Migrating
Monarchs and Shifting Paradigms: Cli-fi Dynamics in Flight Behaviour by
Barbara Kingsolver
Kumar Gourav Panda,
PhD Research Scholar,
PG Department of Language and
Literature,
Fakir Mohan University,
Balasore, Odisha, India.
Dr. Sonali Das,
Associate Professor of English,
PG Department of Language and Literature,
Fakir Mohan University,
Balasore, Odisha, India.
Abstract:
Barbara Kingsolver's Flight Behaviour positions climate
change not as a distant scientific abstraction but as the central narrative
force shaping personal, social, and ecological realities. This paper examines
how the disrupted migration of Monarch butterflies functions as the dynamics of
climate change within the novel. The unprecedented arrival of the Monarchs in
rural Appalachia signifies the breakdown of long-established natural patterns,
mirroring the instability in human lives, beliefs, and socio-economic systems.
Through the protagonist Dellarobia Turnbow's gradual awakening, Kingsolver
aligns individual transformation with ecological consciousness, suggesting that
environmental crisis inevitably demands ethical and intellectual reorientation.
The Monarch migration propels the plot forward by drawing scientists, media,
tourists, and local communities into conflict, thereby exposing tensions
between scientific knowledge and religious faith, economic survival and
environmental responsibility. By embedding climate change within everyday rural
experience, the novel redefines the climate novel as an affective narrative
that emphasizes interdependence between humans and the non-human world. It
ultimately argues that ecological disturbance compels a shift in paradigms of
thought, identity, and storytelling, making climate change the very mechanism
through which narrative meaning and urgency are generated.
Keywords:
Ecocriticism, Climate Fiction (Cli-Fi), Human-Nature Relationship,
Environmental Crisis, Anthropocene
Introduction
Humanity,
under the influence of rapid progress, modernization, and industrial growth,
continues to perpetrate countless irreversible assaults on the natural world.
From the relentless rise of skyscrapers and the rapidly expanding small-scale
real estate ventures that consume fertile agricultural land, to the endorsement
of nuclear and atomic power plant renovations, the pattern is unmistakable.
Such actions reveal how humans, knowingly or unknowingly, pave the way toward
their own undoing. By positioning themselves as the sole sovereigns of the
planet, people frequently ignore the fundamental truth that human life exists
in interdependence with the non-human world, which is gradually pushed to the
margins. Byside-lining nature, humanity overlooks the principle that every intervention
produces consequences, often destructive ones, thereby endangering its own
survival and inviting large-scale calamities such as climate change, floods,
hurricanes, volcanic eruptions, and earthquakes - collectively manifesting as
an ongoing environmental crisis.
Barbara
Kingsolver’s Flight Behaviouris widely recognized as a defining example
of contemporary climate fiction, commonly referred to as “cli-fi” that
foregrounds human and ecological entanglement in an era of environmental
crisis. The novel’s central inciting event - the unprecedented wintering of
millions of Monarch butterflies in rural Appalachia, functions as both a
literal depiction of ecological disruption and a metaphorical lens through
which cultural, scientific, and personal paradigms are examined. Set against
the backdrop of global warming and shifting climatic regimes, the narrative
uses the Monarchs’ altered migration not simply as a plot device but as a
structural engine that propels character transformation, exposes ideological
tensions, and cultivates an ecocritical sensibility grounded in observable
ecological change.
“Cli-fi”,
often confused as a sub-genre of speculative or science fiction, takes its
stand as an individual genre for its highly elevated climate change concerns,
and narrative structures. Contrary to sci-fi or speculative fiction which deals
with space ships or interstellar travels, cli-fi is constructed in a way that
it helps broaden our understanding of the world we live in and the possible
future on Earth itself. Kingsolver’s novel, thus not only dramatizes a natural
anomaly but invites readers to reconsider humanity’s relationship with the
more-than-human world.
Climate
Fiction and Ecocritical Context
The
term “climate fiction” encompasses narratives that engage with climate change
and ecological disruption as central thematic concerns. Dan Bloom’s coining of
the term, “cli-fi” in 2007, as a pun to “sci-fi”, climate fiction became a
separate genre for climate change novels. Since then, cli-fi has steadily
evolved into an established literary genre, seamlessly weaving environmental
concerns with rigorous scientific reflection to foreground the realities of a
changing planet. These works often deepen public understanding of environmental
crisis by personalizing its effects and highlighting the interplay between
science, culture, and emotion. Flight Behaviour fits squarely within
this category, carving a space for literary engagement with climate science
through narrative empathy and ecological attention. Schneider-Mayerson (2018)
believes, “Given the growing popularity of climate fiction, ecocritics would do
well to apply to climate fiction (and environmental literature in general) the
sophisticated methodologies that have been developed to investigate the influence
of other forms of environmental media”(496).Through its careful fusion of
scientific discourse and emotional realism, the novel exemplifies what
ecocriticism identifies as literature’s capacity to render environmental crisis
both visible and morally urgent. Kingsolver does not merely represent climate
change as a distant catastrophe; instead, she embeds it within the rhythms of
rural life, compelling readers to confront ecological disruption as an
immediate and shared condition. Cli-fi brings latent climate change concerns to
the fore, and through an ecocritical lens, compels humans to reassess and
reconfigure their core belief systems.
