Bhagyalaxmi Das & Itishri Sarangi
KIIT University, Odisha, India. Email: bhagyalaxmidas40@gmail.com
Volume 9, Number 1, 2017 I Full Text PDF
DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v9n1.22
Received January 2, 2017; Revised April 10, 2017; Accepted April 20, 2017; Published May 7, 2017.
Abstract
Literature written during and after World War II expresses an important ecological shift in human perception towards the concern for the environment. Prior to that writers and poets expressed the celebrated role of nature often expressed in Romanticism. A shift in focus was noticed in the absurdist texts written, between the 1940s and 1950s. The writers belonging to the absurd school of thought hinted at an ecological crisis that people were dimly aware of but a serious concern that was slowly paving ground. Ecology outlines the fundamental principle that everything and everyone in this universe is connected. Based on this principle, the paper offers an exposure of how a new concern for the ecology emerged in the absurdist text of the 1940s and 1950s, portraying the troubled relationship between the ecology and man. The paper also traces the atrocity on animals and nature during the two World Wars and how the strangeness of the universe affected the ‘other than human’ forms on planet earth.
Keywords: world war, absurd, ecology, nature, absurdist plays, war animals.
