The Water is Rising, Families are Drowning: An Ecocritical Reading of The Wall by John Lanchaster

Yıl 2023, Sayı: 35, 1351 - 1364, 21.08.2023

Ali Yiğit

https://doi.org/10.29000/rumelide.1346632

Öz

Written in a plain and unsophisticated style like numerous other popular novels, the Wall by John Lanchester deals with a series of contemporary global issues including climate change, rising totalitarianism and protracted refugee crisis. Set in a dystopian future, but conscious of the contemporary problems afflicting humanity and environment, the Wall also presents in an interrogant tone scenes of empathy toward refugees or “the Others”. In this essay, referring to the postulations raised in the field of ecocriticism, but particularly to understanding of environmentalism in apocalyptic, postapocalyptic, and dystopian senses, I will attempt to analyze how rising environmental crises and concerns shape the family structure of modern people, and the relationships between children and parents. Based on problematic family images drawn in the Wall, I propose that the rise of environmental disasters has disruptive and destructive effects on traditional family (nuclear family) structure regardless of geographical location, family bonds and intrafamilial relationships, which makes people more vulnerable to external threats in so far as they are left emotionally and mentally, if not physically, debilitated in a devastated environment.

Anahtar Kelimeler

Ecocriticism, the Wall, eco-dystopia, climate change, eroded family structure, and family disintegration

Kaynakça

• Adams, J. J. (2011, April 11). Dystopian fiction: An introduction. Tor.Com.https://www.tor.com/2011/04/11/dystopian-fiction-an-introduction/
• Allardice, L. (2019, Jan. 11). Interview with John Lanchester. The Guardian.www.theguardian.com/books/2019/jan/11/john-lanchester-interview-the-wall.
• Belaïd, F. (2022). How does concrete and cement industry transformation contribute to mitigating climate change challenges? Resources, Conservation & Recycling Advances, 15(200084), 1-6. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rcradv.2022.200084.
• Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopaedia (2023, May 5). Nuclear family. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/nuclear-family
• Buell, L. (2005). The Future of environmental criticism: Environmental crisis and literary imagination. UK: Blackwell Publishing.
• Cambridge University Press. (n.d.). Post-apocalyptic. In Cambridge Dictionary. Retrieved July 8, 2023, from https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/post-apocalyptic
• Collins, J. J. (2014). The Oxford handbook of aplocalyptic literature. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press.
• De Moor, J. & Marquardt, J. (2023). Deciding whether it’s too late: How climate activists coordinate alternative futures in a postapocalyptic present. Geoforum. 138, 1-9.
• Duncan, G. J., Wilkerson, B., & England, P. (2006). Cleaning up Their Act: The Effects of Marriage and Cohabitation on Licit and Illicit Drug Use. Demography, 43(4), 691-710.
• Elder R. A. (1949). Traditional and developmental conceptions of fatherhood. Marriage and Family Living, 11(3), 98-100+106.
• Friberg, A. 2021. On the need for (con)temporary utopias: Temporal reflections on the climate rhetoric of environmental youth movements. Time & Society, 31(1), 48-68. https://doi.org/10.1177/0961463x21998845
• Glotferlty, C. (1996). Introduction: Literary studies in an age of environmental crisis. In C. Glotfelty and H. Fromm (Eds.). The ecocriticism reader: Landmarks in literary ecology (pp. xv- xxxvii). Athens and London: The University of Georgia Press.
• Houser, H. (2014). Ecosickness in contemporary U.S. fiction: Environment and affect. Columbia University Press.
• Kaup, M. (Ed.). (2021). Ecological realisms: Post-apocalyptic fiction and contemporary theory, Great Britain: Edinburgh University Press.
• Kipling, R. (1954). Rudyard Kipling’s verse: Definitive edition. New York: Doubleday.
• Lanchester, J. (2019). The Wall. London: Faber & Faber. https://www.scribd.com/document/559489822/The-Wall-John-Lanchester#
• Lawyer Monthly. (2020, Mar. 27). The Legality of cohabitation around the World. Lawyer Monthly. https://www.lawyer-monthly.com/2020/03/the-legality-of-cohabitation- around-the-world/
• MacFarlane, R. (2005, Sept. 24). The burning question, The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2005/sep/24/featuresreviews.guardianreview29
• Malvestio, M. (2022). Theorizing eco-dystopia: Science fiction, the Anthropocene, and the limits of catastrophic imagery. European Journal of Creative Practices in Cities and Landscapes (CPCL), 5(1), 24-38.
• Nicol, C. (2007). Brave New World at 75. The New Atlantis, (16), 41-54.
• Orwell, G. (2013). 1984. Free Ebooks. https://archive.org/details/Orwell1984preywo/page/n2/ mode/1up?q=marriage (Original work published 1949).
• Oxford University Press. (n.d.). Apocalyptic. In Oxford learner’s dictionary. Retrieved July 8,2023, from https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/apocaly-ptic
• Rehding, A. (2011). Ecomusicology between apocalypse and nostalgia. Journal of the American Musicological Society, 64(2), 409-414.
• Rowland, A. (1997) "Re-reading 'impossibility' and 'barbarism': Adorno and post-holocaust poetics, 9(1), 57-69.
• Rowling, M. (2018, Dec. 3). Young people get tough with older generations over ‘messed-up planet’. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-climatechange-a accord-youth- idUSKBN1O227E
• Rueckert, W. (1996). Literature and ecology: An experiment in ecocriticism. In C. Glotfelty and H. Fromm (Eds.). The Ecocriticism reader: Landmarks in literary ecology (pp. 105-123). Athens and London: The University of Georgia Press.
• Sandrock, K. (2020). Border temporalities, climate mobility, and Shakespeare in John Lanchester’s The Wall. Journal of Modern Literature 43(3), 163-180. Doi:10.2979/jmodelite.43.3.10.
• Steinberg, S. (2002, July 8). An Englishman in Hong Kong. Publisher’s Weekly. www.publishersweekly.com/pw/print/20020708/20700-an-englishman-in-hong-kong.html.
• Storrie, S. & Martin, D. A. (2018). Revolutionary from the waist down. In Ezio Di Nucci and Stefan Storrie (Eds.). 1984 and philosophy: Is resistance futile? (pp. 23-33). Chicago: Open Court.
• UNHCR, UNICEF and IOM (2018). Refugee and migrant children in Europe. https://www.unicef.org/eca/sites/unicef.org.eca/files/2019 02/Refugee%20and%20migrant%20children%20in%20europe%20jan- jun%202018.pdf
• Von Mossner, A. W. (2020). Affect, Emotion, and Ecocriticism. Ecozon@, 11(2), 128-136.