Ecological Studies Of Jack London’s Two Animal Works

Jack London (1876-1916), is the American novelist. He was born in San Francisco,and from the poorest bottom of the social class accounts for one tenth population. Hegrew up in a family of having neither fixed occupation nor fixed residence. He is thefamous realistic writer in American. I.Stone, the American novelist, called him the fatherof American proletarian literature. His works are not only popular in American, but alsowelcome by the people all over the world. He has the high position in American literatureand the world literature. His works has his own features, full of manly content, and mostloved by the men. But the girls also like his works. Jack London’s works reflects thecharacter of himself.Jack London (1876-1916) is well-known in the literary world worldwide and manyof his works are very popular both at home and abroad. Many Chinese readers arefamiliar with London’s works especially his two animal novels The Call of the Wild andWhite Fang. Up to now, the studies on London’s works mainly focus on the contentthemes and writing skills. Some critics analyze the two animal novels from theperspective of naturalism and demonstrate the influence of environment and heredity onanimals respectively. The thesis thinks, however, ecological consciousness can be foundin the two animal novels when they are read against the background of ecocriticism.Ecocriticism emerges with deterioration of the environment. The major task ofecocriticism is to explore the relationship between human beings andnature. Ecocriticism especially focuses on the side-effects of human beings’ developmenton environment. Human beings’ development leads to deterioration of environment andecological crises. The most practical meaning of ecocriticism is to arouse human beings’ecological consciousness in the process of reflection and criticism. So, analyzingLondon’s animal novels from the perspective of ecocriticism has theoretical, as well aspractical meanings. The thesis will reread the two novels from the perspective ofecocriticism through detailed analysis of texts in order to show London’s ecological consciousness.The thesis consists of five parts. The first part is about the whole life of Jack Londonand his works, as well as the background of the two novels in this thesis. Through theaspects of personal, family, social, history, and philosophy narrate the background ofwriting these works. This part is also about the current and creative studies of JackLondon’s two animal novels, focuses on emergence, features and principles ofecocriticism. The principles include anti-anthropocentrism, deep ecology and ecologicalholism. The second part analyzes one of the principle of ecocriticism,anti-anthropocentrism, in the two novels. The controlling relationship between humanbeings and the dogs is a reflection of anthropocentrism. Obviously, London detests thehuman-centered views on animals. In the third part, Deep ecology stresses more onnature and dog refers to nature in the novels. Deep ecology emphasizes diversity of livingthings and intrinsic values of each life form. The thesis first analyzes dogs’ intrinsicvalues which include dogs’ loyalty, self-respect and intelligence. All these values belongto dogs’ humane personalities. And then the thesis analyzes dogs’ wild personalities.The two personalities are interchangeable. The reason behind the change is humanbeings’ attitudes towards animals. The fourth part emphasizes ecological holism reflectsharmonious and equal relationship between human beings and dogs in the novels. Humanbeings only deal well with the animals and the nature; they can get along well with eachother, and set up a nice, harmonious ecological holism. The fifth part summarizesecological thoughts and hopes that readers can take up their own ecologicalresponsibilities.