摘 要

《野性的呼唤》是美国著名作家杰克伦敦最富盛名的小说，全书立足于生态批评视角，围绕当时社会风靡一时的淘金热展开叙述，描述了一只来自文明世界的狗—巴克，在主人的虐待下逐步回到荒野的过程。本文通过描述人类与动物之间的关系及人类虐待和残害动物的行为，严正批判在人类社会长期占统治地位的人类中心主义思想，呼吁人类应该尊重自然，与自然和谐相处。本文试图从生态批评学角度，对《野性的呼唤》中所体现的杰克伦敦的生态文明观从以下三个部分进行探索与剥析。第一部分主要是对生态批评理论起源及发展的介绍。第二部分主要通过对比巴克主人的自私、伪善，以及巴克的忠诚、智慧，坚毅的性格特征，揭示人类中心说日益明显的弊端。第三部分通过分析淘金者代表与巴克之间病态的关系以及桑顿与巴克之间和谐的伙伴关系，点明本文的中心思想：人类应重新审视自身本质，以及人在自然界中的地位和人与自然之间的关系，倡导人类应该从生态整体利益出发,承担起保护自然的责任，从而创造出一种人与自然和谐相处,人类回归大自然的状态。

关键词：人类中心论；生态批评学；人性; 野性

Abstract

The Call of the Wild is famous American realistic writer Jack London's most prestigious fiction, under the social background of the gold rush which is all the rage at that time, the returned to the wild under his master's abused. The paper written in seemingly a dog, but actually reflected reality of the human world, by describing the relationship between animals and human beings and the behavior which human beings abused animals cruelly, solemnly criticized the dominance of Anthropocentrism which existed in human society for a long time. This paper attempts to explore ecological civilization concept of Jack London in The Call of the Wild from the perspective of Eco-criticism on the following three parts. The first part mainly introduces the origin and development of ecological criticism theory. In the second part, by analyzing the characteristics of human beings and animals to explore the ideal relationship between human and nature in the current social background. The third part aims to summarize the final destination of human and animal, through the comparison to summarize central idea of this paper: human beings should assume the responsibility to protect nature, respect for nature, and get along well with nature.

Key Words: Anthropocentrism; Eco-criticism; Nature; Wild.

Contents

1 Introduction 1

2 Theoretical Basis 3

2.1 The Origin and Development of Eco-criticism 3

2.2 Application of Eco-criticism 4

3 Comparison of Wildness and Humanity 6

3.1 The Intelligent Buck as the Representative of Wildness 6

3.2 The Morbid Humanity Embodied on Golden Diggers 7

3.3 The Return of Wildness in Humanity 10

4 The Relationship Between Animals and Human Beings 12

4.1 The Unhealthy Relationship Between Buck and Wicked Master 12

4.2 The Rehabilitation of Harmonious Eco-relationship 13

4.3 Comparison of Eco-criticism and Anthropocentrism 14

5 Conclusion 16

References 17

Acknowledgements 18

The Return to the Nature:

The Study of Call of the wild from the Perspective of Eco-criticism

1 Introduction

Jack London is one of the most prestigious writer in the American literature history. He was born in a bankrupt farmer family in San Francisco, California, USA. He published many short stories since 1900 and he was be considered a socialist writer because his works mostly with socialist overtones, but there are also many people think he is expressive individualism and public philosophy of naturalism. His works are not only in the widely circulated in the United States, but also by the welcome of people all around the world, is one of the most popular foreign writers that Chinese readers deeply love.

The Call of the Wild is the most famous novel created by Jack London. The story mainly describes a strong brave dog Buck came back to the primitive life from the human civilization. Buck is a very strong dog with a 140 pound weight and he grew up in south, a judge’s home. In there, Buck enjoyed a prosperous life, pivotal status and universal respect, but in a very time which gold rush was all the rage, everything started to change for Buck. He was abducted by judge’s gardener, and then he was sold to a sweater guy. With a hint of aristocratic, Buck suffered a cruel treatment for the first time; Followed hitting by a rod again and again, he lost his conscious, gradually he was aware of that was meaningless to fight against the man who has rod. From this point, the author think that this rod actually stands for a rule, a rule which the weak must obey the strong, a rule which the relationship between men and animals were destined to be unable to get along harmoniously. It also can be considered a key which make Buck start to know the original nature and open the door to Buck return to the nature; Meanwhile, it also woke up the wildness in Buck’s deep heart. Except experiencing a serious horrible things, such as badly beaten by his different masters, painfully competed by other dogs, Buck also lived a short and happy life. he met Thornton who brought happiness and hope to him. However, happiness always is transient, Thornton’s death became the last straw to Buck, the most primitive wild of him was inspired, he returned to the wild and grew into a real wolf gradually.

Many international scholars and domestic experts have already studied The Call of the Wild from different perspectives such as love, loyalty, flourishing life and so on. There also are many studies researched into the realism in the novel, while some others tried to analyze the story in the view of naturalism to expound the influence of inheritance and environment on animals. However, as the development of human society has endangered the environmental and biological balance, a new form of literary criticism—Eco-criticism came into being in the 1990s in America and Europe. Aiming at establishing a harmonious relationship between human and nature, it probes into the relationship between civilization and nature through analyses of literary texts. The paper will analyze The Call of the Wild from the view of Eco-criticism which can help authors find new ecological thoughts in the novel and give authors a deeper understanding of the story. So the paper aims to do a study from the perspective of Eco-criticism. Besides, increasingly number of people turn their attention to the relationship between human beings and animals, it is a urgent task which construct harmonious society. Therefore, how nature and human get along well with each other is significant.