Kingsolver
in this novel opens her forum with an array of questions so much like that of
those from a scientist. The novel asks: How do we make our choices? Why is it
tough to initiate a talk about climate change? What is worth believing when it
comes to climate change? And why does the belief about climate change vary from
one another? Kingsolver aims to focus on these possible choices an individual
can make, and relates it to the change that an individual could spread to a
community through the choices he/she makes. Kingsolver's way of offering
insights, but not a particular solution in the end is incontrovertibly a flight
towards certainty from ignorance. At the same time, Kingsolver leads her
discovery towards a new perception on how people arrive at their belief system,
and actual truths about the world through fiction.
The
novel’s opening scene powerfully dramatizes this ecocritical impulse through
the unexpected appearance of monarch butterflies in a Tennessee valley, an
event that Dellarobia Turnbow initially interprets in spiritual and revelatory
terms, describing the landscape as “the inside of joy… a valley of lights”
(Kingsolver 21). This moment of aesthetic wonder functions as an entry point
into the novel’s broader ecological argument, illustrating how environmental
phenomena are often filtered through cultural belief systems before they are
scientifically understood. The monarch migration dislocated from its
traditional Mexican overwintering grounds, serves as a living index of climatic
imbalance, transforming an otherwise familiar rural space into a site of
ecological anomaly. In this way, the butterflies operate as more than symbolic
spectacle; they become biological witnesses to global warming, anchoring the
abstraction of climate change in tangible, observable life forms. The monarchs
serve not only as a startling spectacle but as a “powerful symbol of the
broader disruptions to the environment wrought by global warming” (Chandan 86). By foregrounding the
monarchs as agents within a disrupted ecosystem, Flight Behaviour enacts
an ecocritical narrative strategy that emphasizes interdependence between human
and nonhuman worlds, urging readers to recognize climate change not as an
external threat but as an unfolding crisis inscribed upon the natural
environment itself.
The
Monarch Migration Anomaly as Narrative Cause
In
this celebrated novel the Monarch butterflies’ aberrant migration-wintering in
Tennessee rather than Mexico, functions as a narrative engine by compelling
scientific inquiry and community engagement. The arrival of scientists,
journalists, tourists, and opportunists transforms the rural setting into a
contested site where differing interpretations of environmental change collide.
For many locals, the phenomenon becomes a religious “miracle” or a source of
economic opportunity. However this ignorance leads to their own doom. “Their
existential crisis is the result of slow violence that changes the climate.”
(Rajyalaxmi et al. 200)
This
phenomenon operates as a microcosm of the contemporary climate crisis,
foregrounding the fragility of ecological equilibrium in the face of
accelerating environmental change. Disruptions in temperature, weather
patterns, and habitat destabilize long-evolved biological systems, compelling
species such as the Monarch butterfly to alter their migratory behaviours in
ways that are both unprecedented and perilous. Such maladaptive shifts
underscore the uneven, unpredictable, and often catastrophic effects of climate
change on global ecosystems. By foregrounding the Monarchs’ anomalous migration
as a metaphor for ecological displacement, Barbara Kingsolver translates
abstract scientific data into a tangible narrative experience, enabling readers
to apprehend the lived consequences of climate change while simultaneously
critiquing anthropocentric complacency toward environmental degradation.
As
a trained biologist, Barbara Kingsolver perfectly deploys Ovid Byron as her
mouthpiece in Flight Behaviour to articulate the ecological truths of
the contemporary world, particularly the inescapable reality of global warming
and the principle that all life systems are naturally dependent on climate.
Through Byron’s scientific reasoning, the novel explicates how shifting
climatic conditions disrupt migratory patterns long understood to be stable,
emphasizing that “changing climate affects biodiversity”(Francis 169) and
reshapes species distributions. However, Kingsolver simultaneously dismantles
the naïve belief that forests alone can redeem ecological damage, suggesting
instead that climate change has already disrupted the delicate coordination of
Earth’s biological systems to such an extent that even preserved habitats may
prove insufficient to save the Monarch butterflies.
