, enabling the emergence of

new ways of being and dwelling that might prove not only more adaptive but also more

just and compassionate.

However, there has been a marked shift in more recent climate novels, wherein

climate change is examined through current modes of scientific understanding and

discourse, such as Barbara Kingsolver‟s Flight Behaviour offers another alternative and

non-typical example of a climate novel by exploring the topic through a contemporary,

realist lens.Kingsolver‟s Flight Behaviour, presents us with a more successful realist

example. It is one of the few climate novels to confront climate change directly.
 21

Public perception of the risks from climate change is represented in the recent

novel, Barbara Kingsolver‟s Flight Behaviour. The contemporary authors are retrieving

from literary tradition and adapting to their representations of the risk involved in global

warming. Kingsolver have made clear in interviews that herintention to alert the public

to the risks posed by climate change through their writing. By personalising the

experience of global warming and exaggerating its consequences, they seek to bring it

alive and help readers imagine the future.

The consequence of climate change is the main concept of Flight Behaviour. The

varying climatic conditions and their effects on living beings, is clearly depicted in this

novel. Kingsolver has confidently attempted this work, so as to bring awareness about

the climate changes and the dangers about the global warming. Kingsolver has created

the fictional characters, settings in order to create the atmosphere of varying climatic

conditions and the catastrophe it has brought at the end of the novel. Kingsolver‟sFlight

Behaviour, which is discussed in detail and manages to weave various social and

environmental factors together to arrive at a comprehensive view of climate change. It

focuses on the effect of climate change on a single butterfly species,yet this refined scope

becomes obvious how this event is related to the wider human and nonhuman

community.

In the novel Flight Behaviour, we can see a detailed view of incidents happening

related to the varying Climatic conditions and their impacts on living things in chapter-

wise. In Chapter one, Dellarobia saw the astonishing vision, every bough in the forest

glowed with orange blaze. She thought it was the burning coals of fire went up and down

among the forest. But originally it was the migrated monarch butterflies. It was the

warning sign of the changing climatic conditions.

 22

In chapter two, during the time of shearing the ewes, Hester, mother-in-law of

Dellarobia talks about the shifting weather patterns and tells that are decided by the

hands of the God. She believes that the God stopped the rain for their shearing.

Dellarobia‟s father-in-law, Bear decided to log the forest behind the house. During that

night, the weather patterns changed suddenly, the humidity drops and it started raining.

The whole mountain is sliding into the road and this is quite unnatural during that

season. Dellarobia says that she has seen this sudden rainfall six times since

July.“Christmas tree farms were just proof that every gone thing came back around

again, with a worst pay scale” (70)These lines are from the novel tells the fact that the

emitted carbon into the atmosphere returns back as a global threatening hazard as climate

change.

Cub told to his father, Bear, about the vision of butterflies in their farm, and also

warned him that there is a reason for everything. The poor people in the country side

believed that this migration of butterflies is all could be the Lord‟s business and they

believed in God‟s faith instead of the facts about the climate change. In chapter three,

Cub tells to Pastor Bobby Ogle about the thoughts of Dellarobiaabout the vision of

butterflies that she saw on the mountain side. He states that Dellarobia had a feeling that

something real major dilemma was going to happen to their property.

The chapter four opens with the climatic description that the day was darkened

outside, thunder rumbled and an unusual sound for the first of December. The idea of

December seemed impossible to them. Dellarobia feels that the weird weather must have

bewildered everyone to some extent. On stepping out the door, she sometimes had to

struggle a few seconds trying to recognize the month of the year. Cub also felt the same,

he feels like no season at all. He also felt it was like the season of burst and leaky clouds.
 23

Dellarobia met a Mexican family and Josefina was the girl from that family was

the friend of Preston. The Mexican family visited to Dellarobia‟s house to watch the

butterflies. The girl regretfully said that the “Whole other world, which they might take

the wrong way, but it is too late” (134) She said referring to the wrong migration of the

monarchs and also about the unpredictable climatic changes. The girl tells the

information about the butterflies that they are from Mexico and they are the “Monarchs”.

