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Most People Would Not Pick Up, Flight Behavior By Barbara Kingsolver

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Most people would not pick up “Flight Behavior” by Barbara Kingsolver and think of it as environmental literature. One would think that it is a piece about potentially life after a teen pregnancy or a portrayal of rural life in Appalachia. However, when you start to get into the meat of the novel, you realize that the whole thing is set around a drastic and dangerous phenomenon that was caused by climate change. Obviously many factors are at work and have conglomerated into the world we have to live in today. Human activities are turning out to be seriously detrimental to the health and functionality of Nature. Bear, Hester, Cub, and Dellarobia all have different ideas and motivations to what should happen to the trees and “King Billies” on the top of their mountain. The options available to them are to clear-cut all of the trees down to pay for loans, to charge people to see the migration of Monarchs currently living there, to let scientists do research and run all the tests they need in order to develop a clear report, or do what his parents tell him to do. The natural world and human world are at a bitter war here, however there isn’t even a war at all. The fact of the matter is that man cannot survive on Earth without nature, but nature can surely thrive much better without man constantly destroying it. The humans, in this case the Turnbows and Dellarobia specifically, believe that they are the only things that matters in the world and that it is anthropocentric, but

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