This master thesis offers an ecocritical reading of Ruth Ozeki's novels My Year of Meats and All Over Creation. The first half of the thesis provides an overview of ecocriticism, spanning from its modest beginnings to its development into the field of literary theory that we know today. Ecofeminism and postcolonial ecocriticism are carefully discussed as they warn about human and nonhuman victims of the patriarchal and imperialist system. The focus is also on science and technology and the way biotechnology affects human and nonhuman world. Following that is the second part of the thesis with the interpretative analysis of the novels My Year of Meats and All Over Creation. We enquire in what way do the ecocritical findings from the theoretical part manifest themselves in each literary text. Pollution, the poisoning of female bodies and animals are the themes that interlace in My Year of Meats. The main focus is on meat consumption and its questionable production. Synthetic hormone DES is especially interesting as it was used for breeding cattle and it was prescribed to pregnant women, however, these practices proved to be extremely harmful. The victims of pollution in All Over Creation remain the nonhuman world and the less privileged. Ecocritical issues touch upon the controversial cultivation of potatoes from GMO seeds. If the author puts the blame on the producers, i.e. farmers, for producing contaminated food in My Year of Meats, she redeems herself in her second novel by exploring deeper causes for suspicious food production practices which, in All Over Creation, also include biotech corporations.
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