Environmental Predicaments And Human Resistances In J.G.Ballard’s Urban Short Stories

James G.Ballard is one of the finest and most maverick science fiction writers in contemporary Britain.Influenced by his childhood experience in war-time Shanghai and the rapid social changes in European cities afterwards,J.G.Ballard always pays a great attention to presenting the outlook of the urban places in many of his works.This thesis,with the application of Lawrence Buell’s environmental criticism and Herbert Marcuse’ theory of one-dimensional man,explores the theme of environment predicaments in Ballard’s six urban short stories from three aspects:the environmental problems,crises under these problems and the mankind’s failed resistances to both of them.The first part of the thesis focuses on the textual analysis of the two predicaments caused by the imprudent development of the industrial society in Ballard’s short stories,namely the absence of the green nature and the prevalence of the pollution,revealing the severe environmental imbalance and destruction in the urban areas.In the second part,this thesis study how people are influenced by these predicaments during the interaction with these environments.For people surrounded by the brown construction,they lose their free subjectivity and critical thinking due to the overwhelming social control enhanced by the brown construction’s collaboration with the industrial social system.For people threatened by the pollution,they lose their identification with and sense of belonging to certain places,as the pollution destructs these places and disconnects them from their past experience.In the third part,this thesis investigates how the inhabitants attempt to find ways out of the environmental predicaments and get rid of their harmful influences,and how these attempts turn out to be futile and serve as intensifiers of these people’s tragedy.By presenting the environmental predicaments,people’s sufferings from them and failed resistances to the predicaments and sufferings,Ballard criticizes the ignorance of environmental balance in the industrial society,shows a great biotic concern over both the human and nonhuman in the urban areas and appeals for reverence for the nature.