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A Farewell to Anthropocentrism in American Postbellum Prose: A Reconsideration of Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried
JournalArticle (Originalarbeit in einer wissenschaftlichen Zeitschrift)
 
ID 4640792
Author(s) Aerni, Anouk
Author(s) at UniBasel Aerni, Anouk
Year 2021
Title A Farewell to Anthropocentrism in American Postbellum Prose: A Reconsideration of Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried
Journal COPAS—Current Objectives of Postgraduate American Studies
Volume 22
Number 1
Pages / Article-Number 102-122
Keywords Ecocriticism, Anthropocentrism, Postmodernism, Postbellum, Tim O’Brien, Vietnam War
Abstract

This article is driven by the urgency of the current ecological situation and humanity’s role

in its development. It explores the ways in which nature, humanity, and the relationship between

the two are negotiated in Tim O’Brien’s collection of short stories The Things They Carried (1990).

Close readings of key passages show that through use of anthropomorphisms nature is portrayed as

active rather than passive, and that the soldiers are, on the one hand, alienated and removed from

US society and, on the other, embedded within nature. As a result, the human-nature dualism is

exposed as a reductive, hierarchical, and separatist approach to a multifaceted, complex relation

between interacting, equally valuable entities. The analysis of prevalent themes and devices—

including anthropomorphisms, temporal non-linearity, decentering and fragmentation of the

individual, and the omnipresence of death as well as the narrator’s preoccupation with mortality—

provides a blueprint for an ecocritical reading of postwar literature. This approach values nature in

itself and generates an understanding of the ways in which the anthropocentric worldview prevalent

in the Western world encourages a misinformed and harmful attitude towards nature.

URL https://copas.uni-regensburg.de/article/view/344
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