An Ecocritical Analysis of Richard Powers’ The Overstory through the Lens of Joseph Meeker’s The Comedy of Survival

Abstract

This study tries to examine how people and nature interact in Richard Powers‘ The Overstory. Environmental concerns have occasionally become a hot topic, especially in literature. The forest has been one of the most important aspects of our planet since the time of our ancestors. We have experienced such dreadful environmental degradation as a result of the conversion of wooded areas to non-forested areas. It has an impact on a variety of facets of our planet, including forestry, climate mitigation, and biodiversity. The Overstory by Richard Powers is one of the literary works that bring up this problem. The Overstory is a work of fiction that discusses nature in an ecological and scientific way and illustrates environmental problems like deforestation. This study uses ecocriticism theory to examine, concentrating on how people and nature interact. It also specifically applies Joseph Meeker‘s theory of ecocriticism, emphasizing upon the picaresque and pastoral elements and the way environmentalists responded to the harm caused by nature. The statistics are extracted from sentences, phrases, and words in Richard Powers‘ book The Overstory. The study‘s findings demonstrate that Nick‘s property serves as a contrast between urban and rural life in The Overstory. In addition, the individuals that work to preserve the forest are depicted in this book together with the problem of deforestation. Additionally, there are picaresque and pastoral themes that deal with time, such as nostalgia, which is concerned with memories of the past, and utopia, which emphasizes hope for a better future. Additionally, environmentalists express their opinions, feelings, and attitudes toward the three categories of natural damage that are later separated: having a profound understanding of nature, respecting nature, and leading a genuine movement to preserve nature that included planting trees, protecting forests, and participating in protest activity against deforestation.