Midterm Essay #1:Â âIâm posting it online because I feel like it, GODâ
Prodigal Summer is an interesting novel written by Barbara Kingsolver that examines the relationship between man and nature in a rural farming community. This story follows three drastically different characters with their own unique relationship to the environment. These three develop their understanding of the environment and learn ways that they take better care of it. This essay will focus on Garnett Walker, a stubborn old man who feuds with his ecocentric neighbor. In this novel, Garnettâs character is meant to represent the standard anthropocentric worldview.
Anthropocentrism is the idea that the world is man-centered. In terms of the environment, it means that man is top dog, ergo the environment should submit to manâs whim. This is seen everywhere in modern culture, with deforestation and pollution running rampant. Capitalism takes center stage in Western culture; nature and the environment are just tools now used to make money. Killing the planet doesnât matter as long as money is being made, but how did we get to this worldview?
Anthropocentrism has been deeply rooted in society since the advent of Christianity. Prior to Christianity, many religions incorporated animism: the idea that nature and wildlife have spirit. This principle created a greater respect for the environment, as man would have to appease nature before taking the materials they needed for building or survival. Man would not take to excess in fear of angering the spirits, so they only took what they needed; it was sustainable, and man could coexist with nature pleasantly. Christianity, on the other hand, had no concept of animism. The Christian God created the planet for man; man was made in his own image, paralleling man to the creator, giving him an inherent superiority over nature. âMan shares, in great measure, Godâs transcendence of nature. Christianity, in absolute contrast to ancient paganism and Asiaâs religions, not only established a dualism of man and nature but also insisted that it is Godâs will that man exploit nature for his proper endsâ (White Jr., 407). The Christian God told man that he created the world for him; go forth and name the animals, eat the fruit, use the materials given to you for whatever you like. In effect, the environment was created for man, and he is free to exploit it. This ideology placed man at the top of the food chain and removed the spirituality from the environment, which effectually removed the inhibition to exploit the environment. Christianity spread over the world like wildfire during the colonial era and set its ideals deep within society. Even as man moved away from religion, the ideology still remained ingrained into society.
Another anthropocentric idea ingrained in Western culture is that nature is feminine in concept and is therefore subservient and passive. The dualism between masculinity and femininity places men in the active role and females in the passive role. This makes men the dominant within the dualism, which also places man over nature. Within the gendered depictions of nature, there exist two sides: âa kindly beneficent female who provided for the needs of mankind in an ordered, planned universeâ and âwild and uncontrollable nature that could render violence, storms, droughts, and general chaosâ (Merchant, 10). Obviously, the latter half of nature was an issue; man was dominant, so something more powerful and violent than man would need to be subdued to retain the hierarchy. In order for man and nature to coexist, nature must submit to man. Grasslands were turned into fields, forests were chopped down to make room for development, and deep wounds were carved into the planet to mine for minerals. This new perception was necessary for society to grow, for as long as man is perceived as dominant and the earth is perceived as passive, thereâs no moral issue with exploiting the planet. In the need to subdue the planet, man has made many a tool to make it more convenient to forcefully suppress the planet. From plows and machinery to pesticides and chemicals, man has made it easier to keep the wild in line. Areas of wild that still exist today are marketed as tourist attractions, surrounded by high fences and civilization.
So how does this relate to Prodigal Summer? Well, as Garnett is meant to represent the standard anthropocentric worldview, these ideas are deeply ingrained within him. As we begin Garnettâs story, we find that he is a sad old man who misses his wife. Still following the male and female dualism, he believes that she was his âanchor,â holding him to his house. However, the main conflict in his story arc comes from his neighbor, Nannie Rawley. Nannie is an active old woman who will voice her opinions and advocate for the preservation of nature. She believes that wildlife should be able to run its course without human interference, as she believes interference will make things worse. These ideas are drastically different to the ideas Garnett has about women. She is active, as opposed to passive, and she vouches against the domination of nature. The first conflict between these two is illustrated within the book, immediately pitting them against each other with their conflicting ideals. Garnett notices a sign on his property, âhis roadside, two hundred feet over his property line,â proclaiming his field âto be a âNO SPRAY ZONE.â As if all a person had to do to rule the world was concoct a fool set of opinions and paint them on a three by three square of plywoodâ (Kingsolver, 84). This passage sets Nannie up as an obstacle to Garnett; she plays the active role by placing a sign onto his property in order to protect her orchard from pesticides. This example shows a woman defying gender roles, and Garnett struggles to accept these ideas.
