Awareness-Conflict-Reflection

With the development of our society, the environment which we depend on to live is facing greater and greater challenges. Considering themselves as the master of everything, human beings usually conquer the nature and destroy the nature wantonly, and as a result this causes the tense relationship between human and nature; in order to gain social and economical interests, human beings often ignore the sustainable ability of nature, and this has caused the tense relationship between society and nature; the decrease of natural resources and the formation of ecological crisis express that the ecological values of people have gone a wrong way. Therefore, how to re-consider the relationship among human beings, society and nature is a problem must be solved immediately. This thesis aims to dig out the roots of ecological crisis, to reveal the damages people have done to nature, to lead people do reasonable reflections, and at last people may merge into nature and co-exist with ecology in the developing process of eco-criticism: awareness—conflict—reflection.The first chapter presents the early ecological intention and the awareness of ecological consciousness. In 1840s, the author Henry David Thoreau expressed his unique natural views in his famous work Walden. He advocates that people should be in harmony with nature. He is against the increasing desires for materials. He strongly disagrees with human-centralism and advocates the spiritual life; in practice, Thoreau advocates simple life and calls up people to protect nature with our own behaviors. In sum, we can say that the publishing of Walden is the milestone of the awareness of ecological consciousness.The second chapter of the thesis mainly illustrates kinds of conflicts exist in ecological literature: the blind warship for technology makes people proud and they change their attitude from"fear"to"contempt"; the conflicts between natural resources and social development are intensified; we cannot have the right ecological values because of the shortage of ecological consciousness and so on. The work The Old Man and the Sea which was written by the famous author Ernest Hemingway includes rich ecological philosophies. In the process of catching fish, the old man has the desire of conquering nature and on the contrary, the nature itself has the force majeure. Thus, this paper will be based on the book and illustrate various conflicts.The third chapter focuses on people's reflections of the former conflicts. With the development of environmental crisis, people begin to pay more attention to The Silent Spring written by Rachel Carson. The ecological views in this book wake up people's ecological consciousness and become the turning point for people to examine themselves. Since the publishing of this book, it was analyzed by many researchers from kinds of angles. I think: people should carry on reflections from the following aspects. First, people should re-locate science and technology. Science and technology is just a tool to push forward social development, not a mean to destroy nature. Second, we have to re-locate ourselves: we should be harmony with nature and we can never rely on destroying nature to satisfy our endless needs. At last, we should have the right ecological ethics and respect nature.In the end, we have to focus on the effects brought by eco-criticism. The environmental views Carson expressed not only predicted the following ecological crisis, but also pointed out the direction we must choose in the future. She pointed out the way, but we really have a long way to go...