Community
Responses: Faith, Denial, and Economic Pressure
Flight
Behaviour
charts a spectrum of responses to the monarch event, illustrating how cultural
belief systems, economic anxieties, and epistemological frameworks shape
interpretations of environmental phenomena. Many townspeople view the
butterflies through religious lenses interpreting them as signs of divine
intervention rather than as indicators of climate disruption. This reflects
what scholars term ecological denial, where individuals resist acknowledging
environmental degradation because of psychological, cultural, or economic
pressures. As Jones observes, “The novel presents a nuanced critique of how
economic instability prevents rural communities from engaging meaningfully with
environmental issues, revealing the intersection of poverty and ecological
ignorance”.
This
ecological apathy is reflected in the anthropocentric attitudes of characters
such as Bear Turnbow. Bear interprets the Monarch phenomenon through an
economic lens, remarking that “they’ve got (the butterflies) figured like
supply-side economics. The good Lord supplies the butterflies and Feathertown
gets the economics” (Kingsolver353). Such a statement underscores the
commodification of nature, wherein ecological events are valued not for their
environmental significance but for their potential economic gain. A similar
exploitation of the natural crisis is evident in the character of Tina Ultner,
the media reporter whose fascination with the so-called “phenomenon” serves
merely to enhance her channel’s visibility rather than to cultivate
environmental awareness. Kingsolver indicts institutional narratives that
prioritize sensationalism and profit over ecological truth. The media, which
ought to function as a conduit of scientific reality, instead obscures it,
thereby distorting public perception. This distortion particularly affects
rural communities such as Feather town and its surroundings, blinding them to
the environmental evidence unfolding before their eyes. The novel's ecocritical
stance is further reinforced through its engagement with the theory of
Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW), which validates Ovid Byron's assertion that
human-induced increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide are a primary catalyst of
global warming. This process not only accelerates environmental degradation but
also foreshadows the eventual destruction of natural resources and, by
extension, humanity itself. The evidence is rightly explicated in the end of
the novel when the totally clueless Dellarobia observe the exodus of Monarchs
as she struggles to survive on a hill top during the flood which has already
caused immense damage to the inhabitants and properties of Feathertown.
Ecocritical
Significance of the Monarchs
In
literature, animals often function as symbols that bridge human experience and
broader ecological concerns. In Flight Behaviour, Monarch butterflies
represent both ecological fragility and interconnectedness. Their disrupted
migration signals the instability of climatic systems and the vulnerability of
species to anthropogenic change. The Monarchs’ plight becomes a living metaphor
for the broader ecological disruptions wrought by global warming.
Furthermore,
the Monarch butterflies symbolize the vulnerability of nonhuman species in the
Anthropocene, an era defined by human dominance over Earth’s ecosystems. Their
dependence on precise climatic conditions for survival highlights the
disproportionate impact of environmental degradation on species with limited
adaptive capacity. Kingsolver juxtaposes the Monarchs’ fragility with human
economic activities such as deforestation and unregulated land use,
particularly through the actions of characters like Bear Turnbow. This contrast
foregrounds the ethical conflict between short-term human profit and long-term
ecological sustainability, reinforcing ecocriticism’s call for an expanded
moral community that includes nonhuman life. As McKie observes, “Flight
Behaviour, does not simply depict climate change as an abstract global
issue, but as a deeply personal, socioeconomically layered crisis”. Kingsolver
foregrounds the need for an inclusive environmental ethic, one that
acknowledges how socioeconomic realities profoundly shape human perceptions of,
and responses to, sustainability. The Monarchs also serve as a connective
symbol linking local and global ecological crises. Although the butterflies
appear in a remote rural setting, their disrupted migration patterns are the
result of global climate systems altered by industrial practices far beyond
Appalachia. This interconnectedness challenges anthropocentric notions of locality
and responsibility, reminding readers that environmental harm transcends
geographical boundaries. In this sense, the Monarchs function as emissaries of
global climate trauma, translating abstract scientific data into a tangible,
emotionally resonant presence within the narrative.
The
complexities generated by climate change are not confined to the material world
alone; they extend decisively into the realm of fiction, where environmental
crisis demands equally nuanced representation. If climate change remains a
contested and unsettling reality outside literature, its fictional portrayal
must also grapple with ambiguity, uncertainty, and ethical tension. In Flight
Behaviour, Barbara Kingsolver negotiates this challenge by translating
climatic disruption into narrative and characterological difficulty. The
wilderness of climate crisis is inscribed in figures such as Dellarobia Turnbow
and Ovid Byron, through whom Kingsolver seeks to articulate the gravity of
environmental collapse without reducing it to didactic certainty. The anomalous
migration of the Monarch butterflies becomes a site of interpretive struggle,
filtered through Dellarobia’s divided consciousness. While one aspect of her
vision perceives the butterflies as a miraculous spectacle, another resists
acknowledging the ecological catastrophe that has displaced them. This dual
vision underscores the human tendency to aestheticize environmental phenomena
while simultaneously evading their alarming implications. The novel’s open
ending thus functions as an ecocritical gesture, offering a choice between
confrontation and denial—between facing the impending ecological disaster or,
like the Monarchs themselves, choosing flight as an act of survival.
