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"Okerstrom, Dennis"
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Wilderness, ethics, and violence: An ecocritical study of the works of Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, Aldo Leopold, and Edward Abbey
Contemporary American nature writing and popular views of nature have been largely forged by four writers: Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, Aldo Leopold, and Edward Abbey. In style, tone, and message, Abbey appears to be out of step with the other three, who are generally regarded as less militant, less inclined to violence; in truth, a direct link can be traced from Thoreau's political views through Muir's exuberant neoprimitivism on to Leopold's land ethic thence to Abbey's adumbration of violence. To understand Thoreau, his passionate defense of John Brown needs to be seen alongside his timorous expedition to Ktaadn through the Maine woods. Muir's accounts of his solitary hikes through the Sierras must be weighed against his publicity campaigns to establish wilderness parks. Leopold's ethical dictums should be considered against the backdrop of his bureaucratic past replete with policies of commodification. Abbey's often-quoted “I'm a humanist; I'd rather kill a man than a snake” needs to be understood as a philosophical expression founded in an academic study of the morality of violence. Abbey, rather than being out of step with the other three, instead conveys a message that runs directly parallel to Thoreau's defense of Brown and that embraces Muir's valorization of nature and Leopold's advocacy of ethical treatment of the earth. Each of these four contributed to a radical refiguring of the Other to include a nonhuman entity: Earth itself. The impact of these four on contemporary nature writing has been enormous, and traces of each can be found in current nature texts by the most widely-read and widely-recognized writers.
Dissertation