Henderson The Rain King From The Eco-criticism Perspective

Saul Bellow is a Jewish-American writer who won the Nobel Prize for literature in1976. His very important and mature novel, Henderson the Rain King, was set in thepostwar America, characterized by Bellow as dominated by Anthropocentrism whichconcerning only about money and fame. Living in such a society, Henderson, the hero ofHenderson the Rain King, senses the absurdity of the world around him which provokesin him feelings of anxiety, and emptiness. Finally, Henderson decides to get away fromhis unsatisfying life and proceeds to travel to Africa. Africa as presented in the book canbe understood to represent Nature, and more specifically the purifying and clarifyingpower of Nature. These themes coincide with the tenets of Eco-criticism, a field ofcriticism which emphasizes the power of nature and the symbiotic relationship betweenhumans and their environment. So this paper interprets Henderson the Rain King fromthe perspective of Eco-criticism to reveal Nature’s purgatory power for humans andadvocate that people ought to respect nature and go back to nature.This dissertation is divided into six parts. The first part is a brief introduction to theauthor and his novel, and the literature review in this part lists the researches done by thecritics home and abroad, which proves the significance of this paper as well. The secondpart introduces the relative ideas of Eco-criticism: pollution under anthropocentrism,nature’s purgatory power under deep ecology, and eco-feminism, which are the mainanalyzing ideas in this paper. The third part, by using anthropocentrism ideas aboutpollution, interprets modern pollution as the cause of Henderson’s anxiety and his escapefrom the society to the nature: the pollution in the modern metropolis, both physical andmental. The fourth part explains Nature’s purgatory power in terms with deep ecology toreveal the purgatory power of the pastoral setting in Africa, of the harmonious relationship between the natives and animals in Africa and of women as an embodimentof nature under eco-feminism. As a result, the natural environment in Africa can not onlypurify or heal human’s mind, but also provide or indicate a way of dealing withecological problems: to live eco-friendly so as to break down the alienation and isolationamong man and nature and the sustainable development of the earth depends first on theharmonious relationship between man and nature. The fifth part simply shows theauthor’s ecological view via interpreting the contents of the novel. The last part is theconclusion, summarizing the whole content of this dissertation, putting forward what iscreatively found in the process of analysis, and inspiring some relative ideas which couldbe helpful for scholars to make future research.