The girl was focused on the butterfly issue. She also tells the facts about the monarch

that they like to live in Mexico on the trees like the hanging “grapes”.

The girl‟s father is a guide in Mexico and he takes people on horses in the forest

to see the monarchs, he explains it to people and he counts the monarchs. She says more

information about the monarchs, in summer season it flies around everywhere drinking

the flowers. In winter, the monarchs come to Angangueo, the girl‟s town. Every year

they come and there were thousands of people and millions of butterflies. Dellarobia

asked the reason for the family‟s displacement and the girl replied sadly that it was no

more, it‟s gone. Dellarobia imagined the dreadful event.

The girl burst out into tears and said “Everything is gone”, in obvious distress.

She told that the water coming everywhere and the mud was on everything. Dellarobia

could not figure out what might have had happened and asked whether it is a flood or a

landslide. Dellarobia thought of a landslide in Great Lick and remembered about that

calamity. The poor little girl cried out and told that everything was gone the houses, the

school, the peoples, they lost everything, the mountains and even the monarchs. The

Mexican family said it had happened during the month of February. Since then the

family moved to Feathertown. Dellarobia had no idea what to say to a family that had

lost their world, including the mountains under their feet and butterflies of the air.
 24

In chapter five, Ovid Byron enters the story. He is an entomologist, lepidopterist

and a biologist. He is a specialist in monarch research and he tells some mysterious and

strange facts about the monarch butterflies to Dellarobia and to her son, Preston.The

monarchs fly thousand miles to go to south, like the birds do, the only insect capable of

flying great distance and even over ocean. They can go hundred miles in a single day.

It‟s unbelievable. The butterflies eat milkweed which is toxic to them. The butterflies lay

eggs on milkweed plants, when the eggs hatch out as caterpillars and those babies will

eat nothing except nothing the toxic leaves, milkweed plants. Monarch is not really

flying in South in winter. It is really a Mexican butterfly flying north in summer, like just

a visit. All monarchs are tropical butterflies. “Monarch is the only one clever enough to

seek his fortune in a cold place” (165)Ovid also tells about the taxonomy, the evolution

of migratory behaviour, effect of parasitic flies and their flight, population dynamics,

genetic drift, and also tells about the most significant question.

As if today, the most interesting and alarming question anyone in the field has

yet considered, why a major portion of monarch population that has overwintered in

Mexico since God has created them in such a way. Instead of it the whole monarch

population has settled down in Southern Appalachians, for the first in recorded history,

on the farm of the family Turnbow.

In chapter six, it was during the Christmas, that season was usually winter season

but it was rainy now and everyone felt that it was like dreaming of a wet Christmas.

Dellarobia felt, the latest round of insect invasion on that had infested her life. Before

this year she had hardly looked a butterfly in the face and now they were star players in

her own domestic drama. Ovid had set up the research team to investigate the question of

what butterflies were doing on the mountains and the “alarming question” he used to call

like this.
 25

Dellarobia thought about the great themes towards the Bear‟s logging idea and

told that if man could act against man, man against nature and also man against himself.

Dellarobia done some search on the internet about the town in Mexico, Preston‟s little

friend had lost their home and logging was a part of it. They had clear-cut the

mountainside above the town and that was the main reason for the mud slide and floods

when a hard rain came.

After the heavy rain in forest, the ground was completely covered with flattened

bodies of monarch butterflies lying every which way, like a strange pattern on the land.

She wondered if this was a butterfly funeral. The sudden vision filled her with strange

strong emotions that embarrassed her. The monarchs could not make their own body

heat, so they were paralyzed in the cold and unable to move until the sun warmed them

to 55 degrees.

In recent years, Ovid has said about their studies had found the range was

expanding northward. The butterfly generations had to push farther into Canada to find

their happiness. The Southern end of the things was getting difficult. The monarchs had

to leave the Mexican roost sites earlier every year because of seasonality changes from

climatic warming. He said no one completely understood how they made these migration

and hundreds of factors come into play. For instance, Fire ants had now come into Texas,

where the monarchs were vulnerable. Ants ate the caterpillars and the farm chemicals

were killing milkweed plants.

