The Effects of Nature and Exile on Language and Identity in Atwood's "Surfacing" and Malouf's "An Imaginary Life"

The Effects of Nature and Exile on Language and Identity in Atwood's "Surfacing" and Malouf's "An Imaginary Life" Order Description Abstract “I am not an animal or a tree, I am the thing in which the trees and animals move and grow, I am a place.” (Surfacing, 236) “We have all been transformed, the whole group of us, and become part of the woods. We are mushrooms, we are stones...” (An Imaginary Life, 55) Our world is such a wonderful place where, despite their differences, billions of people live in harmony. Each person has a different mindset, different perspective, different ways of communication and perhaps most importantly, different personality. These differences determine who we are and how we perceive things that surround us. All of these together form the definition of “identity”. However, identity is not enough to answer how we perceive things. Nature, accepted as the purest form of the universe, holds an important place which human beings have long forgotten about: our own purest form. The authors Margaret Atwood and David Malouf seem to be aware of this. The relationship between nature and identity form the narrators’ point of view: Ovid of Malouf and the unnamed narrator of Atwood. In my essay, I will be talking about the changes the two main characters of the novels Surfacing and An Imaginary Life goes through during their contact with nature. I will be focusing on the journey that the characters take and I will try to answer how the notion of nature and exile affect the character's language and identity. In addition to the terms exile, nature, language and self-discovery the term “ecocriticism” will be described to be able to form the complete understanding of the characters and arguments. Above is the abstract of my essay. It should be at least 5000 words(it can be total 5000 words). It should include the ideas I've mentioned in my abstract. The essay should discuss and analyze how the identity of the characters are shaped with the nature in these two novels (Atwood's and Malouf's). In the novels, the reader observe the protagonists' character change as they experience after exile and their encounter with natural life as a result. Also, language is one of the main themes. Writers also underline the importance of language through the protagonists: use of language in other words, how it is also affected by nature. Because, as the characters begin to live in nature, among natives they question the use of language. These discussions should also be in the frame of postcolonial history, as I am studying postcolonial literature. * Main sources: -Atwood, M. "Surfacing" - Malouf, D. "An Imaginary Life" Also, my professor suggested these secondary sources: -Maurice Merleau-Ponty: "Eye and Mind" - Bakhtin has theory of language, she said. These two are just suggestions. My main sources are above. + the ecocriticism theory + the postcolonial theory