Hope, Despair, and Environmental Discourses in Contemporary North American Speculative Fiction

Abstract

This thesis examines contemporary North American speculative fiction through an environmental perspective. It explores emotions and environmental discourses portrayed in nine novels, tracing authors’ utilization of hope and despair both as themes and emotional states to envision the future interconnectedness of humanity and the environment. As it connects literature, emotions, and the environment, this study expands the scope of how contemporary environmental speculative fiction is analysed by moving beyond the focus on scientific and economic facts to also include the emotional language and expressions in such texts. It does so through analysing nine novels in which the bonds between humanity and the environment are explored, both emotionally and ecologically: Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake (2003), Paolo Bacigalupi's The Water Knife (2015), T. C. Boyle’s A Friend of the Earth (2000), Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior (2012), Nathaniel Rich’s Odds Against Tomorrow (2013), Kim Stanley Robinson’s New York 2140 (2017), Louise Erdrich’s Future Home of the Living God (2017), Sherri L. Smith’s Orleans (2013), and Cherie Dimaline’s The Marrow Thieves (2017). Across the three broad sections on the consequences of human behaviour on the natural world, climate change, and environmental justice, this thesis asserts the vital role of the expressions of hope and despair as tools for communicating and shaping environmental discourses in contemporary speculative fiction and as fundamental elements of the storytelling, mirroring the ambiguity and uncertainty of future environmental issues. The simultaneous presence of both hope and despair in such narratives is not only determined by human-nonhuman interconnectedness but also aligns with the underlying cultural, historical, societal, and environmental contexts that shape this connection. This alignment, I contend, allows for more broader understanding of the term “Anthropocene” in contemporary texts, one that highlights diverse experiences and voices, especially when applied to literary texts that explore human-nonhuman interactions within various community contexts. Reading contemporary speculative fiction at the intersection of ecocriticism, environmental humanities, and affective ecocriticism, I argue, not only reveals the intricate depiction of human-nonhuman connection in these novels but also the ways in which authors position readers to be part of a wide range of environmental issues.