In chapter seven, Dellarobia informs Cub about the dangers about the logging

idea of the mountain. She told that when you clear-cut the mountains it can cause the

landslide and mud slide over to road. She also told about the disaster in Mexico that the

same had happened in Mexico, where the butterflies were before. They had clear-cut the

mountain and a flood brought the whole thing down on top of them. Dellarobia said, it‟s
 26

like the butterflies came here and we might be the next, like they are a sign of something.

The butterflies being here means something really wrong to the whole earth and it‟s like

the end of the days.

In chapter eight, Dellarobia was visited by the news channel to know about these

butterflies migrated to a wrong place this year, for the first time ever. She guessed that in

the history of the world, it looks really pretty but it might be a problem it could actually

be terrible.

In chapter nine, Ovid tells about, “A continental ecosystem is breaking down”.

This is due to the climate change and that has disrupted the system before events of this

winter destroy a beautiful species and the chain of its evidence. We are seeing a strange

alteration of a previously stable pattern.

The butterflies freezing to death and millions of unfortunate are lying on the

ground. Dellarobia felt that one of the God‟s creatures of this world, meeting its end of

the days. The butterflies would pass through the world like that baby in its pelt of red fur.

Ovid told in his distressed tone that nobody knows it is this bad. Every environmental

story has to be made into something else. Ovid shouted,“The damn globe is catching fire,

and the islands are drowning. The evidence is staring them in the face”. (318)

Ovid has conducted the experiments to know whether these butterflies fattened up prior

to overwintering. They usually travel light during their migration and then pack away a

lot of lipid stores just before they roost for the winter. The scientists want to know

whether they are involving a normal migratory pattern even though this is not a normal

place for the migrants to go. They also concerned about the physiology and how it is

responding to the cold weather.

Ovid‟s main worry in time-wise is that a winter storm could arrive at any time

and kill every butterfly on that mountain. The temperature at which, the monarch will
 27

freeze to death because it is minus four degree centigrade. The forest might shield them

to some extent. The monarchs won‟t lay eggs in winter. They survive the winter in adult,

breeding and egg-laying are still impossible for them until spring, when the milkweed

emerge. So if these monarchs die here, they will become an extinct species.

In Mexico, that year is catastrophically diminished in population and they had

unbelievable storms and flooding during last spring. Dellarobia felt that people are

scared to face up to a bad outcome. If it is fight or flight is a choice, it is easier to take

the decision as, fly. The parasitic infestations were associated with the monarch

population that did not succeed in making normal migrations.

The parasites may be the cause of these butterflies coming to their mountains

instead of Mexico. The infestations suck monarch‟s strength and preventing it from a

long migration. There is a big increase in these infestations. These climatic change acts

as an advantage to the parasite. Dellarobia felt that some deep and terrible trouble had

sent the monarchs to the wrong address. The butterflies had no choice but to trust in their

world of signs, the sun‟s angle set against a turn of the seasons and something inside all

that had betrayed them. While getting into the storm of man versus nature is a possible

conflicts and that was the one hopelessly man loses.

The chapter ten opens with the freezing line of climate in January. Dellarobia

could not sleep for the disturbing thoughts of the cold air creeping down. It would fill the

forest secretively like the poisonous gas and surround the butterflies. Ovid spoke about

so many things about the Elephant in drought stricken Africa, the polar bears on the

melting ice, were as good as gone. The so-called butterfly phenomenon was unnatural in

the extreme. Butterflies all came here because the winter is too cold here. But they came

because of the things being too warm and it is something gone way wrong.
 28

Dellarobia explained the facts about the migration of these butterflies to her

husband, Cub. He exclaimed that butterflies can go wrong in their heads. She replied that

no one things had no wrong they stay the same but it confuses them and they are here by

mistake and they cannot adjust to it. Not only the butterflies but a lot of things are

messed up. Dellarobia told to Cub about Ovid‟s idea that it is due to climate change,

basically and it is nearly like the global warming. Last year there was a heavy rain in

their town and that made trees falling out of ground after they stood for hundred years.

The weather is turned weird and it is very different from the past years.

