From Nature Hymn To Ecological Alarm

American nature writing is a widely accepted writing genre whose study object is nature. It develops in the twentieth century and researches the relationships between human beings and the natural world. It calls on humans to sort out the relationship between wilderness and civilization and to protect the environment. Nature writers not only express their pursuit of beauty in literature, but also discuss the values of the environment and the land ethics. Among them are Mary Austin and Rachel Carson, two famous American nature writers. Mary Austin, who created the “desert aesthetics” at the turn of century, was regarded as a major representative of the American nature writing. In 1903, she published her masterpiece The Land of Little Rain, showing people the special charm of the desert where the author had lived as long as twelve years. Mary Austin showed her immense respect to nature in the whole book. However, Rachel Carson exposed the ecological crisis by DDT abusing and other chemicals and criticized the attitude of human being attempting to control nature in her masterpiece Silent Spring. It awoke the environmental consciousness of the public and changed humans’ arrogant attitude toward nature and greatly accelerates the development of the environmental movements around the world. This thesis attempts to study The Land of Little Rain and The Silent Spring from the perspective of eco-criticism and mainly discusses the differences between them. With the comparative analysis, this thesis compares and analyzes the different ecological themes, different skills of expression and different origins of thoughts between the two works. This comparative study intends not only to track the differences in their nature writing to achieve a better understanding of Austin’s and Carson’s works, but more importantly, to make the readers realize the two authors’ advocacy of harmony between human beings and nature.This paper consists of five chapters:Chapter one is a brief introduction of the origin and development of American nature writing, Mary Austin, Rachel Carson and their works, the literature reviews at home and abroad as well as the structure of the thesis.Chapter two compares and analyzes their different ecological theme. The first section discusses the different ecological consciousness embodied in the two works. The Land of Little Rain showed Mary Austin’s infinite love and respect for nature. However, Carson’s works can be seen as an environmental apocalypse which were centered on the environmental disaster caused by DDT abusing and also appeals to humans to introspect themselves. The second section discusses the different efforts tried by the two authors to solve the plight. In fact, taking individualism as a starting point, Austin values independent spirit, appeals to people to return to nature to live a materially-simple but spiritually-rich life, and claims that human can achieve spiritual distillation and ethic leap. Unlike Austin, who concerns about the immortal soul, Carson tends to focus more on the substantial relationship between humans and nature. Faced with the environmental degradation, Carson seeks a kind of dialogue and emphasizes the harmony between human and nature. To her credit, Carson points out the way to solve the ecological crisis.Chapter three compares and analyzes their different skills of expression. Firstly, as for writing styles, Austin has an unique narrative angle, lots of romantic descriptions of natural scene and appropriate use of rhetorical device—personification, effectively increasing the artistic appeal and enhancing the expressiveness of her book. However, Silent Spring is a perfect combination of literature and science, and its words are based on the facts. Austin’s concern is only staying in the level of loving and respecting nature, which belongs to the primary stage of the development of eco-literature. Rachel Carson not only loves nature but also reveres it. Her ecological concern includes deep reverence for life and non-human forms of life in the whole ecosystem. Further to say, Carson’s love for nature is not limited in the hollow praise of nature. To her credit, she combines the ecological ethics with it and provides specific suggestions and methods for humans in plight. Secondly, in the aspect of women images, both of them show their ecological concern about women in their works and they have reflected the inherent connection between women and nature. Mary Austin not only expresses her sympathy to women’s misery in the patriarchy society but also highly appreciates the strong, independent, and creative personality of women images in her work. But Carson realizes that women are the biggest victims of the ecological disaster. She suggests that women have to strive for an equal right and protect their own interests. From this point of view, Austin places a greater emphasis on women’s intimacy to nature and psychological tendency toward seeking solace from nature. However, in Silent Spring, Carson not only criticizes the patriarchal oppression on women but also praises the rebellion of them, which obviously walks much further than Austin’s feminism on the road of eco-criticism.Chapter four compares and analyzes different origins of their ecological ideas. The origin of Austin’s ecological ideas lies mainly in two aspects: American transcendentalism and American Indian culture. The origin of Carson’s ecological ideas lies mainly in two aspects: “the ethics that respect for life” of Schweizer and Aldo Leopold’s ecological holism.Chapter five is the conclusion. By comparing Austin’s and Carson’s different nature writing and ecological thoughts, the thesis concludes that Carson’s ecological philosophy, inheriting the ethics of reverence for life and ecological holism, is more mature than Austin’s ecological ideas that praise the nature and appeal to people to return to nature so as to seek spiritual solace and self-realization. Carson’s nature writing leads humans to break away from the anthropocentrism. To sum up, by digging into Austin’s and Carson’s ecological thoughts of philosophy embodied in their nature writing, it can provide profound enlightenment for people who get trapped in ecological dilemma.