Fraternity For All-on Human-elephant Community In English Works At The Turn Of The 21^st Century

With the emergence of increasingly severe ecological crisis and the rise of post-humanism,literary works about the elephant are endowed with richer connotations and more diverse themes.This thesis focuses upon four elephant works published at the turn of the 21 st century,namely,Silent Thunder by American writer Katy Payne,Modoc: The True Story of the Greatest Elephant That Ever Lived by American writer Ralph Helfer,Water for Elephants by Canadian writer Sara Gruen and The Elephant Keeper by British writer Christopher Nicholson,explores the female-elephant,trainer-elephant and human-elephant relationships from the perspectives of gender,class and ecology respectively.First,this thesis unfolds the female-elephant community implied in the works.In the patriarchal society,females and elephants share a similar fate,both of whom are suppressed and under the “gaze” of males.To eliminate the oppression and subvert the domination of men,women and elephants have to collaborate by forming an alliance.This reflects the authors' view of gender equality by questioning the dominant role of males and confirming females and elephant's subjectivity.Second,trouper-elephant community is explored in the works.In the circus performance,troupers and elephants should cooperate with each other.Both of them are subject to violence and discipline in the circus hierarchical relationship;meanwhile,they jointly “gaze back” to respond forcefully and revolt the strict hierarchical relationship in the circus.This reveals the authors' appeal for equality and care of animals.Third,this thesis focuses on the human-elephant community in nature.In works,elephants are depicted as having empathy and can also experience psychological trauma like humans.The resonance between humans and elephants,psychologically and spiritually,showing writers' criticism of speciesism and anthropocentrism and their advocacy of species equality.In conclusion,this thesis investigates the relations between humans and elephants in English works and explores the shared fate of different groups of humans and elephants.Inter-personal,inter-species and human-animal relationships are discussed to show the authors' thoughts of harmonious relations,which arouse our further thinking over the issue of shared fate.