It was a heavy winter season and on the mountain, the snow falling on butterflies

and on their little brittle wings and tender bodies, was a heart break to Dellarobia and she

did not have that courage to imagine them in such scenario. After a heavy snowfall, the

simplest conclusion was that they survived and the part of the world was still in place.

The temperature varies all the way up, especially in these evergreen forests. There is a

ton of temperature data recorded on the Mexican overwintering sites by Brower et al. It

is important to note how the thermal characteristics of the Feathertown site compared to

the normal roosting sites.

It would be a memorial when the place, where a species met its demise. For the

research work, some boys had voluntarily joined and they are called as 350.org. Their

team name was very interesting to note that it is 350 parts per million. The number of

carbon molecules the atmosphere can hold and still maintains the ordinary thermal

balance. It is an important figure to note. It is a greenhouse gas, Carbon and it traps the

heat of the sun. The number has been going up right before our eyes. The Carbon goes

up when we burn oil and stuffs. When it hits three fifty, the thermal stability of the planet

will gets collapsed. To know about limit of carbon emission in atmosphere at present

condition, it has reached three ninety. At present we had exceeded the limit.
 29

Due to these catastrophes, hurricanes are reaching a hundred miles inland, wind

speeds up so terrible nowadays that we had never seen to such extent and the deserts are

all on fire. In New Mexico, we are seeing the firestorm and even Texas is worse.

Australia is unimaginably worse and lot of continent is in permanent drought. Farms are

abandoned forever and rain being sent to the wrong places in the wrong amounts.

Because of the firestorms they could not irrigate the farms and it is like the walls of

flame.

Traversing the land like freight trains, fed by dead trees and dried soil. In

Victoria, hundreds of people burned to death in one month and so many, their Prime

Minister called it as hell on earth and this had not happened before. Everything that has

brought us here continues without pause. Ovid lamented that it might not be the worry of

ours anymore. It will take only a few degrees of change in global average to knock our

kind „out of the running‟ and the word „out of the running‟ means Ovid explains clearly

about it,“Living systems are sensitive to very small changes, Dellarobia. Think of a

child‟s temperature is elevated by two degrees. Would you call it normal?”(386)

Ovid had said that a four degree rise in the world‟s temperature might be

unavoidable at this point. The accumulation pays out for a very long time, even if we

stop burning Carbon. There are some unstoppable processes, like the loss of polar ice.

White ice reflects the heat of the sun directly back to space, but when it melts, the dark

land and water underneath hold on to the heat. The frozen ground melts and that releases

more Carbon into the air. So, it is not a question of having Floridian winters in

Tennessee. Ovid said calmly about the slow changes in the environment to Dellarobia as:

“A photo cannot prove a child is growing, but several of them show

changes over time. Align them, and you can reliably predict what is

coming. You can see it all once. An attention span is required.” (387)
 30

As Ovid rightly stated that the warm air can hold more water. Think of the case of

condensation on a windshield, multiply that times all the square metres above you and it

is a hell of a lot of water. It evaporates too quickly from the hot places, floods the wet

ones. Every kind of weather is intensified by warming.

Forest absorbs Carbon from the sky, but not when they are dying or burning. The

oceans also buffer the atmosphere, but not when their carbon levels make them too acidic

for life. The oceans were losing their fish and coral reefs also. In the Pleistocene most of

this continent was under ice, and the rest was Arctic desert. At other times the ice caps

melted and their very place was under the ocean. It was only the cycles, with the millions

of years between events and not decades.Dellarobia saw a million dead monarch

butterflies, as hell they ever landed here. Ovid confessed himself as the doctor of natural

systems and this looks terminal to him. Ovid regretted that people can only see what they

actually recognize. People always wants full dilemma revealed and proven in sixty

seconds or less.

Chapter eleven opens in February 2, the Groundhog Day, if the groundhog

emerges and sees his shadow on that day, there will be six more weeks of winter.

