Ecological Consciousness In Oryx And Crake

Ecocriticism, born in the 20th century, is the study of relations between literature and nature. It explores how culture is related to nature in the spirit of shouldering responsibilities for the environment. Culture-criticism oriented, it is cross-cultural, cross-disciplinenary, dimensional. It digs on the ecology and seek the return of human being, with aestheticism as its principle.Margaret Atwood, a Canadian prolific female writer. Her works focused on the survival of the disadvantaged group: the survival of nature,the survival of female and survival of ethnic nationalities. The motif of her works is Survive. Most scholars have done researches Margaret's novels, from perspectives of feminism, intextuality and nationalism, etc. Oryx and Crake, is a dystopian fiction, echoing the theme of Handmaid's Tale. It is typically an environment literature, describing how the future world losses its ecology, how disasters happen, and how human being come to the devastation.This thesis is to study the ecological consciousness reflected in Oryx and Crake from the perspective of ecocriticism, analyzing ecological crisis, the causes of ecological crisis and poetic factors in the novel. It categorizes ecological crisis into three layers: environmental crisis (population explosion, natural disasters, epidemic diseases, wrenched animals, human extinction), social crisis (gender crisis, loss of language), and spiritual crisis (loss of culture and loss of belief). It analyzes the causes of the crisis reflected in the novel: human manipulation nature, egoism and malfunctions of belief. Then it digs on the poetic factors: the change of Crake from destroyer to savior, the goodness of Jimmy, Snowman the star of hope, the innocence and naiveness of Oryx, and the environment protection endeavors of the society. Comparing the ecological crisis, the causes of the ecological crisis and the poetic factors, it discusses the ecological consciousness reflected in the novel. The novel tie a bond among nature, female, and lower class people by linking the fate of female and the fate of lower class people with the fate of nature and viewing the suffers of nature a embodiment and result of the miseries of female and lower class people. Ecological balance can be realized only when enough ecological concerns are given to the three. Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake warns human being about the ecological crisis. By exhibiting the horrible scenes that might happen in the future, Atwood arouse the ecological consciousness in the readers, leading them to think about the way to avoid the destruction path in the fiction. Exploration on the ecological consciousness in Oryx and Crake is of great significance to literature and the society. It warns people to reflect on the path human being has pursued, to reexamine the inappropriate factors—anthropocentrism, male domination, and hegemonism. It leaves the question of how to reconstruct the green civilization.