Abstract
Global warming is a matter of perception rather than just a problem for the environment and decision-makers. The ecological crisis is too complex for the average person to understand as a part of their daily existence. The book Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver will be examined in this article as an example of climate-fiction writing that can transform concept into tangible and emotionally charged experience. The process of developing cognitive sustainability will be examined through the development of Dellarobia Turnbow's understanding of the phenomena, using the approaches of eco-narratology and ecocriticism. The results show that the story's creator had no intention of directly imparting climatic knowledge. The narrative describes how the scientific message is transformed through focalization, metaphors drawn from everyday life, rural language, affective shock, and dialogical relationships between the experiences of experts and local communities. This study also shows that rural belief, economic pressure, and religion are cultural contexts that facilitate environmental discourse in addition to being obstacles to understanding climate change. This essay shifts from climate fiction as discourse to climate fiction as a storytelling process that promotes environmental awareness in the face of uncertainty when one interacts with Flight Behavior from the standpoint of cognitive sustainability. By exploring how literature might foster an awareness that is necessary in the Anthropocene, this work contributes to the fields of ecocriticism, econarratology, and climate fiction studies.
Keywords
Cognitive Sustainability, Econarratology, Climate Fiction, Anthropocene, Climate Action, Ecological Perception, Barbara Kingsolver, Flight Behavior, Environmental Humanities,Metrics
References
- Ameel, L. (2022). Book review: Environment and Narrative: New Directions in Econarratology, by E. James & E. Morel (Eds.). Poetics Today, 43(2), 415–418. https://doi.org/10.1215/03335372-9642693
- Bolze, H. (2026). Charged Readings and Momentous Expectations: The Curious Case of Climate Change Fiction. C21 Literature: Journal of 21st-Century Writings, 12(3), 4. https://doi.org/10.16995/c21.23660
- De Cristofaro, D., Cordle, D. (2018). Introduction: The Literature of the Anthropocene. C21 Literature: Journal of 21st-Century Writings, 6(1), 1. http://doi.org/10.16995/c21.73
- Donly, C. (2017). Toward the eco-narrative: Rethinking the role of conflict in storytelling. Humanities, 6(2), 17. https://doi.org/10.3390/h6020017
- Hansson, S.O. (2020). Social Constructionism and Climate Science Denial. European Journal for Philosophy of Science, 10(3), 37. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13194-020-00305-w
- Kingsolver, B. (2012). Flight behavior. Faber & Faber. United Kingdom
- Mohajeri, F. (2024). The Portrayal of Weird Weather as a Psychological Trigger to act Against Climate Change: An Exploration into the concept of “Anthropocene uncanny” in Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior. Anglo Saxónica, 22(1), 8. https://doi.org/10.5334/as.150
- Nikoleris, A., Stripple, J., Tenngart, P. (2017). Narrating Climate Futures: Shared Socioeconomic Pathways and Literary Fiction. Climatic Change, 143(3–4), 307–319. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-017-2020-2
- Reid, A. (2019). Climate Change Education and Research: Possibilities and Potentials versus Problems and Perils?. Environmental Education Research, 25(6), 767–790. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504622.2019.1664075
- Schneider-Mayerson M. (2018). The Influence of Climate Fiction: An Empirical Survey of Readers. Environmental Humanities, 10(2), 473–500. https://doi.org/10.1215/22011919-7156848
- Schneider-Mayerson, M., Gustafson, A., Leiserowitz, A., Goldberg, M.H., Rosenthal, S.A., Ballew, M. (2020). Environmental Literature as Persuasion: An Experimental Test of the effects of Reading Climate Fiction. Environmental Communication, 17(1), 35–50. https://doi.org/10.1080/17524032.2020.1814377
- Thieme, J. (2023). Anthropocene Realism: Fiction in the Age of Climate Change. Bloomsbury Academic, London. http://dx.doi.org/10.5040/9781350296060
- Tian, H., Wang, Y. (2022). Ecosemiotics and biosemiotics: A comparative study. Language and Semiotic Studies, 8(3), 130–144. https://doi.org/10.1515/lass-2022-2007
- Van der Leeuw, S. (2020). The Role of Narratives in Human Environmental Relations: An Essay on Elaborating Win-Win Solutions to Climate Change and Sustainability. Climatic Change, 160(4), 509–519. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-019-02403-y
- Veland, S., Scoville Simonds, M., Gram Hanssen, I., Schorre, A.K., El Khoury, A., Nordbø, M. J., Lynch, A.H., Hochachka, G., Bjørkan, M. (2018). Narrative Matters for Sustainability: The Transformative Role of Storytelling in Realizing 1.5 °C futures. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 31, 41–47. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cosust.2017.12.005
- Whiteley, A., Chiang, A., Einsiedel, E. (2016). Climate Change Imaginaries? Examining Expectation Narratives in Cli-Fi Novels. Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society, 36(1), 28–37. https://doi.org/10.1177/0270467615622845
- Yeoman, R. (2021). Meaning and Purpose in Sustainability Transitions. In: Brears, R.C. (Eds) the Palgrave Handbook of Climate Resilient Societies. Springer International Publishing, Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, 1-29. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42462-6_100
Articles

