earticle

영어

This article attempts to discuss the ecological perspectives in The Botany of Desire and My Ántonia, and find a certain solution to the problems of modern society. Our society, or the global society in general, is in trouble with the ecological disasters including ozone depletion, Mad cow disease, and Avian Influenza. Mentally, modern people are suffering from depression, and many of them commit suicide these days. This article assumes that there is Anthropocentrism at the center of these problems as such. The biblical sentence that man is the lord of the creation has brought the wrong idea that man can treat animals and plants as he will. Philosophically, Descartes, the father of modern philosophy, reinforced this way of thinking by creating the concept of human subject. According to him, only man can be established as the subject because of his ability of self-reflection, and in the relationship between the subject and the object the subject takes the superior place. Michael Pollan’s essay, The Botany of Desire and Willa Cather’s My Ántonia are very important in this regard, because they disagree to this way of thinking, and search for the other ways in which we can discuss the relationship between nature and man. In The Botany of Desire, Pollan explores man’s mutual relationship with animals and plants. Seen from the perspective of co-evolution, man not only uses but also is used by the desires of animals and plants. Pollan then overturns the given relationship between the human subject and the object. In My Ántonia Cather shows that Jim Burden, one of the protagonists, is suffering from the feelings of loss. Jim is leading a successful life as a lawyer, but this does not make him happy. Jim’s struggling with his problem brings him back to his Nebraska years, and lets him realize what nature really means to him. Throughout the novel, Cather presents nature as the source of life, that is alive on its own, sometimes influencing the lives of men. This leads us to stop thinking of nature as a mere means of living. In this way, this article studies the ecological discourses in The Botany of Desire and My Ántonia, and is expected to pave the way for a new paradigm of thinking.