The paper aims to analysis the relationship between nature and society from the perspective of Eco-criticism. It seems that nature only means the field which animals lived in at the appearance, but in the deep meaning, it also means the characteristic which animals had. So the word nature in the paper is a pun which not only stands for a environment animals lived, but also means a characteristic animals possessed.

2 Theoretical Basis

2.1 The Origin and Development of Eco-criticism

Eco-criticism, the study of literature from the perspective of environment, originated in America in the 1970s. In 1974, American expert Joseph Meeker first proposed the term “literary ecology” in his book The Comedy of Survival: Studies in Literary Ecology. In 1978, American famous specialist William Ruecker Kroeber first used the term “Eco-criticism” in his essay Literature and Ecology: An Experiment in Eco-criticism.

As a new literary critical perspective, Eco-criticism did not march its developing and flourishing development until the 1990s. In 1991, Harold Fromm initiated and hosted the academic seminar with the theme “Eco-criticism: The Greening of Literary Studies” in the conference held by MLA^[1], which is the first time that the Eco-critics could voice their opinions on Eco-criticism. In 1992, ASLE^[2] was established in the University of Nevada as an international academic research institution in Eco-criticism. In 1995, the first research periodical in ecological literature ISLE^[3] were set up. After a short while, some important research monographs on Eco-criticism were published in America, the two important ones of which were The Environmental Imagination: Thoreau, Nature Writing, and the Formation of American Culture and The Eco-criticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology. With the environmental crisis comes a crisis of the imagination, a need to find new ways to understand nature and humanity's relationship which is a serious challenge, Lawrence Buell came up with "The Environmental Imagination". With Thoreau's Walden as a touchstone, Buell gives us an account of environmental perception, the place of nature in the history of Western thought, and the consequences for literary scholarship of attempting to imagine a more "Eco-criticism" way of being. In doing so, he provides an understanding of Thoreau's achievement and, at the same time, a rethinking of our literary and cultural reflections on nature. (Buell, 1995). The Eco-criticism Reader is the first collection of its kind, an anthology of classic and cutting-edge writings in the rapidly emerging field of literary ecology. Exploring the relationship between literature and the physical environment, literary ecology is the study of the ways that writing both reflects and influences our interactions with the natural world.An introduction to the field as well as a source book, it also defines ecological literary discourse and sketches its development over the past quarter-century. (Fromm, 1996), And the research development on Eco-criticism in England could be represented by The song of the Earth and The Green Studies Reader: From Romanticism to Eco-criticism. It offers a complete guide to the growing area of ecocriticism and a wealth of material on greenissues from the romantic period to the present, The most important aspects of this field are covered in depth: Romantic ecology and it’s legacy, the earth, memory and the critique of modernity(Bate, 2000).

The origin and development of Eco-criticism is tightly related to the development of ecology, among which Leopold’s important concept “land ethic” and Naess’s basic concept “deep ecology” are the most important theoretical foundation of Eco-criticism.

2.2 Application of Eco-criticism

For years, the relationship between literature and natural environment has been put forward, some scholars tried to explained it from ecological criticism perspective. A serious of questions which ecologists often present such as how does the writer describe the nature, how do the humans to deal with the relationship between nature and society, except these fundamental problems, ecological criticism also including these kinds of special problems: how to determine the relationship between nature and culture, what is the contemporary ecological literature criticism research direction? Isn’t Eco-criticism a "ultimate science"? What is the relationship between ecological literature studies and other disciplines? Ecologist clearly put forward that the fundamental premise of ecological criticism is: human culture and the natural world is closely related(Rueckert, 2008). Human culture affects the natural world and it also is influenced by the natural world at the same time. The theme of this theory is to discuss the relationship between nature and culture. As a literary and cultural criticism, the main task of Eco-criticism is to reflect human culture through the literature. Cultural criticism, to explore how does human’s ideology exist, how the cultural and social development model influences even determines people's attitude and behavior, and what leads to the environmental deterioration and ecological crisis(林红梅，2008). As Jonathan Levin said, "All the aspects which exist in our society and culture together determine the unique way we live in this world." Without studying these, we can not deeply understand the relationship between people and the natural environment, and can only express some superficial concerns.

The paper will base on the view of Eco-criticism, analyze the relationship between Human beings and animals, and how to establish a Eco-harmonious relationship between them. Besides, with the increasingly prominence of environmental issues, the construction of Eco-harmonious relationship between nature and society is an irresistible historical trend. Finally, the comparison with Eco-criticism and Anthropocentrism will indicate that Eco-criticism is even more adapt the development of Human beings and society.

3 Comparison of Wildness and Humanity

3.1 The Intelligent Buck as the Representative of Wildness

The nature of Buck is distinct, especially after comparison with his masters, Buck seems like a people rather than a dog who with intelligence, competitiveness and friendship. So as the representative of nature, Buck’s experience presented clearly that the most ideal relationship between human and nature not slavery but partner. In nature, Buck is a real leader with braveness and loyalty, however, to gold digger it seems that Buck is only a excellent instrument which can make more benefit for them and satisfy their strong desire to make fortunate.