An Ecocritical Reading Of The Octopus

As a classic model of American literature, Franklin Norris’s The Octopus was often classified into naturalism novel. It was often considered as revealing people’s existential plight under the law of nature. However, what captures readers’ attention is Norris’s representation of the exacerbating clash between wheat growers and railroad company, his critique of the destructive catastrophe brought by uncontrolled industrialism, and the nuanced aspects of his ecological concerns.With the Ecocriticism as the theoretic framework, this thesis tries to explore Norris’s ecological consciousness in The Octopus. It argues that Norris’s ecological consciousness can be glimpsed from his portrayal of natural landscape and pastoral lifestyle, from his dramatization of the collapse of an Edenic world, and finally, from his delineation of major characters-a consciousness quite in keeping with the three major ecocritical assumptions outlined in the paper:nature ecology, social ecology and spiritual ecology.The ecological consciousness expressed in the novel-criticizing the anthropocentrism and human’s explosive desire, advocating the humanity for a return to nature and building a harmonious man-and-nature relationship-enlightens us to rethink what is happening today, to reconstruct the social structures, and to build an ecological-friendly future society.