Regaining The Spiritual Garden

Leslie Marmon Silko is an outstanding woman writer of the Indian Renaissance. As the only womanwriter, she is regarded by Alan R. Velie as one of the “Four American-Indian Literary Masters”, the other threeof whom are Momaday, James Welch, and Gerald Vizenor. Her works convey her strong national consciousnessand display the rich traditional culture of Indian people, which win her many laurels, such as Discovery Awardof National Endowment of Arts, Poetry Prize of Chicago Review, Push Carter Poetry Award, and the Non-fictionAward of The Boston Global, and so on. Published in1999, Gardens in the Dunes is Silko’s third novel. Itdepicts two worlds in the end of the19th century: one is a highbrow society on the European continentrepresented by Hattie and the other is the Indian tribe in the western part of the U.S. represented by Indigo, andshows the striking contrasts in the social structure, culture, convention, and moral beliefs. Besides, the richthemes such as ecology, feminism, racialism, religion and culture endow this novel with clear era sensation andwin it good reputations.From the post-colonial perspective, this thesis focuses on the ecological thoughts in Gardens in the Dunes,and the problem how Indian people save and regain their spiritual culture in modern society by applying theeco-criticism theory of Gayatri Chakravorty SpivakChapter One gives a brief introduction to the importance of Leslie Marmon Silko and Gardens in the Dunes,illustrates the research status, the main ideas of Spivak’s post-colonial eco-criticism theory, and the researchsignificance of this thesis.Chapter Two explores the main reasons of losing gardens. Through the analysis of the ecological injusticebetween animals and human beings, the ecological injustice between nature (land) and human beings, and theecological injustice among peoples, this chapter concludes that it is the “land policy” by the white, and humanbeings’ devastating exploitation of nature that caused the loss of Indian gardens. Besides, colonial oppressionand patriarchy also caused the spiritual loss of both Indian women and the white women.Chapter Three takes the journey of heroines as the clue, focuses on the different images of garden and thedifferent ecological thoughts revealed. This chapter classifies different images of garden into two parts: thecolonists’ garden and the soul garden, and analyzes the differences of ecological ideas between Indian peopleand the white people, between the male and female, which paves the way for the further analysis on how toregain and rebuild the spiritual garden.Chapter Four probes into the question how to regain and rebuild the spiritual garden. Based on the previous chapter, this chapter concludes three important conditions for regaining the spiritual garden: return to home,respect for the divinity and diversity of nature, and respect for the cultural diversity.Through the careful interpretation of Gardens in the Dunes, this thesis draws such a conclusion thatGardens in the Dunes shows the ecological thought of harmony and respect of Indian people, and highlights thecultural development model of harmony and coexistence through the relation between human beings and nature.What’s more, the respect for nature in Indian culture is no longer confined to Indian people themselves, theharmonious relationship among human beings, society, and nature has become the foundation of developmentand is vital to any kind of culture as well.