A Comparative Study Of Cherishing The Memory Of The Wolves And The Call Of The Wild Under Ecocriticism

Despite of differences in era, culture and background of contemporary Chinese writer Jia Pingwa and American writer Jack London, there are similarities in ecological awareness and depiction of animal images in Cherishing the memory of the Wolves and The Call of the Wild. Through reading these two novels, the ecological awareness contained in them can be easily found. Therefore, it provides good comparative texts for us and helps us deepen the understanding of the two novels. Through relevant theories of ecocriticism, the comparative study on Cherishing the memory of the Wolves and The Call the Wild is carried out this paper. Firstly, the ecological interpretation of the two novels is performed from the perspective of ecocriticism to analyze the implied ecological concepts. Secondly, the differences and similarities of the two novels are compared. Thirdly, the reasons for resulting into these differences and similarities are analyzed again. It is quite novel to compare the two novels from the perspective of ecocriticism, so it is of certain research value. Additionally, this paper also has strong realistic significance, calling for everyone’s focus on environment and harmony in coexistence with nature. This paper consists of five chapters. Chapter I is the introduction, mainly including literal review, research methods. It is tried to comparatively analyze the two pieces of works through parallel study from the perspective ecocriticism. Chapter II discusses the ecocriticism theory. The definition of ecocriticism, reasons for causing ecocriticism and the tasks of ecocriticism are initially elaborated. Chapter III interprets The Call of the Wild and discusses the ecological thought of the novel from the perspective of ecocriticism. From two aspects, the ecological thought implied in The Call of the Wild is analyzed from two aspects:criticism on human centrism and pursuit of harmony in humankind and nature. The ecocentrism has most apparent features:criticism on human centrism and pursuit of harmony of humankind and nature. Chapter IV, Cherishing the memory of the Wolves is interpreted from the perspective of ecocriticism to discuss the ecological thought in the novel. It mainly narrates the disasters brought by the wolf and damages caused artificially and harmonious coexistence of humankind and wolves to let the humankind think over how to harmoniously coexist with the nature. In Chapter V, the differences and similarities of The Call of the Wild and Cherishing the memory of the Wolves are compared and the reasons are found out. There lies similarity in the ecological themes and animal images of the two novels. Through description of animals and conflicts between human civilization and nature, the humankind’s ecological ideal of longing for coexisting with nature harmoniously is conveyed. Besides, the animal images wrote by them are quite similar. Though it is not easy to tame the wild nature of Buck and the wild wolves in Shan Zhou, they represent the strong vitality. They have similar humanized emotions. The differences are mainly represented by writing objects, vision and style. Ultimately, the reasons for causing differences and similarities in two novels are analyzed from Chinese’culture and western culture, their special background knowledge and their personal experience.