Dellarobia felt the butterflies would have survived to fly away by then, or they would

have died. Sometimes everything hits her, the approach of flood and famine. The girls sit

up all day and knit monarchs out of recycled orange yarns and hang them all over the

trees and it looks like kind of real. It is like a campaign to save the butterflies

A strange fog rolled over February. Hester called it as omen, but it is a winter so

persistently unusual as this one, most of the people were sick of weather. The visibility

reduced to zero and the place was unrecognizable. During this period Dellarobia watched

roosting colonies and track their flight behaviour. The butterflies were showing some

signs of restless movement. Hester helped Dellarobia to find some flowers for the nectar
 31

sources for the butterflies. Leighton Akins explained his life style pledge to reduce their

impact on the planet. Ovid said that an animal is the sum of its behaviour and it is the

community dynamics of it and it is not just the physical study.

Ovid asked that Dellarobia about what was the use of saving a world that had no

soul left in it. He also tells about the facts:

“Continents without butterflies, seas without coral reefs, he meant. What

if all human effort amounted basically to saving a place for ourselves to

park?” (438)

Ovid states we do not know anything else like it on earth. The population can fluctuate

five-fold in a year. It is an insurance policy against environmental surprise. Ovid

miserably told that not everyone has the stomach to watch the extinction. He was

frustrated about the upcoming loss of the entire monarch species. Ovid said, “I‟m not

here to save monarchs. I‟m trying to read what they are writing on our wall” (442)

Due to heavy rain, most of these butterflies were already died. The biggest

question is that where these butterflies will go. Ovid said, “Into a whole new earth.

Different from the one that has always supported them.” (449)Leighton Akins made

Dellarobia to read a list of things and should promise to do to lower the carbon footprint

and that means to use less fossil fuel to relieve the damage of carbon emission to the

planet. The list contains some instructions, it involves, bring your own mug. Carry your

own cutlery. Use no plastic utensils. Carry your own bottle instead of buying. Try to

reduce the intake of red meat. Try to drive less and make the old computers got recycled.

Turn your monitor off when not in use. Switch your light bulbs to CFLs. Upgrade to

energy efficient appliances. Buy low emission vehicle. At last Akins said, “There‟s only

one planet! We all have to share.” (454)

 32

In chapter twelve, Dellarobia said that Scientists had told that the weather will

just get all wild instead of settling down. Some places are gone dry and some places had

to abandon the farms for the drought, like Texas. It is difficult to find out what is worse.

It is not easy to talk about the known world collapsing into fire and flood. Dellarobia

came with a reliable word to talk about, “Pollution”. You pollute the sky long enough

and it turns bad on you.

People from all over the world will know about the monarch‟s plight. The

butterflies might die and that is out of our hands, but may be they would not. Bear

continues his idea of logging the forest at the end of March. One question persisted

Dellarobia that was „why‟. “Why the butterflies, why now. Why here?” (480)New

weather patterns affect everything in the migratory pathways. Both the fire and flood, it

has become much too warm at the Mexican roosting sites. With the climate change the

whole forest moves up those mountain slopes, slow-motion slipping uphill.

Dellarobia came to know about some unknown facts that the Monarchs are highly

infected with parasites cannot fly very far. The monarchs that are very infected do not fly

to Mexico but seek their shelter in the trees of California coast. Warmer temperatures

correlate with rising infections. By fire ants marching north, consuming 100% of the

monarch caterpillar, they have the chance to meet its demise. This roost had held the

upward of fifteen million monarchs. By Ovid‟s estimates they had suffered about 60%

loss. The monarchs‟ ordinary home in Mexico was changing, trees getting cut down and

climate zones warming up much too quickly. Ovid tells about the subject of wider world

and its damage. Animals are losing their homes, because of people being a bit careless by

making pollution.

This is the evidence of a disordered system. It is a sign of some deeper problem

with the ecology. Persistent environmental damage is a biological system falling apart
 33

along its layers. Unseasonable temperature shifts, droughts, a loss of synchronization

between scavengers and their host plants. Everything revolves around the climate

change. Many environmentalists contend that burning fuel puts greenhouse gases into the

atmosphere. All the coal that has ever been mined, that is Carbon. All the oil wells,

Carbon again. We have evaporated that into the air. “What‟s in the world stays in the

world, it does not go poof and disappear. It‟s called the conservation of matter” (506)

this question was settled well before the time of Sir Isaac Newton. It is difficult to predict

the exact effects of Global warming. The glaciers that keep Asia‟s watershed in business

are going right away. The Arctic is genuinely collapsing and the hurricanes and floods

are the whole thing that makes the Arctic melt.

