The Growth Of The Son Of Nature-exploring The Ecological Thought In The Professor's House And Neighbor Rosicky

From the perspective of ecocriticism,combined with the theories of earth ethics,deep ecology and ecofeminism,this thesis intends to take the middle and late works of the American female Writer Willa Cather's The Professor's House and Neighbor Rosicky as objects of study and interprets the ecological thoughts of St.Peter,Tom Outland and Rosicky after close-reading of the text.Meanwhile,the author hopes to further supplement and innovate the research on ecological criticism of Cather's middle and late period novels based on previous research.There are three chapters in addition to the Introduction and the Conclusion.The Introduction part includes research status of Willa Cather and her works.And the brief analysis of the topic will be also elucidated.The first chapter mainly analyzes the prevalence of materialism,consumerism and money worship brought by the development of industrial civilization and the heavy crisis that human and nature suffers in The Professor's House.In the novel,differing from his families who indulge in serious hedonism,Professor St.Peter is a person who desires to back to nature.But his ecological consciousness is too fragile to resist the invasion of materialism.After experiencing a serious spiritual crisis,the professor eventually loses his natural ideal.The second chapter mainly revolves around the character of Tom Outland,and analyzes the process of his natural ecological consciousness during his exploration of Blue Mesa.In fact,he ignores nature at the very beginning,gradually respects and loves nature and realizes his responsibility to the entire natural community.Eventually,Outland completes his self-realization and becomes the son of nature.Through this character,people can learn about Cather's pursuit of nature.However,because of the incompleteness and too good to be true of the image of Tom,he is an idealized existence and lacks of the sense of reality actually.Last chapter mainly takes Neighbor Rosicky as the research object,considers Rosicky as the most mature son of nature who finally achieved a permanent symbiosis between human and nature.In the novel,Cather builds a beautiful future that people live in harmony with nature,men and women live on an equal footing,and people are interdependent.As a matter of fact,there are some spiritual connections among St.Peter,Tom Outland and Rosicky,and in the end,Cather realizes the perfect image of her ideal son of nature through Rosicky and gives him a perfect life.In the conclusion part,the author once again points out the natural son whom Willa Cather paints,that can be seen in The Professor's House and Neighbor Rosicky,experiences the gestation,growth and finally achieved maturity.In fact,it reflects Cather's criticism toward materialism and exploration that how to maintain the close relationship between human and nature.Besides it also expresses Cather's good ideal of maintaining the peace and tranquility of the human mind forever.