A Study Of The English Patient From The Perspective Of Eco-criticism

As one of Canada's most highly regarded contemporary writers,Michael Ondaatje(1943-)establishes a unique literary style through his publication of many books in poetry and prose.Often based on the non-mainstream lives of real people,his longer narrative works are well-known for dissolving the line between poetry and prose,as well as combining the factual and the imagery.The English Patient is considered as Ondaatje's most acknowledged fictional work to date and has won him the Booker Prize in 1992,which contributes to his international fame.Characterized by its poetic language,complicated structure and diversified themes,the novel has created grand space for the extensive research from different critical perspectives.The thesis intends to explore The English Patient from the perspective of eco-criticism.Set in an Italian villa at the end of World War ?,the novel depicts the physical and emotional suffering of four characters,interweaving with the astonishing recollections of their pasts.The four war victims gather together to heal each other,but end up leaving the villa and setting off their own journeys respectively.Critics have analyzed this novel from the perspectives of post-colonialism,narratology,intertextuality,history and gender;but systematic researches of this novel from the view of eco-criticism are limited.Through close reading of the text,this thesis applies the theory of ecological holism to analyze three sequential conditions in the novel--respectively the pre-war harmonious coexistence between humanity and nature,the post-war collapsed homeland of human beings who lost their identities,and the attempt of humankind to rebuild their sense of place and reconstruct their identities-so as to unearth the ecological elements embedded in The English Patient.The theory of ecological holism applied in the thesis is regarded as the core idea of ecological philosophy,with Aldo Leopold and Holmes Rolston as the two significant figures in this field.Different from anthropocentrism,which focuses on the profit of human beings,ecological holism considers the benefit of the whole ecosystem as the highest value.Humankind,as the most sophisticated product in the ecosystem,shoulders the responsibility to reconstruct ecological holism and look out over all orders of life.The conditions and memories of the four characters in the villa properly present Ondaatje's demonstration,destruction and reconstruction of ecological integrity.The intensified degradation of environment has been a problem of great urgency;nevertheless the accelerating process of globalization has made it an unprecedented crisis faced by all human beings.In The English Patient,Ondaatje points out a way of homecoming through the reconstruction of the ecological integrity,as well as reveals the damage of war to nature and humanity.His work has practical significance in extricating humanity from the global survival predicament,showing his deep concern towards the ultimate fate of humanity.