The Ecological Reading Of George Orwell's Coming Up For Air

George Orwell, who has a writing career of almost twenty years, is one of the most important writers in the 20th century literary world. He writes many excellent essays, literary critiques, informal essays and novels, but they are eventually overshadowed by his two most famous novels:Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty Four. Chinese also are most familiar with these two works. For decades critics' attention has been concentrating on the political and ideological ideas embodied in his works, especially the above-mentioned two works, due to the works of Orwell's closely linking to the international situation.Coming Up for Air, regarded as one of the fifty highly delighting literary works in the world, is also one of his excellent works. This thesis re-reads Orwell's work---Coming Up for Air---from an ecological perspective, a completely new perspective. In the novel, George Orwell exposes the severe situation of both the ecological crisis of nature and that of human spirit. He also gives some suggestions to heal the crisis:mankind should return to nature and get along harmoniously with nature; the only right way for mankind to live happily and develop sustainably is to respect nature and protect it.This thesis consists of three chapters in addition to the Introduction and Conclusion. The Introduction gives an overview of Orwell's life, his novel Coming Up for Air, the critics'comments concern and eco-criticism.Chapter One analyzes Orwell's views cornering natural ecology embodied in Coming Up for Air. The novel describes vividly the natural world and reveals its author's profound idea of the relationship between man and nature, indicating that he has a deep love of and unique understanding of nature:mankind is the child of nature and cannot be isolated from it.Chapters Two and Chapter Three explore the novel's representations of Orwell's concern for modern social ecology and humans'spiritual ecology. In his opinion, war and industrial civilization not only destroy beautiful nature, but also ruin humanity and render humans painful because they engender the split of spirit and body. People can not achieve self-fulfillment and consequently get lost in life.The Conclusion points out that selfishness are the root of ecological crisis. Meanwhile, Orwell also implied the way to solve ecological crisis. The way is that human beings should regard nature as a good friend and maintain a harmonious relationship with it. The harmonious relationships will help human beings to find a release point for their already hurt spiritual and physical world, and only in this situation, can human beings come up for fresh air. Only in such a harmonious relationship, can people have a better survival and development.