On The Bush In A Bend In The River From Eco-criticism Theory

Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul is famous as an important immigrant writer in British literature.As the winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in literature,Naipaul puts unique perspective on the history and developments of the African countries.A Bend in the River is one of Naipaul’s most important work in which the word “bush” appears more than 70 times.To Naipaul,the bush is not only the physical home but also the spiritual sustenance to the African people.Aldo Leopold and Lu Shuyuan insist that with people’s desire to pursue a better life,the unified nature is endangered and at the same time the relationships between man and man are affected,which eventually leads to people’s breakdown in spirit.First part is about the destruction of the original bush.By analyzing how the water hyacinth,the colonists and the new President destroy the bush through different ways,the author points out that the harmonious relationship between man and nature is one of the important factors in maintaining the stability of natural ecology.In this novel,the water hyacinth breaks the natural integrity of the bush.At the same time,the Western colonists’ invasion and the new President’s manipulation on the bush lead to a terrible situation that the bush as a physical home to the Africans is in a vicious circle of destruction and that the natural resourceson which the bush people live are also on the verge of depletion.Secondly,the social ecological environment formed by the relationship between man and man is elaborated under the influence of the imbalanced natural ecology.On account of the alienated and distorted relationship between man and man,the bush becomes a chaotic society.The social crises resulting from colonial exploitation and the domestic riots as well as the promiscuity and the new President’s dictatorship,lead to the disorder of the society and people’s lack of moral beliefs.The last part is to discuss how the African people return to the bush when their natural and social ecology is at stake.The existence of Western colonialism has made the African people unconsciously erase their memories of history,and has deliberately deprived the African people of their spiritual roots.The imbalance of natural ecology coupled with the chaos of social ecology have caused people in the bush to start a journey of spiritual pursuit of returning to the primitive bush.The Africans’ spiritual pursuit is not only the adherence to the primitive bush,but also the repair of spiritual alienation.This thesis mainly points out the crisis of natural bush,social bush and the bush people’s spiritual belief showing in Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul’s A Bend in the River,and which in a way expresses Naipaul’s deep humane care for the bush’s rebirth and sustainable development.