Published Online:December 2024
Product Name:The IUP Journal of English Studies
Product Type:Article
Product Code:IJES091224
Author Name:Trina Bose
Availability:YES
Subject/Domain:Arts and Humanities
Download Format:PDF
Pages:91-100
Julie Bertagna’s Exodus (2017) and Mindy McGinnis’s Not a Drop to Drink (2013) envisage a post-apocalyptic future induced by perpetual neoliberal exploitations of natural resources, the techno-industrial hubris of the Anthropocene, and ecocide. In the catastrophic world envisioned in Exodus, there is an acute land crisis, as global warming translates into rapid sea level rise. On the other hand, Not a Drop to Drink predicts a drought-stricken future for the United States, where freshwater is rarely found, threatening all living beings’ existence. Despite the socio-ecological adversities under archetypal totalitarian governance exhibited by the two eco-dystopian novels, this ecologically devastated future is marked by human resilience and a desperate struggle for survival, often through migration to relatively more habitable places. Through a close reading and ecocritical analysis of the novels under discussion, the paper explores the two contradictory and dire consequences of anthropogenic climate change and the possibility of human adaptation to the climatologically changing post-natural world.
Ecocriticism, which explores the connection between literature and the physical environment, concentrates on human/nature or human/non-human dichotomy, environmental degradation, and eco-injustice (Glotfelty 1996).