Beyond Humancentred Ethics: An EcoCritical Reading of Barbara Kingsolvers Flight Behaviour

This paper presents an eco-critical reading of Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behaviour. It highlights themes of climate change, eco-social interconnectedness, and the critique of anthropocentrism. Using the frameworks of third-wave ecocriticism and posthumanist theory, this study explores how Flight Behaviour connects the local realities of rural Appalachian life to the global climate crisis. The moral allegory of the mass migration of monarch butterflies functions as an environmental disturbance. It functions as both a symbolic phenomenon and a disruption. It encourages both characters and readers to recognise the impacts of individual, economic, and human-centred activities on the natural world. The paper argues that Flight Behaviour turns complex scientific ideas about climate change into a personal narrative of moral and ecological awakening. Through the main characters’ personal and intellectual development, the study shows how individual awareness is connected to environmental responsibility. It is also connected to issues of gender, class, and ecological vulnerability. By focusing not just on humans but on the whole biosphere, Kingsolver challenges the idea that humans are superior. She calls for a more responsible and sustainable way of living. Finally, the paper emerges as an important contribution to climate fiction. It promotes environmental care and ecological ethics. It invites readers to rethink humanity’s role in a global, interconnected community.