The chapter thirteen opens with the season of spring during early March, the

butterflies started to mate each other. The warm weather helps the butterflies to break out

from their period of diapauses. It is really good news, if they started mating each other,

their population will get increased and they will not meet its extinction. “The butterflies

were a symptom of vast biological malignancies” (531)Ovid‟s wife, Juliet tells the facts

about the monarchs, they were locally called as King Billies and its name came from the

old King. The Protestants noticed the butterflies wore the royal colours of William of

Orange, the King of England. Monarch system collapses under the pressures of fires and

floods. On the advice of Pastor Bobby Ogle, Bear reluctantly gave up the idea of logging

the forest.

In chapter fourteen, the winter was very cruel and they had not seen a winter like

this in their lifetime. Dellarobia wondered if any butterfly could survive this. Dellarobia

stood watching the ewes and it acted weird. She miserably told that this was not the

country for insects. The real grief of that day came to her in waves. It could not even be

called a „freak storm‟, there was no such thing in a „freak new world of weather‟. The
 34

ewe acted weird and they found that it is in labour, but it is too early. The ewe gave birth

to a lamb, but it was motionless. Dellarobia does safety measures to bring it back to

consciousness. She tried hard to warm up and finally its life arrived. It is all due to the

unpredictable weather and changing climatic conditions.

A week ago, she saw sun came up at seven. The day was absurdly temperate and

light.Dellarobia felt her heart slide and everything was moving fast. In the woods behind,

she heard a quiet steady tingling sound of falling ice.On that day, there was an alert on

the radio about the flood and weather warning about the disaster, something terrible

beyond the Japan fire and flood. She was preparing for her son‟s birthday, but before that

she was pulled outdoors by the flood. The sun had levelled its light and the whole

mountain of snow was melting in a torrent. Water poured over the tops of her boots and

the water had reached her knees. The whole field reflected as a single sheet of brightness.

She was completely surrounded by moving water and she understood it was dangerous.

She felt the wild thrill of being at sea.

Dellarobia looked for an elevated place to save her life. She heard the croaking of

crows and it was a dead world learning to speak inharmonious and unbearable sounds. A

chill of fear displaced her thoughts and a slip could be the end of things. She stood on the

fence line and climbed over on the higher side to avoid her demise. She was stunned to

see the water had arisenin its level to the height of her house. For a moment, her

fascination exceeded ordinary fear and safety.

She saw the Orange clouds of butterflies floated in the air space above her and

their reflection is on the surface of the water. It is like a lava flow that reflected in the

water. They all flew in the same direction like the flood itself occurring on other levels.

Their numbers astonished her, it may be a million. It looked like merging of flame and

flood at once. The monarchs fled to a new place.

 35

The world now has changed as a place of agony to all living beings. The

endangered earth is not a suitable place for the living beings to live. The world has now

polluted a lot and it leads to global warming. The new weather patterns and sudden

change of climates are the results of the emission of carbon into space. Though it is a

slow process that is not visible to us directly, but its impact is so dangerous. We must

recognize it as early as possible and try to reduce the warming of earth. However it

cannot be stopped immediately but it should be reduced definitely.

In this dissertation, I took this particular novel, Flight Behaviour which

particularly dealt with the impacts of climate change on a particular Monarch butterfly

species. It tells about the cause and effects of climate change on the particular monarch

butterfly community. Humans are so cruel in his treatment to this earth, like burning

fossil fuels, emitting carbon into space, clear-cutting the forests and lots more. This all

comes back to us in the form of floods, rainstorms, snowstorms, changing weather

patterns, varying climatic conditions. Due to our harsh treatment towards the earth, all

living systems are totally affected by it and they are suffering to live a normal life in this

collapsed earth. The earth has turned out to be a hell to all living beings by the activities

of humans.
 36

CHAPTER III

CONCLUSION

When setting out to research for this dissertation, I was initially motivated to find

aclimate novel that „works‟: a novel that could somehow express what climate change is,

while inspiring environmental consciousness,as I learned more about climate change --

its origin, consequences, and justification -- I realised the complexity and misguidance of

this task. The issue is too vast and diverse to be described by one central perspective.

