Flight Behavior

by Barbara Kingsolver

she carved the roast on the counter

She’s competent in a lot of ways

the reverence of an ox in the presence of flight.

Simile metaphor

from her labored attempts to explain things yesterday, he’d probably picked up only one narrow band of the spectrum: that he disappointed her.

expressing himself with a hammer in an empty barn.

his home in the yard.

Haha

Haha

From colonial times, she said. Protestant settlers noticed this butterfly wore the royal colors of their prince, William of Orange,

The name monarch came from the same old king.

Alcidus Byron.

Raquida,

a forceful woman who supervised all postal affairs on the is...

Reggie

Haha

“That post is brilliant, by the way,” Juliet said.

“The purple heart,” Ovid said.

For getting wounded in battle

It was hard to feel the remotest sympathy for any of the different fools she had been.

Again, she is saved from ignominy by some self-awareness

As opposed to the fool she was probably being now. People hang on for dear life to that one, she thought: the fool they are right now.

See “lif3 r@dt” next paragraph

His life was now at the whim of a livid ecosystem.

Haha - simile

here she sat, detached, as if this gigantic miserable husband were not her fault. Just being the fools we are right now, she thought: a condition that inevitably changed, often for the worse. In one transcendent moment buoyed by about two ounces of Riesling she saw the pointlessness of clinging to that life raft, that hooray-we-are-saved conviction of having already come through the stupid parts, to arrive at the current enlightenment. The hard part is letting go, she could see that. There is no life raft; you’re just freaking swimming all the time.

I’m not sure I understand most of this, but it’s very good, I can tell. “Life raft” harks back a paragraph.

the theory of the territorial divide.

See loc. 5441-5481

it’s not indigenous, Juliet argued. It’s like a cargo cult. Introduced from the outside,

corporate motives via conservative media.

now it’s become fully identified with the icons of local culture, so it’s no l...

“once you’re talking identity, you can’t just lecture that out of people. The condescension of outsiders won’t diminish it. That just galvanizes it.”

“The rebel flag on mudflaps, science illiteracy. That would be us.”

“Well, yeah,” Juliet said, “that’s kind of the point, that outsiders won’t get it.”

Ouch pain

Haha

Perfect Females,

Haha

A Canadian scientist chased the mystery his whole life, devising a tag that would stick to butterfly wings, recruiting volunteers to help track them, losing the trail many times. And then one winter’s day, as an old man on shaky legs, he climbed a mountain in Michoacán to see what must have looked like his dream of heaven.

I wept at this

Haha - brilliant!

That was the day I understood the world is still living.”

“We saw them having their family life,” Preston said. “In the road.”

Haha

With the sense of a great weight settling, she recognized marriage.

Simile metaphor

She was not about to lose it. She’d never had it.

Brilliant

Haha

this immense sad man in his boxers,

In his sermon Bobby warned against losing gratitude for the miracle of life.

Haha

Haha

Haha - or bith

Haha

Haha - and a bit too much righteousness in the home

Haha

Or wiser

Haha

He’s been to seminary and can read like a lawyer.