| Edward Abbey (1927-1989) is regarded as one of the most eloquent and passionate advocates in the U.S. west literature. Through his novels, essays, letters and speeches, Edward Abbey consistently voiced the belief that the West was in danger of being developed to death, and that the only solution lay in the preservation of wilderness. Abbey authored twenty-one books in his lifetime, including Desert Solitaire (1968), The Monkey Wrench Gang (1975), The Brave Cowboy (1965), and The Fool's Progress (1988). His comic novel The Monkey Wrench Gang helped inspire a whole generation of environmental activism. A writer in the mold of Twain and Thoreau, Abbey was a larger-than-life figure as big as the West itself.The Monkey Wrench Gang is Abbey's most famous fiction which published in 1975. This well-known book is a fictional account of 4"environmental warriors"liberating parts of Utah and Arizona from evil road-builders, miners and rednecks. The book fueled a new generation of angry young environmentalists (such as Earth First!) practicing monkey-wrenching, sabotage for the sake of protecting the wilderness.This thesis intends to analyze Abbey's ecological thoughts in The Monkey Wrench Gang to publicizing his critique of anthropocentrism and his new view on development.This article includes three parts: introduction, the main body and conclusion, and the main body is divided into three chapters. Chapter one, based on ecocriticists'Ecological thoughts, primarily describes the ecological fighters'love and preservation to the wilderness and their willingness to save the wilderness. The second chapter introduces the most valuable ecological thought in this book—ecosabotage, and then rationally analyzes its origin and feasibility as the way to defend the wilderness. Chapter three focuses on the critique of the Developmentalism by revealing the deceptions made by the government and corporations to the Public and proposes the new mode of development: Opposition-Compromise-Balance. |
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