FB ~ final quote and book question

Prepared by Mary/Zorro

Catalina Trail at Butterfly Family Fun Day at the Bullock Museum. She was featured on the cover of the August 1976 National Geographic after the discovery of the monarch butterflies migration retreat in Mexico.  She said, "I am the only living member of the team who discovered the Monarch Butterfly overwintering sanctuaries in Mexico in 1975."

Mary says, "I can't find the source of this quote":

"The novel is structured in a way that makes the reader realize that all the things we do without considering the future have grave consequences — from the personal (smoking, sex) to the global (climate change).    We may realize it's human nature to make a mistake and stay the course in much smaller ways (such as Dellarobia's unplanned pregnancy and unhappy marriage).

"This theme makes the flood at the end a very fitting way to end the novel. It's easy to see how we've failed to correct our path towards climate change when all the small changes Dellarobia made in her life won't matter unless we make the most important changes with respect to the environment."

In a comment (below), she asks, "What do you all think about the book as a whole?"

FB ~ themes

Prepared by Mary/Zorro

Flight Behavior interweaves important themes:  religion and science, poverty and wealth, education and instinct or faith, intolerance and acceptance.   How are these themes used to complement each other, and how do they conflict?

FB ~ stereotypes, social issues, the media

Prepared by Mary/Zorro

For Dellarobia...

"Nobody truly decided for themselves, there was too much information.  What they actually did was scope around, decide who was looking out for their clan, and sign on for the memos on a wide array of topics."

Do you agree that this is a fair assessment of a divided America?  How can we get beyond our judgments and stereotypes?

How is media both a help and a hindrance in our understanding of social issues?  How does it offer clarity and how does it add confusion?  How is the media portrayed in Flight Behavior?  What impact does it have on Dellarobia and the fate of the butterflies?  People are envious that the media pays attention to Dellarobia, yet she says being interviewed was like "having her skin peeled off."  Why are so many people consumed by a desire for fame?

FB ~ climate change, science, and religion

Prepared by Mary/Zorro

Flight Behavior illuminates the conflicting attitudes of different classes towards nature and the idea of climate change.  

How does each side see this issue?  Where do they find common ground?  Do you believe in global warming or climate change?  Explain the basis of your beliefs.  How much do you know about both the proponents and opponents in this debate?

Why do so many Americans fear or dislike science?  Why do so many others fear or dislike religion?  What impact do these attitudes have on the nation now and what do they portend for our future?

FB ~ Dellarobia's options

Prepared by Mary/Zorro

After Dellarobia's parents died, what options did she have?  She wanted to go to school — and did try — she tells Ovid,

"People who hadn't been through it would think it was that simple:  just get back on the bus, ride to the next stop.  He would have no inkling of the great slog of effort that tied up people like her in the day to day.  Or the quaking misgivings that infected every step forward, after a loss.  Even now, dread still struck her down sometimes if she found herself counting on things being fine.  Meaning her now-living children and their future, those things.  She had so much more to lose now than just herself or her own plans."

What are the factors that hold back people in Dellarobia's circumstances?  How can they be overcome?  How is each character's ideas about the future colored by his or her circumstances?

FB ~ Education

Prepared by Mary/Zorro

"Kids in Feathertown wouldn't know college-bound from a hole in the ground.  They don't need it for life around here.  College is kind of irrelevant."

Why isn't college important to these people?  Should it be?  Would you say the people of Feathertown respect education?

Why is faith and instinct enough for some people?

When she explained this to Ovid,

"His eyes went wide, as if she'd mentioned they boiled local children alive.   His shock gave her a strange satisfaction she could not have explained.  Insider status, maybe."

Explain her attitude. Yet Dellarobia also believes that "educated people had powers."  What does she mean by this?  How does education empower people?  Can it also blind them?

Monarch in San Antonio

Prepared by Mary Kennedy/Zorro

The downtown portion of the San Antonio River is a landscaped linear park with sidewalk gardens all along both sides of the banks.  The San Antonio River Authority planted and maintains the gardens.  Several years ago they planted non-native tropical milkweed, and the migrating fall monarchs found it, dropped out of the migration and now stay in San Antonio, mating all winter long.  I help monitor this population of monarch each week through-out the winter.  The above picture was taken last week as we monitored the milkweed for eggs, larvae, pupae, and adult monarchs.  Our numbers on Saturday showed 12 eggs, 4 caterpillars, no pupae and 1 adult male butterfly.   Here are graphs of our data.
http://www.mlmp.org/Results/ResultsSite.aspx?state=TX&siteID=1643

Several time in the book the author mentions the study of the O. e. parasite in monarchs.  Tomorrow a  PhD scientist from Univ. of Georgia will arrive to study the monarchs and to look for the O. e. parasite that you read about in the book.  She will sample these monarchs and then go on to the Texas Gulf Coast to study the monarchs that over-winter there.
http://monarchparasites.uga.edu/whatisOE/index.html

FB ~ clearcutting in Michoacan

Prepared by Mary/Zorro

http://www.learner.org/jnorth/images/graphics/mexico/Ikonos_2004_2008_Animated_Combined.gif

http://www.learner.org/jnorth/tm/monarch/Deforest_Ikonos2004_2008_MBSF_2.html
[Dr. Lincoln Brower was an advisor to Barbara Kingsolver while she was writing this book]

Cub and his father, Bear, want to sell the patch of forest where the Monarchs are to a lumber company for clearcutting.  What ramifications would this have, not only for the butterflies but for Dellarobia's family and her town?  (What happened in Mexico after the forests were clearcut?)

