Eco-Aesthetical Thoughts In Cormac Mccarthy's The Road

Cormac McCarthy (1933--- ) is one of America's greatest writers. He is considered the only successor after Hemingway and Faulkner. In his works, nature is the great existence which is given extensive and thriving vitality. In Cormac McCarthy's world, beasts, even the sun, the moon, the mountains and the river, are the human observers, examining human behaviors---folly, evilness and cruelty everywhere and at all times.The Road is the tenth novel of McCarthy, which describes a journey of America taken by a father and his young son after an unnamed cataclysm. It is considered a "brutal poetics" with great apocalyptic solemnity and dignity. The novel was published in Sept. 2006 with great praise and was awarded the 2007 Pulitzer Prize. Since the publication of the novel there has been widespread concern in academic circles at home and abroad. Further concern about McCarthy works is coming. This thesis, based on the close reading of the text, aims to reveal the thought-provoking ecological aesthetic thoughts in The Road and arouse the consciousness of the human race to shoulder the responsibility to set up the harmony between man and nature.Eco-aesthetics, a kind of existing aesthetics combined with ecology, concerns about the aesthetic relationship between man and nature, man and society, man and himself. Eco-aesthetics is philosophically based on the view of practice and existence, with eco-center principles being basic principles. Such principles give up the long-term man-center principles, emphasizing the equality between human beings and nature in the biological chains, and fully stressing the man's sense and rights to the environment. Eco-aesthetic is considered as a response to the ill effect caused by modernization. Its main aim is to rebuild a harmonious existence relationship between human beings and nature.This thesis is composed of six parts including an introduction and a conclusion. The introductory part of the thesis summarizes McCarthy's literary achievements and the main idea of The Road. Meanwhile, it gives a brief survey of the previous studies of the novel at home and abroad.The first chapter is devoted to an overview of ecological aesthetics and the relative theories including Heidegger's existence theory, eco-criticism and deep ecology which paves the way for eco-aesthetic reading this novel.Chapter Two offers a reading of The Road from the three perspectives: natural ecology, social ecology and spiritual ecology which presents a picture of the imbalanced ecological state: the faded landscape; the lack of substances; the destroyed human relations and the split of ego in human beings which causes worthy of deep consideration.Based on the contemplations of it, the main body of this thesis, Chapter Three, explores the ecological aesthetic thoughts embodied in the novel. According to McCarthy, to build up the aesthetic relations between man and nature, man and society and man and self is basically of greater importance which is the prerequisite for the presence of human society and the material conditions of its existence and development.Chapter Four objectively analyzes the significance and value of this research. The significance lies in the advocating for a view of holism in the ecological system in contrary to the"human centralism", advocating social responsibility, against environmental pollution. Meanwhile, the study enriches and promotes the development of ecological literature.Finally, the thesis reaches the point that is to inspire people's consciousness of protecting nature and realizing the importance of harmonious man-nature relationship which will help the human world reconstruct a new type of relationship between man and nature from the perspective of the whole ecological interest.