Nature as Witness: Environmental Trauma and Recovery in Morrison and Atwood’s Fiction

Deepadarshini K¹, Jaisre V²

¹Research Scholar, Department of English, Vels Institute of Science, Technology & Advanced Studies, Chennai – 117. k.deepadarshini@gmail.com

²Professor, Department of English, Vels Institute of Science, Technology & Advanced Studies, Chennai -117. jaisre.sl@velsuniv.ac.in

Abstract

This article investigates in what way nature appears as an accessory or even as a sole determinant and witness to the trauma of the earth that reflects on the works of Toni Morrison and Margaret Atwood. This paper is in the context of reading ecocritical texts in Morrison’s Beloved and The Bluest Eye and Atwood’s Surfacing and The Year of the Flood to understand how the two authors connect ecological abuses with individual and communal traumas, especially on the suburbs. The author explores the parallel between landscape and psychological trauma, ecological destruction and social inequity and racial injustices, and how the landscape also forms a possible realm of healing and redemption. Based on the ecofeminist and social ecology approaches, the paper unveils that the nature in the stories functions beyond its symbolic representation; it is the one of the repositories of the memory, the one that absorbs violence and provides the means of the resistance. The article compares the ecological awareness of Morrison and Atwood in their fiction and sets the works within the world context of the environmental justice, gender issues, and postcolonial resilience.

Keywords: Ecocriticism, Psychological, Healing, Oppression, Resistance, Trauma.