Religion also plays an important part in Garnettâs character. Garnett sees Nannie as a godless old woman because she acts differently than how he expects a Christian woman to behave. Even in the Bible, the woman is portrayed as passive; Eve was created from Adam. This creates a precedence that man is again superior to women. After seeing Nannie in a store talking about setting free endangered lizards, Garnett wrote a letter to Nannie:
Or are we to think of ourselves as keepers and guardians of the earth, as God instructed us to do in Genesis 1:27â30, âSo God created man in his own image, ⊠and God blessed them and said to them, âBe fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it! ⊠Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed which is upon the face of the earth, and every tree in which is the fruit of a tree-yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earthâââsuch as salamanders, Miss Rawleyâââwherein there is life, I have given every green earth for meatâ; and so it was so.â If the Holy Bible is to be believed, we must view Godâs creatures as gifts to his favored children and use them for our own purposes, even if this occasionally causes this one or that one to go extinct after a while (Kingsolver, 186).
Within this letter, Garnett shows that he doesnât much understand the environment, for he only knows of his anthropocentric worldview where God made him king. When an animal goes extinct (or reaches the brink of extinction), there are very large effects that make their way up the food chain. Itâs like the butterfly effect, something small and insignificant could have devastating effects that we donât foresee. The extinction of a salamander could cause an overabundance of insects or plant life that would normally be eaten by the salamander. Alternatively, the birds and turtles that preyed on this salamander could struggle to find food and begin to die off. Garnett doesnât think about these things, though, because he carries his Christian ideology with him, wherein it proclaims that destroying the environment is fine for it is yours. Nannie is able to expertly refute this, also by using the Bible. She states that gluttony is a sin, and âthou shalt not kill,â arguing that the Bible does not vouch for dominance over the environment, but to coexist with it, and to not harvest to excess. She also argues that God made plant life with the animals in mind as well, interpreting the passage Garnett outlined as creating food for them, too. Again, as the woman shows him a different worldview that refutes his own, he goes into a tizzy and begins writing back an angry letter.
To finally end the arc between these two, Garnett and Nannie have a discussion. A tree falls onto Garnettâs property, so he goes over to her property to talk to her about it. However, Nannie has something sheâd like to talk about as well: Garnett is spraying weed killer himself. She finally explains why she thinks weed killer is counterproductive by way of the Volterra Principle. âPredator bugs donât reproduce so fast, as a rule. But see, that works out right in nature because one predator eats a world of pest bugs in its life. The plant eaters have to go faster just to hold their ground. Theyâre in balance with each otherâ (Kingsolver, 275). By spraying his land, both insect populations are reset to zero, which gives the pest bugs the upper hand as they reproduce faster. Garnett believes this to be true, and from there, their relationship improves to where it is at the end of the book. Nannie is able to make Garnett see the error in his ways, which is to say that it is possible to overturn our anthropocentric thinking. By a woman showing a man that he was wrong, it shifts the power balance within the dualism back to equal, which in turn places the earth back on equal footing with man.
In conclusion, Garnett Walker is a grumpy old man who was able to change his thinking with the help of his pushy neighbor. Garnett was set to represent the anthropocentric view that man holds as a whole; the advent of Christianity and the inherent male to female dualism ingrained in society holds man over the earth, free to exploit it for his own gain. When Nannie was able to convince him to change his thinking, it symbolized challenging the anthropocentric thinking of society, which would in turn help save the world.
Kingsolver, B. (2000). Prodigal Summer. London: Faber and Faber.
Merchant, C. (2008). Nature as Female. In The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution (p. 10). San Francisco, CA: HarperOne.
White, L., Jr. (2008). Historical Roots of our Ecological Crisis. In American Earth: Environmental Writing Since Thoreau (p. 407). Toronto, ON: Penguin Random House Canada.
