پیمان امان اللهی بهاروند

Deforestation has been one of the most detrimental consequences of the prevalence of European anthropocentrism in North America. European settlers who immigrated to North America found themselves in a bountiful paradise with infinite untrammeled natural resources that could be utilized to make a fortune. Likewise, they inflicted irremediable damages on nature upon the onset of their settlement in this continent. Investigating Louis Owens’ Wolfsong from an ecocritical standpoint, this article seeks to highlight the massive deforestation conducted by the white Americans in the Northwest of the United States of America. As a qualitative, research-based study, this article commences with the theoretical framework and subsequently focuses on the representations of the critical concepts in Wolfsong . It shall be indicated that the perspective held by the White Americans towards nature drastically collides with that of the indigenes. More exactly, the argument of this research follows the distinction between the treatment of nature by the Euro-Americans and Native Americans in Wolfsong .

Critically reading Amitav Ghosh’s Sea of Poppies, the present paper attempts to explore the impacts of colonization on indigenous subjects, plants and animals. To trace the detrimental effects of colonialism on both environment and people in Sea of Poppies, this study foregrounds the reflection of the obligatory cultivation of poppy under the rule of British colonizers in India. Sea of Poppies is indeed a portrayal of the catastrophic policies enforced in India by British colonizers in the nineteenth century. In his seminal novel Ghosh deals with the changes brought about by the lucrative cultivation of poppy in the exacerbation of the financial status of indigenous subjects. Environmental devastation and the changes in the normal behavior of animals are also dealt with. Focusing on the theoretical frameworks proposed by Graham Huggan and Helen Tiffin, this paper explores the convergence of postcolonialism and ecocriticism in Ghosh’s Sea of Poppies to indicate that not only were native people impoverished during colonialism in India, but also the ecosystem was severely damaged.