Authors: Dr. J. Felcia Pushpalatha
Abstract: The representation of nature has undergone significant transformation in Canadian fiction, moving from images of wilderness and geographical vastness towards complex representations of ecological crisis, environmental vulnerability, and human–nature interdependence. This paper examines this transformation through an ecocritical reading of selected Canadian fiction, focusing on Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake (2003), Lee Maracle's Celia's Song (2014), Cherie Dimaline's The Marrow Thieves (2017), and Waubgeshig Rice's Moon of the Crusted Snow (2018). The study investigates how Canadian writers have moved beyond representing nature as a passive landscape or national symbol and increasingly portray it as an active component of human identity, cultural memory, survival, and ethical responsibility. The analysis considers wilderness, anthropocentrism, technological intervention, climate change, Indigenous ecological knowledge, environmental justice, and community resilience. Atwood's dystopian fiction demonstrates the consequences of technological domination and the commodification of biological life, whereas Maracle's work foregrounds relationality between humans, land, animals, and community. Dimaline connects ecological catastrophe with colonial histories and Indigenous displacement, while Rice explores energy dependence and the significance of local ecological knowledge during social disruption. The paper argues that contemporary Canadian fiction represents a movement from the idea of nature as wilderness towards an understanding of nature as an interconnected ecological system in which human survival is inseparable from environmental health. Through this transformation, Canadian fiction contributes to the development of ecological consciousness and challenges conventional anthropocentric understandings of the human–nature relationship.
DOI: http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23096611
