Return To Nature

The American author Jack London (1876-1916) has long been popular as a writer of primitive nature. His works have been scrutinized by critic all over the world from both thematic and aesthetic perspectives. Up to now, critics engaged in thematic studies have mainly focused on his depiction of environmental impact, individual helplessness and heredity of biological traits. They spill much ink to categorize him as a representative of American naturalism. However, some critics come to realize the importance of going with the limes, so they begin to view Jack London in light of the most urgent present-day concern-environmental protection. From this point of view, Jack London’s works are an ecocritical comment on the relationship between human civilization and nature. Thus he prefigured today’s voices of ecological protectionists.Ecoriticism takes an earth-centered approach to literary studies, emphasizing the relationship between humans and nature, especially negative effects of excessive human development on the natural environment to arouse people’s ecological consciousness. So, analyzing literature works from the perspective of ecocriticism has practical as well as theoretical meanings. This new wave of critical studies have attracted wide attention and proven to be very rewarding. It is against this background that conception of the current thesis gets under way. As The Call of the Wild is Jack London’s most typical and powerful work of nature, it is chosen as the subject of critical studies for the thesis.The thesis consists of five parts. Part One gives a brief account of the author’s background and life career, an overview of ecocriticism, and a brief survey of current researches, domestic and abroad, on the novel. Part Two explicates the major principles of ecocriticism, including anti-anthropocentrism, deep ecology and ecological holism. Part Three and Part Four are ecocritical analyses of the novel. The former highlights Jack London’s anri-anthropocentrism, deep concern over nature, and advocation of ecological holism as embodied in the novel. London is shown as being opposed to human mistreatment of animals and human intrusion into nature. Nature and animals are seen by London as having intrinsic value on which human life depends, so a harmonious relationship is absolutely necessary. Part Four draws readers’ attention to Jack London’s calls for a new harmonious coexistence, which rests on human responsibility to nature, a new perspective of self-realization and an eventual return to nature. The final part wraps up the entire thesis by reiterating the major points and pointing out the great impact of Jack London’s ecological ideas on all the future generations.