The Galapagos in American consciousness: American fiction writers' responses to Darwinism (Herman Melville, Kurt Vonnegut, Tennessee Williams, Ecuador)

My dissertation examines the works of Herman Melville, Tennessee Williams, and Kurt Vonnegut, along with two twenty-first century popular fiction writers. The Galapagos Islands connect the disparate group of authors and unite them in a common pursuit, which is the exploration of humankind's place in what can be a harsh universe. Melville wrote "The Encantadas" in 1854, five years before Darwin's Origin of Species (1859), but his writings evince a concern with what he saw as an unwelcoming world and what the role of human beings was in that world. Upon Darwin's publication of Origin, humanity's existence became more problematical; writers and philosophers have grappled with its implications ever since. Because the impact of Darwinism is widespread, the Galapagos can serve as a filtering device by which to examine American responses to Darwinism.; The Galapagos Islands have risen from obscurity primarily because of Darwin's 1835 visit. His admission that the archipelago prompted many questions into the nature of speciation sparked an interest in the islands that steadily grew. After a brief history of the idea of evolution in America in Chapter 1, Chapter 2 traces the rise in popularity that the islands underwent from 1850 to 2002. A sampling of the periodical literature shows the different ways that the islands have been portrayed for the last century and a half. Chapter 3 examines "The Encantadas" and Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle (1839, revised 1847) to discern the attitude with which each author treats the islands and what each of them suggests about the nature of life. Chapter 4 discusses Tennessee William's play, Suddenly Last Summer (1959), which incorporates elements of Freudian and Darwinian theory. Chapter 5 examines the use of the Galapagos by two contemporary authors, Cathleen Schine, and Gregg Andrew Hurwitz. Their novels, The Evolution of Jane (1998) and Minutes to Burn (2001), use the islands as a place to contemplate Darwinian themes. The final chapter, Chapter 6, discusses Kurt Vonnegut's Galapagos (1985) and inspects his response to Darwin's theory of natural selection.; The Galapagos Islands serve as a common ground for authors from different time periods and geographical places. Through each author's contemplation of the islands and the theories they symbolize, we gain insight into the ways Darwinism has affected America since its inception.