Why is it often difficult for people see the long-term effects of their immediate actions?

FB ~ Ch. 4 ~ Mexico

Prepared by Mary/Zorro

Flood damage in 2010 in Angangueo, Michoacan, Mexico.

We read about the flood in Angangueo, Michoacan, in Ch. 4.   There are a number of videos on YouTube of the flood in 2010 in this small mountain village of the monarchs.   Josephina and her family lost everything in the flood and moved to Tennessee.

FB ~ Ch. 3 Congregational Space

Prepared by Mary/Zorro

Ch. 3 Congregational Space

"An enclosed walkway connected the sanctuary to the Men's Fellowship room and the sunny, tile-floored Cafe in Christ, where she could sit and have some alone time with a blueberry muffin, with other congregants who would just as soon get their sermon over closed circuit."

Have you ever attended a church like this?  Would you expect to find an elaborate church of this type in a small Tennessee mountain town?  Would you be comfortable in a church where you might be called out by the pastor as a Holy Beacon?

FB ~ first set of questions from Zorro

Prepared by Mary/Zorro

I am using the discussion questions at http://www.litlovers.com/reading-guides/13-fiction/8988-flight-behavior-kingsolver?start=3   This set of questions contains spoilers, so I am trying to pick questions that can be answered from the first chapters of the book.

In Flight Behavior we meet the East Tennessee mountain family of Dellarobia Turnbow.  What is your impression of the Turnbows so far?  Does this impression reinforce or dispute your image of the people of the mountains of East Tennessee?

[3.  Describe Dellarobia.  How is she of this mountain town in Tennessee and how is she different from it?  How are she and her family connected to the land and to nature itself?  How are they disconnected?  How does this shape their viewpoints?  How does she describe herself?  Do you agree with her self-assessment?]

As she climbs the mountain Delarobia sees the mountain "explode with light."  "The forrest blazed with its own internal flame."  "The flame now appeared to lift from individual treetops in showers of orange sparks, exploding the way a pine log does in a camp fire when it is poked.  The sparks spiraled upward in swirls like funnel clouds."

[7.  How does Dellarobia react when she first sees the Monarchs?  What greater meaning do the butterflies hold for her?  How is she like the butterflies?  How does finding them transform her life?  Were the butterflies a miracle?]

Mary/Zorro's links about monarchs

Monarch #1

http://texasbutterflyranch.com/
www.monarchwatch.com www.mlmp.org
http://www.learner.org/jnorth/monarch/
http://www.monarchjointventure.org/
http://monarchwatch.org/bring-back-the-monarchs/
http://www.monarchparasites.org/

Monarch #2

Bonnie's question:  Which is which?

One thing I like about reading Barbara Kingsolver's novels is that I learn as I read.  For instance, I now know that one of these two butterflies is a male, and the other is a female.  Without reading anyone else's comment first, tell me which is which. 

Flight Behavior ~ January 2013

Flight Behavior ~ by Barbara Kingsolver, 2012, fiction (Tennessee)

In the opening scene in the rural community of Feathertown, Tennessee, 29-year-old Dellarobia Turnbow is headed for a secluded mountain cabin to meet a man and initiate what she expects will be a self-destructive affair.  But the tryst never happens.  Instead, she walks into something on the mountainside she cannot explain or understand:  a forested valley filled with silent red fire that appears to her a miracle.  The arrival of a research team led by Ovid Byron reveals the troubling truth behind the butterflies' presence, that they've been driven by pollution from their usual Mexican rywinter grounds and now face extinction due to northern hemisphere temperatures.  Already restless in her marriage to the passive Cub, for whom she gave up college when she became pregnant at 17, unsophisticated, cigarette-addicted Dellarobia takes a mammoth leap when she starts working with the research team.  As her horizons expand, she faces a choice between the status quo and, perhaps, personal fulfillment.

Author's website
Videos ~ butterflies, interview, etc.
Mary/Zorro's links about monarchs
Monarch in San Antonio
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
Male or female question
FB ~ first set of questions
FB ~ Ch. 3 Congregational Space
FB ~ Ch. 4 ~ Mexico
FB ~ clearcutting in Michoacan
FB ~ Education
FB ~ Dellarobia's options
FB ~ climate change, science, and religion
FB ~ stereotypes, social issues, the media
FB ~ themes
FB ~ final quote and book question