Ultimately,
the Monarch butterflies in Flight Behaviour operate as a central
ecocritical symbol that redefines humanity’s relationship with nature. They
compel a recognition of ecological vulnerability, interdependence, and
accountability, urging readers to reconsider dominant narratives of human
exceptionalism. Through the Monarchs’ disrupted flight, Kingsolver articulates
a poignant critique of environmental neglect and offers literature as a vital
medium for ecological awareness and ethical transformation.
Conclusion
Analyzed
through the critical lens of cli-fi dynamics, Flight Behaviour emerges
as a narrative that transcends a mere representation of ecological crisis and
evolves into a profound meditation on the fragile entanglement between the
human and non-human worlds. The novel not only interrogates the visible
manifestations of climate change but also delves into its invisible, often
ineffable consequences those subtle disturbances that unsettle ecosystems,
reshape human consciousness, and expose the moral ambiguities of
anthropocentric living. Kingsolver situates environmental catastrophe not as a
distant, abstract phenomenon but as an intimate presence that permeates
everyday life, compelling individuals to confront the limits of their
understanding and the depth of their responsibility.
At
the heart of the novel lies the mysterious choreography of the natural world,
exemplified by the anomalous migration of the Monarch butterflies. This
ecological irregularity functions as both a scientific puzzle and a symbolic
rupture, revealing how climate disruption destabilizes long-established
biological rhythms. Nature, in Flight Behaviour, is neither a passive
backdrop nor a romanticized refuge; instead, it is an active, communicative
force that responds to human excess with unsettling unpredictability. Through
this portrayal, the narrative underscores the idea that ecological imbalance is
not merely an environmental issue but a crisis that reverberates through
cultural, emotional, and ethical domains.
Simultaneously,
the novel offers a poignant exploration of the human heart caught in the
crosscurrents of fear, denial, wonder, and awakening. Characters such as
Dellarobia embody this inner turbulence, as personal discontent and ecological
anxiety intersect to produce moments of revelation and transformation.
Kingsolver suggests that climate change does not only alter landscapes; it
alters ways of seeing, knowing, and belonging. Human responses to environmental
upheaval ranging from scientific inquiry and economic opportunism to skepticism
and spiritual awe expose the fractured relationship between humanity and the
natural order it depends upon yet persistently exploits.
Ultimately,
Flight Behaviour articulates an urgent call for symbiotic coexistence,
insisting that the restoration of Earth’s fragile equilibrium hinges upon a
renewed ethic of interdependence. The novel cautions against the illusion of
human supremacy, reminding readers that resistance to nature’s laws leads not
to progress but to collective loss. By foregrounding the interconnectedness of
all life forms, Kingsolver reorients the cli-fi narrative toward a moral
understanding that survival is contingent upon humility, attentiveness, and a
willingness to live in harmony with the non-human world. In this sense, the
novel stands as both a warning and a vision, affirming that when humans choose
to move against nature, they inevitably move toward their own undoing.
Works Cited
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Surabhi. “Climate Narrative in Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behaviour.” International
Journal of English Literature and Social Sciences, vol. 10, no. 1,
Jan.–Feb. 2025, pp. 86–91.
https://ijels.com/detail/climate-narrative-in-barbara-kingsolver-s-flight-behavior.
Accessed on 27.12. 2025
Francis,
Ashna. “Decoding Cli-Fi Dynamics in Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behaviour.”
SMART MOVES Journal IJELLH, vol. 9, no. 3, Mar. 2021, pp. 169–175.
Jones,
Boyd. “Flight Behaviour by Barbara Kingsolver: Review.” The Daily Telegraph, 1 Nov. 2012.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/fictionreviews/9635964/Flight-Behaviour-by-Barbara-Kingsolver-review.html.
Accessed on 31.12.25
Kingsolver,
Barbara. FlightBehaviour. New York: HarperCollins, 2012.
McKie,
Robin. “Flight Behaviour by Barbara Kingsolver – Review.” The Observer, 11 Nov. 2012.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/nov/11/flight-behaviour-barbara-kingsolver-review.Accessed
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Rajyalaxmi,
Kamal Sharma. “Slow Violence, Climate Change and Denial in Kingsolver’s Flight
Behaviour.” Contemporary Research: An
Interdisciplinary Academic Journal, vol. 8, no. 2, Nov. 2025, pg. 193–206.
Schneider-Mayerson,
Matthew. “The Influence of Climate Fiction: An Empirical Survey of Readers.” Environmental Humanities, Vol. 10, No.
2, 2018, pg. 473–500.