Eco-critical voices in the twentieth century anti-war literature

This doctoral thesis discusses the main stream anti-war American literature in the twentieth century in terms of eco-criticism. In the pieces chosen it is researched how anti-war literature defines the concept of war and anti-war by deciphering antropocentrism which comes to the forefront in these pieces. It is tried to be found out the nucleuses of speciesism probing the approach of these pieces towards non-human beings and nature. The chosen literary works are also criticized in terms of militarist theories in addition to eco-critical ones. Not only has all the theoratical background made the history of American war identity be examined in detail possible but also it has underlined where and how wars are located in the American literary tradition. It is of great importance to discuss historical timeline in detail in order to understand ideological aspects on which American literature has been structured. At that point, the research has been done through literary criticism in depth in terms of qualitative data. The examples chosen from the mainstream anti-war American literature discuss what a war means and how it defines the distructiveness side by centralizing human beings and humanity. These literary works consist of three novels, two short stories, and six poems including Mark Twain's "War Prayer" (1916), Angela Morgan's "Battle Cry of the Mothers" (1915), Charles W. Wood's "King of the Magical Pump" (1914), Ernest Hemingway's "Champs d'Honneur" (1923), In Our Time (1924) and A Farewell to Arms (1929), Louis Simpson's Carentan O Carentan (1949), Randall Jarrall's one of the best known anti-war poems "The Death of Ball Turret Gunner" (1945), Robert Lowell's "On the Eve of the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, 1942" (1943), Joseph Heller's Catch 22 (1961), and Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried (1990). Key Words: eco-criticism, anti-war literature, post-humanism, American literature, American history