Enchantment, Disenchantment, And Reenchantment: An Ecological View On Mara And Dann

Denominated as "an evergreen in British literary world", Doris Lessing is one of the most stylistic and classical female writers after World Warâ…¡. Her works have become renowned for their capability to change human mind and further to affect human life. Her later works reflect her deep concern about human destiny. Mara and Dann, a science fiction and modern fable published in 1999, exposes Lessing's profound thinking of man-nature relationship, while this kind of pondering drives her to envisage a survival adventure from human dependence on nature to the reflection on modern technology, and finally to the reconstruction of pastoral life in future society. Regarded as an "Exodus in the Ice Age", Mara and Dann reflects her strong desire for regaining the charm of the world.Based on the concept of reenchantment, the author of this thesis probes into the protagonists Mara and Dann's pursuing course for the reenchantment through the narrative clue of Mara and Dann from the perspective of man-nature relationship. It shows that postmodernism pursues for a poetic sense of existence with the combination of both human perception and rationality.Besides introduction and conclusion, this thesis is divided into three chapters. Chapter 1 concentrates on the protagonists'inheritance of enchantment. On the starting point of the adventure, Mara and her brother Dann lived in a desolate condition in the next ice age. They had regressed to human original state and showed their awe and dependence on nature. Chapter 2 mainly explores the characters'elimination of disenchantment. As the journey went on, a disenchanted world in the ice ages intervals gave them an impression of anthropocentrism. With the birth of rationality, Mara and Dann began to reconsider the uncovered world in modern times and doubt the authority of rationality. Chapter 3 focuses on Mara and Dann's pursuit for reenchantment. After a series of hardships to the north of Ifrik, Mara and Dann's terminal was set on a small poetic pastoral farm. The landscape was where harmony of man and nature as well as diversified relations in the reenchantment of the world expected to get. With love and desire for knowledge, the new kind of existence was a reenchantment of perception and rationality, culture and nature. The protagonists had rationally realized the importance of constructing a harmonious relationship with nature.From the above analysis, this thesis aims to demonstrate that the survival journey of Mara and Dann corresponds with human "enchantment-disenchantment-reenchantment" progress. However, the novel does not seek to more hope; instead, it gives out an alarm on the possibility of human survival in the future. As a modern fable concerning ecological civilization, the novel manifests that if human beings go on destroying the environment and civilizations in modern times, the same predicament Mara and Dann have encountered would reappear. Therefore, it reveals a necessity for human beings to reconstruct a harmonious reenchanted world from now on.