This is also said with the assumption that a novel could be capable of such aneffective

function in the first place.

Climate change is an on-going, slow and progressing issue, thus „fast‟, dramatic

depictions fail to see climate change as an interconnected and accumulating

event.Climate change is one of the most prominent, incomparable issues in our age and

culture. The novel provides us with the concepts to think and speak about what it means

to us. It is a valuable literary form for its imaginative capacities and extended focus.

Climate change demands imagination since it clashes with our inherited ways of

knowing, our understandings of time and space, and ideologies associated with growth

and progress.Instead, climate change is rejected for not sitting within the established

categories of knowledge.

Kingsolver offers analogies for the climate debate throughout the novel in Flight

Behaviour. Here she parallels the disparities between two differently perceived

worlds.Climate change breaks down arenas of knowledge. Climate change creates chaos

out of previously stable ways of knowing, as drawn from the external world. The term

we have for nature is no longer relevant in its current context and it must be redefined.

Kingsolver has written one of the most thoughtful novels, Flight Behaviour is

about the scientific, financial and psychological complexities of climate change.

 37

Kingsolver delivers a literary fiction that conveys an urgent social message and it is a

clarion call about the climate change. She has a particular skill for making us empathize

with lives that may bear little resemblance to our own. Kingsolver draws both her

Appalachian roots and her background in biology in her novel. She delivers a passionate

novel on the effects of global warming.

The butterfly phenomenon obscures previous dichotomies by bringing together

humans and nonhumans. The variety of factors leading to the butterflies‟ diversion points

to a network of relations. It is related to humans influencing and damaging conceptions

of nature. Kingsolver is more able to show the disruptive effects of an ecological event.

Flight Behaviour shows that through a combination of ecological enchantment and

scientific knowledge this novel brings the climate change into her imagination.

Addressing climate change means reconceptualising and reconfiguring both pragmatic

and philosophical matters. It also asks us to receive new concepts that favour ecological

integrity.

The discussion ofFlight Behaviour shows the necessity of combining new

categories of knowledge and ways of knowing in order to relate to a place affected

ecologically and by the impacts of climate change.Dellarobia constantly encounter the

fact that the butterfly phenomenon is linked to climate change. Kingsolver explores the

factors leading to the climate change. Dellarobia embodies the hope for a better world

and for a better planet (with both human and nonhumans collectively). We should treat

the planet with more respect than anything else.Through a better understanding of how

we human beings are related to every other thing that happens on the planet.

We can start to enact processes and mindsets that will rejuvenate the earth and,

hopefully, stop treating one another, animals, and nature with single-minded pursuit of

profit and leisure.By analysing the relationship between humans and their environments
 38

is worthwhile.It can engage in a post-carbon imagination and explore what a truly

sustainable existence might look like. It can allow us to creatively imagine a future

beyond fossil-fuel dependency.

The creativity and experimentation afforded by the novel allow us to explore

such alternative scenarios, and reimaginingour future and philosophical frameworks. As

climate change is undeniably a large and complex issue. It demands various responses

such as carbon capture and storage, lifestyle changes, like recycling and flying less,

developing renewable energy, moving away from fossil fuel dependency and faking a

new economic system that is not reliant on growth. These are all important examples.

The difference between the focus and writing strategies in the novel is reflected in

the title. Kingsolver‟s book is concerned with the changed flight behaviour of butterflies

as a disturbing symptom of global warming, but at the same time it is a study of human

„flight behaviour,‟ alluding to the public‟s flight before reality, in denying the necessity

to change patterns of production and consumption in response to climate change-related

environmental risks and hazards: “If fight or flight is the choice, it‟s way easier to fly”

(231).

