Lupher, James (Dixie State University)
Faculty Advisor: Pilkington, Olga (Dixie State University, English)
In today's society, climate change is one of the most polarizing issues. Indeed, it seems as though there is a war being waged between believers and deniers with the believers being "scientifically minded" Americans and the deniers being "religious people". There is significant evidence, though, that religious peoples' ostensible incapacity to understand science is not really the issue, but rather, that the issue is political in nature. Barbara Kingsolver's novel Flight Behavior tackles this issue of a perceived dichotomy between science and religion in the setting of Appalachian Tennessee. We are presented first, with Dellarobia, a native of Feathertown, Tennessee who married into a religious, agricultural family. Using Carl Jung's definition of religion from The Undiscovered Self, I limn Dellarobia as the book's avatar of pure religion. Later, Ovid Byron enters the plot. As an entomologist and lepidopterist, who is concerned with what butterfly migrations tell us about climate change, he represents the ethos of science in America. I argue that though, at first glance, these two characters represent extremes, as the book progresses, they are revealed to be multidimensional. Dellarobia's religious nature remains intact, as she accepts the reality of climate change and Ovid reveals a capacity for a religious-like reverence for the natural world. The multidimensionality of these characters I argue subverts the perceived dichotomy between religion and science, suggesting that people on both sides of the political spectrum need to give each other credit and stop falling for politicized versions of the debate found on many mainstream media outlets.