An Eco-critical Interpretation Of And The Mountains Echoed

Khaled Hosseini is a famous contemporary American Afghan writer. He won the UN humanitarian award in 2006 and was invited to be the goodwill ambassador for the UN Refugee Agency. As a rising star second to none in contemporary literary circle, Khaled Hosseini has created three works so far, that is, The Kite Runner, A Thousand Splendid Suns and And the Mountains Echoed. In all of his works, Hosseini appeals for international humanism and his literary works are closely bound up with the sorrow and persecution suffered from the war by the Afghan people and the country. He combines his ecological thought with Afghan real social condition and creates those works with tremendous accomplishments which convey profound humanitarian care. This thesis attempts to regard Hosseini’s third novel And the Mountains Echoed as the target of research.There are a number of characteristics in And the Mountains Echoed. The plots of this novel are tortuous. It is divided into nine inter-alternated parts, in which each is narrated from a different viewpoint. Taking the Afghan village Shadbagh as the main background and with mutual convergence amid kinship and friendship, poverty and war, this novel depicts intimate relationship between an elder brother and his sister which is closely linked as flesh and blood, along with the suffering of a whole nation, household hardship, individual struggle, cruelty of the war and crisis that exists in the nature. As a significant and influential new work, And the Mountains Echoed is of great research value. This thesis tries to apply eco-criticism theory and analyzes And the Mountains Echoed from Lu Shuyuan’s ecological trichotomy: natural ecology, social ecology and spiritual ecology.This thesis is divided into three parts, namely introduction, main body and conclusion.The first part is the introduction. This part mainly introduces the author of And the Mountains Echoed and the outline of this work as well as his other two well-known works. Secondly, this part states the purpose and significance of this thesis. That is, analyzing Khaled Hosseini’s third novel And the Mountains Echoed by Eco-criticism. It explains the complex relationship among the war in present society, humanity and the nature through the analysis of the relationship between man and nature, man and man, man and oneself. It helps the readers better understand this work as well as Hosseini’s ecological awareness and deeper ideological content, revealing his ecological and philosophical thinking as well as his digging into ecology crisis and human crisis. Thirdly, this part summarizes the researches of this thesis that have been done both home and abroad.The second part is the main body of this thesis, which consists of four chapters. The first chapter gives a detailed introduction to the theory of eco-criticism, as well as the eco-criticism theory applied in this thesis. Eco-criticism is a green wave of criticism that came out in the challenge of the increasing severity of ecology crisis in the 1970 s, the objective of which is to conduct cultural examination and criticism, disclosing discrimination of species, excavating ecology wisdom and constructing ecological theory upon ecological philosophy and ecological ethics. Hosseini’s ecology thinking can be seen clearly in his works.The second chapter mainly bases on natural ecology and focuses on the relationship between nature and human beings as well as the disruption of nature by factors such as wars in this novel through natural ecology. Nature is the material basis of human beings. It offers men material power. The beautiful natural scenery and vitality brings about comport to people in difficulty. Nature has close relationship with humans. Nevertheless, as it is described in the novel, a series of human’s behaviors are damaging nature, especially the evil war. The harmed nature correspondingly revenges on human beings.The third chapter focuses on the social ecology and mainly analyzes the war factors, the damaged after-war Afghanistan, the twisted human relations and the cruel treatment to vulnerable groups, such as children, women and the poor. Afghanistan has long been enveloped by war fire, which leads to the relationship between human beings, lost in a twisted trouble. This social phenomenon can be found everywhere in And the Mountains Echoed.The fourth chapter sets spiritual ecology as the basis. In this chapter, it mainly unscrambles the losing of oneself, the confusion of cultural identity and various factors’ influence on Afghan culture. The spiritual subject(man) and its living environment interplay on each other. In this novel, the Afghan people live in extreme misery, fleeing from one place to another, being homeless. Affected by this living environment, the Afghan people were not able to grow up healthily, letting alone the confused cultural identity. The development of Afghan culture is also negatively influenced by the above factor.The third part is the conclusion part of this thesis. This part first takes a further summary about the application and significance of the eco-criticism theory in this novel, forming the thesis into a whole. Then it emphasizes the researching significance of this thesis. In the field of literary criticism, eco-criticism has become one of the hottest. The analysis of And the Mountains Echoed by eco-criticism can help the readers to understand this work better. While talking the real social condition in Afghanistan, though the social position of the vulnerable groups has be changed a lot and the large-scale wars have stopped, the beautiful faces of most Afghan women are still hidden behind the thick burqa, a great number of children are homeless and the natural environment of Afghanistan is worn out seriously. There are still small-scale wars in Afghanistan from time to time. At the same time, there are a lot of third world countries who suffer similar fate with the Afghanistan. Therefore, the practical meaning of this thesis is to arouse people’s sense of ecological crisis and ecological awareness, calling on people to unite as one to construct an eco-friendly, harmonious and stable environment.