The Embodiment Of Amerindian Traditions In Animal Dreams

Barbara Kingsolver is an important contemporary American writer. Her novel Animal Dreams has won many awards. The novel describes changes of a small town under the impact of industrialization and an American woman’s search for spiritual home. The protagonist Codi joins in the local residents in their fights against pollution and meanwhile learns to appreciate the North American Indian cultural traditions.This thesis aims at demonstrating Barbara Kingsolver’s ecological position by examining her novel Animal Dreams from the ecocritical point of view. Its body section is divided into five main parts. The first part is an introduction, which gives a brief account of the writer, her novel and Amerindian traditions. The second part is an introduction of ecocriticism as a literary approach. The third part and the fourth part are the main parts of text analysis. The third part points out the book’s emphasis on the natural beauty of land, lamentation at human damages to the environment and foregrounding of Amerindian harmony with the land, river, animals and plants. The fourth part focuses on eco-related Amerindian cultural traditions such as storytelling, handicrafts, rock engravings, music, ritual dances, fertility worship and relationship inside family and community. The last part is the conclusion. It recapitulates the major points of the thesis and then goes on to urge the government and public to do something for the protection of traditional Amerindian cultural heritages as well as for the conservation of the earth that we live on.Barbara Kingsolver is a writer who admires the way of life led by the Amerindian. This attitude is especially important in the present days when the ecological environment is worsening. The thesis analyze the Animal Dreams to tell the North American Indian traditions for two purposes, one is to call on people to mend our ways of life until finally we reach an ecological harmony with nature. The other is to encourage further research into Animal Dreams and North American Indians’ traditional culture.