Rethinking Anthropocentrism

Margaret Atwood is one of the most famous women writers in Canada. Up to now, she has produced 14 collections of poems, 5 collections of short stories, 3 works of critical essays and 11 novels. Her novels The Handmaid's Tale, Cat's eye, and Alias Grace were all nominated for the Booker Prize, which she won in 2000 for The Blind Assassin. As a productive writer, she pins her attention on three major realms: woman's life, national identity of Canada and environmental crisis due to the development of science and technology. Her latest novel Oryx and Crake brings readers into a future world of complete destruction of human civilization, which is the consequence of genetic engineering.In this thesis, I will use eco-criticism as the theoretical support to analyze and deconstruct the anthropocentrism in Margaret Atwood's latest novel Oryx and Crake. The story vividly depicts how the development, under the guidance of anthropocentrism, of science and technology leads humankind to its Doom's Day by blindly copying human organs at the Organic Farms. The main body of this thesis is divided into four parts. The first Chapter focuses on the development of Margaret Atwood's attention to the environment in about forty years. The second Chapter mainly goes to the deep root of the eco-crisis we faces today. Anthropocentrism leads to the blind development of science and technology, which not only brings endless sufferings to human beings as a whole but also smashes the balance between the human world and the non-human world. The third Chapter does a comparative study between human beings and the animal world in face of great catastrophe, which proves that animals are better equipped for the extreme conditions caused by human activities while humankind is quite vulnerable. The fourth Chapter points out some of the ways for human beings to be out of the chaos introduced by their arrogant deeds.