Butterflies are of course the central symbol in the novel. Flight Behaviour celebrates the

beauty of the Monarch species (DanausPlexippus), The threat to their survival thus

serves as a poignant reminder of the fate of future human generations facing the

consequences of climate change.In the final pages of the novel, the belated arrival of

spring triggers a snowmelt which engulfsDellarobia‟s home, in a scene reminiscent of

the Biblical flood, suggesting divine punishment.

The author writes out of a sense of frustration with the inadequacy of the public

response to the risks of global warming, but FlightBehaviour presents a particularly

 39

detailed portrait of climate denial. Kingsolver pulls no punches in exposing the

“blindness” of Appalachian farmers and small town communities in America‟s Bible belt

to the dangers of anthropogenic global warming. She nevertheless depicts their mental

world with sympathy and understanding. She focuses on the everyday worries of people

without higher education, bordering on poverty. This corresponds closely to the findings

of sociological studies. The perception of an inevitable worsening of the situation until a

climax of destruction is reached, which may facilitate a fresh start for survivors, has been

one of the most influential modes of risk communication in the environmental

movement.

Novelists retrieve, interrogate, and experiment with the cultural tools relevant to

debates on climate change risk, thereby enhancing their readers‟ competence in facing

the challenge it poses. Fiction can help us imagine how our lives are connected to those

of people already affected directlyby climate change, and to see how our values are

threatened by the problems they face. Combining realism with the symbolic forms, this

novel examined to draw our attentionon fragmented awareness of the danger, our failure

to recognise the impact of our actions in everyday lives. Kingsolver‟s tale suggests that

crossing the threshold into awareness and becoming politically engaged can be a

liberating and exhilarating experience, creating a new sense of integrity between self and

world.

By personalising the experience of global warming and dramatizing its

consequences, they seek to bring it alive and help readers imagine the future.In this

novel, Flight Behaviour the author Barbara Kingsolver has attempted to portray thereal

incidents with some fictional events.

The real incident involved in this novel is, in February 2010, an unprecedented

rainfall brought down mudslides and catastrophic flooding on the Mexican mountain
 40

town of Angangueo. Thirty people were killed and thousands lost their homes and

livelihood. To outsiders, the town was mainly known as the entry point for visitors to the

spectacular colonies of monarch butterflies that overwinter nearby. After the great

calamity, the town is rebuilding now and the entire migratory population of North

American monarchs still returns every autumn to the same mountaintops in central

Mexico. The sudden relocation of these overwintering colonies to Southern Appalachia

is a fictional event that has occurred only in the pages of this novel.

The rest of the biological story like the flood in Mexico is unfortunately true.

Kingsolver has sought the help for guidance in constructing a fictional story within the

credible biological framework. Lincoln P. Brower and Linda Fink helped Kingsolver by

graciously opening their home, laboratories, research records and most importantly their

imaginations. Their enthusiastic pleasure of a novelist‟s opinions was so generous, as is

their scientific dedication to the world and its life. In the novel, there are some characters

like, 350.org boys and the characters are real. They are playing the most important work

and the most unending work in the world. “Humanity seeks destruction as much as we

seek stability and happiness” -Irish Times

The environment is not a giving parent with infinite resources. Nonhumans have their

own agendas just as humans have theirs. The nonhumans want to practice their agendas

just as humans want to practice theirs. The climate-related butterfly migration patterns

shifting, and the realization that denying climate change can soon be as physically

altering sources.

To discuss the literary environmental aspects of the novelas ecocriticism would

limit the rich complexities in various strands of the novel. This novel contributes to the

public‟s critical awareness of arguments about environmental risks and by creating a

sense of the possibility of change and the need for it through the power of literary
 41

imagination. Althoughclimate change fiction deserves serious attention and is based on

the premise that the mechanisms through which risk is perceived must be examined as

well as the bare facts of risk, Thein-depth understanding of how dangers from it are

observed by the public.

I have selected the quotation from the ending pages of Flight Behaviour, “The

biotic consequences of climate change” and this was my dissertation title. Kingsolver has

tried to convey the message about the changing climatic conditions and their impacts on

the particular monarch species. SoI have tried to convey my idea of how the changing

climatic condition harms the normal lives of living organisms under this title with the

source of this novel.

 42

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