Human's Ecological Crisis

In the era when the ecological crisis becomes more and more serious and the ecological civilization receives more attention, people begin to realize that in order to reduce the ecological crisis, human's ideology and culture must be reformed, and that in order to overcome it, human's influence on the nature must be understood as much as possible.With the worsening of the ecology, ecocriticism begins apparent and becomes widespread. Many writers and literary critics begin to reevaluate and study some classical works in an ecological perspective. Through the reevaluation and study, the cultural background for the worsening ecological crisis can be clearly found out.In this thesis, Defoe's Robinson Crusoe is analyzed in an ecological way. And through the detailed analysis of Crusoe's religious belief and behavior, some reasons for the present ecological crisis are explored. The paper first introduces systematically the definition, development and theoretical sources of ecocriticism. Meanwhile, it also introduces anthropocentrism in detail, which is also the root for ecological crisis. Then detailed analysis is made to illustrate how anthropocentrism is reflected in Crusoe's religion and his control over other humans. Crusoe is a Christian and believes in God, while the basic doctrines for this is anthropocentrism, which also takes Crusoe's mind and instructs his conquering behavior towards other humans. And then Crusoe's cruel destruction to the nature including the plants, the animals as well as the soil is well displayed. Human's civilization also brings destruction to nature, during which process humans rely on science to destroy nature and satisfy their desire for wealth. Therefore, the conclusion of the thesis is that in order to solve the problem of ecological crisis, humans must abandon the anthropocentric ideology which has lasted for thousands of ages. What's more, people must realize that they are just part of the nature and that they should respect and protect nature, set up a balanced relationship between human and nature instead of an imbalanced one. It can be safely said that most of the environmental problems are caused by ourselves, or in another word, they are by-products of the culture. It is human's violent attitude and brutal behavior toward nature that lead to the ecological crisis. Only by changing their deep-rooted non-ecological or even anti-ecological ideology and culture, criticizing anthropocentrism, and setting up a harmonious relationship between human and nature can people really get rid of the ecological crisis.