Resuating Ecology In Alan Moore's 'Saga Of The Swamp Thing'

Skyler Meeks

ENGL 588

Dr. Gautam Basu Thakur

05/04/16

Big Green Thing: Reevaluating Ecology within Alan Moore’s Saga of the Swamp Thing

As one of the foundational texts of ecocriticism, Cheryll Glotfelty and Harold Fromm’s The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology invited a fundamental discussion about humanity’s negative impact on the environment. Additional ecocritical anthologies soon followed, examining the intersection of ecocriticism and other theoretical frameworks. A decade after Glotfelty and Fromm’s anthology, Greta Gaard and Patrick D. Murphy published Ecofeminist Literary Criticism: Theory, Interpretation, Pedagogy, which explored the junction of femininity and nature. Soon after, Graham Huggan and Helen Tiffin followed

Beineke argues that Swamp Thing from the Moore’s graphic novels is a new iteration of the Green Man, with Swamp Thing serving as a guardian of nature against the encroaching civilization of the DC universe. In the article, Beineke explores Green Man iconography, physically characteristics, and super abilities that connect Swamp Thing to nature. Beineke argues that, prior to Moore’s reimagining, Swamp Thing could not function as a Green Man because it was still a human in a plant shell, and a Green Man needs to be solely plant (9). Beineke also contrasts Swamp Thing with Woodrue, who he claims is a false Green Man. At the crux of Beineke’s argument is the symbolic union between nature and civilization that is common in many contemporary environmental

For Morton, any environmental text, Saga of the Swamp Thing included, relies on ecomimesis, which is how a text signals a sense of place. It is, as Morton says, “an authenticating device” (33). He further defines the technique as “a pressure point, crystallizing a vast and complex ideological network of beliefs, practices, and processes.” A large number of environmental texts rely heavily on ecomimesis to establish the world of the work. This representation relies on figures of speech like metaphor and metonymy, and “the more convincingly [writers] render [the] surroundings, the more figurative language [writers] end up with” (30). Morton defines six components of ecomimesis, but for the purpose of this essay, we will focus specifically on principles of rendering, timbre, the