Study Of Oh, What A Paradise It Seems From The Perspective Of Ecocriticism

John Cheever is an excellent American novelist in the20th century. He is famous for short story writing and named "Chekhov of America". Apart from short stories, he has created many wonderful novels. He has been renowned for writing the dismay and wilderness of human spiritual life in capitalist society. The novel to be analyzed in this thesis was his last work which was published in1982, the year just before his death. It became a bestseller soon after it was published. The novel tries to explore the relationship between human and nature in a deeper sense. This thesis is an attempt to study the ecological consciousness from the perspective of ecocriticism.Ecologists hold that besides natural ecological crises there are social ecological crises as well as spiritual ecological crises. While people are bent on gaining material wealth, the relationship between people becomes tenser. As civilization removes people from nature more and more, spiritual ecological crises arise and people tend to lose their nature. In the novel, Cheever expresses his concern about human distorted ecology. His eco-philosophy can be explored thoroughly through the ecological study of the novel. This thesis studies the novel from three aspects, that is, natural ecology, social ecology and spiritual ecology, which respectively reveals the complexity of the basic relationships, namely, the relationships between man and nature, man and man, man and self. Cheever believes that only if ecological consciousness gets promoted and these three relationships are in harmony with each other can man realize true ecological balance.The essay is composed of an introduction, three chapters and a conclusion.The introduction gives a brief summary of John Cheever, the basic contents of the novel and the literature review of current study on it. Furthermore, there is a brief overview of the development of ecocriticism. Meanwhile, two principles, Ecological holism and Deep Ecology which are used in the analysis of the novel are explained.In Chapter One, the thesis analyzes Cheever’s exposure of natural ecological crises. Through different characters’actions and words toward nature, it proves that anthropocentrism is the root cause of the crises and it works as a cancer growing in society to make people suffer a lot. As well, the thesis experiments to study ways proposed by Cheever of getting out of the crises.Chapter Two further explores Cheever’s concern for social ecology. In his writing, the destruction brought about by the Industrial Revolution comes easily into view. The pursuit of industrial civilization not only destroys beautiful nature but also ruins humanity. So the unbalanced society and distorted human relationship exposed in the novel clearly prove the existence of social ecological crises.Chapter Three mainly focuses on Cheever’s viewpoint of spiritual ecology embodied in the novel. The distorted social atmosphere causes painful split of spirit and flesh. People can not achieve self-realization and consequently lose belief and identity.The author comes to the conclusion that John Cheever bravely attributes the destruction of the nature, the ruin of human relationships and the strangulation of humanity to modern industrial civilization and gives fierce attack on it, which shows his typical idea of anti-anthropocentrism in the novel. In order to eliminate the social evils and heal the deep wound in people’s hearts, Cheever pays more attention to the natural humanity and humans" spiritual world. He deems that if human beings have a good ecological consciousness in spiritual world and form a good ecological behavior, we will be able to maintain the above three basic relationships harmoniously and build an Edenic society with balanced ecosystem ultimately. Facing with severe global crises of the ecosystem, we can be aspired by Cheever’s viewpoint to understand nature, and to strengthen eventually a consciousness of protecting nature. His profound and penetrating viewpoint on ecology can still enlighten today’s readers, so rereading Cheever has a realistic meaning in the21st century.