Life Questing-Tragic Artistic Point Of View Representing Living Crisis

Alice Walker is an outstanding African-American woman writer in contemporary literature and an influential figure in contemporary black literature. She is well-known for the novel The Color Purple and for that she got a Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award for Fiction. She is famous for profound creative thinking among African-American women writers. She concentrates on describing the difficulties suffered by black women and the striving and unremitting spirit of self-improvement. Meanwhile, she pays close attention to the human living environment—nature, and concerns about all the problems threaten to the world peace and the survival of humanity, which demonstrate her strong sense of ecofeminism. This thesis attempts to interpret the novel The Temple of My Familiar from ecofeminist perspective, and aims at realizing the ultimate aim of the harmonious coexistence of men, women, nature, and all existence forms.The Temple of My Familiar is the fourth novel of Walker. This novel, which has multiple themes, touches the problems of politics, economics, racism, colonialism, feminism, ecology, etc. The protagonist of the novel, Lissie, who is a female character with magic power, is the soul of this novel. She experiences many generations and has the ability to remember her past lives. As a storyteller, she tells her experiences as a man, woman, black, white, even as an animal. From different sights, she presents the societies in which oppression exists between men and women, human and nature, etc. By describing the prehistory full of harmony, she shows her real desire for social needs of harmony. In the opening of this novel, there are also such four young characters, all of whom for some reasons or other are spiritually lost and mentally disturbed. Their process of self-seeking goes through the whole novel. By the end of the novel, all the four protagonists find out themselves who have ever been lost and achieve the sense of wholeness and balance finally.This thesis interprets the novel The Temple of My Familiar by close reading of the text based on ecofeminist literary theory. Through detailed examination of nature discrimination, gender oppression and homogeneity of twin domination of nature and women on the basis of ecofeminism, this thesis fully shows Walker's ecofeminist consciousness and longings for the construction of a harmonious relationship between men and women, human and nature as well as all of other existence forms. By elaborating the process of the four protagonists'self-quest, this thesis presents Walker's appeals for harmony, equality, wholeness and balance on earth, which is just the perfect reflection of ecofeminist ideas.