The Seed of Ecological Reverence : An Ecocritical Study in Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behaviour.

Abstract

Eco criticism is one of the most recent movements in literary criticism. Eco criticism is the critical approach which is concerned with the current political trend to rethink and reconfigure the relationship between the human and environment. It has emerged in the late twentieth  century as a response to the increasing global interest in the environment, and as a delayed response to the emergence of the environmental activism of the 1960 and 1970 . Barbara Kingsolver is a contemporary American novelist, essayist, poet and short story writer. Her works are mainly concerned with the issues of Ecology. Flight Behavior is a suspenseful novel set in present day Appalachia. It concerns a young wife and mother on a failing farm in rural Tennessee, who experiences the great catastrophe of climate change. The key event in Flight Behaviour is the arrival of monarch butterflies for a winter roost in the Turnbow woods when they normally go to Mexico their habitat has been destroyed by symptoms of climate change. The paper aims to explore the serious environmental issues portrayed in the novel. Kingsolvers concern for raising humans consciousness towards Nature is evidenced in this novel. She intensifies the attitude of care and respect for the other.  She advocates a transformation of consciousness that acknowledges and respects the environment. She also has seeded the novel with many descriptions that help the reader understand the complicated progress of the planets warming. Hence the paper reveals the biotic consequence of climate change and the need for respecting and preserving Nature.