People and Place: A Comparative Ecocritical Study of Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart and Rajam Krishnan's When the Kurinji Blooms

Abstract: Growing concern for the rapid environmental disruption paved way for a new theory called Ecocriticism at the end of twentieth century. The theory has been employed to analyze literary texts in relation to the physical environmental and its disintegration. With degradation of the environment, tribal people are also subjugated as the colonial powers take charge in the respective novels. The chosen novels, Things Fall Apart and When the Kurinji Blooms relate man’s interaction with surrounding environment and its importance in tribal community. The African novel and Tamil novel present harmonious communal lifestyles that are disrupted deeply paving way for severe damage. Tribal community of Africa and Tamil are living in lieu with environment but they are overpowered by British rule. Both the novels portray the essentiality of natural milieu where they are destroyed with the progress induced by the foreign administration. With increasing changes, novelists establish disintegration of underprivileged people along with nature sharing the commonality of environmental crisis. By comparing the novels, suppression of tribal people and environment is presented through ecocritical analysis.