Paper Details

This paper aims at highlighting the role of landscape as a fundamental element in ecocriticism by means of analyzing a number of Ruskin Bond's short stories. It will explore the function of ecological settings in Ruskin Bond's stories. In ecocriticism, landscape is one of the crucial elements since it supplies a very fertile ground for the analysis of the interactions between humans and the environment. In depicting hills, forests and rivers within a set of short stories, Ruskin Bond clearly shows his ecological awareness. It is through the natural scenes in these stories that the author's gift for ecologically-minded character portrayal gets unveiled. In his short stories Ruskin Bond uses landscape for his characters to find a place within. Throughout, Ruskin Bond treats the natural features symbolically as a source for human emotional serenity and moral uprightness. So being alive and having will on their own are traits that Ruskin Bond communicates in his portrayal of the non-human world which is one of the expressions of ecological consciousness in his short stories. Through the analysis of selected stories, this study highlights the role played by Bond in ecological writing from India and stresses the importance of his works within the context of today’s environmental conversation. It is clear that through this study, one can conclude that Bond’s depiction of landscapes creates an ecological consciousness that is both artistic and moral.

Ecocriticism; Landscape; Nature Representation; Environmental Consciousness; Human-Nature Relationship.