자연과 농업에 대한 과도한 개념화의 파괴성: 프랭크 노리스의 『문어』 읽기
Destructiveness Caused by an Excessive Conceptualization of Nature and Agriculture: A Reading of Frank Norris's The Octopus
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This paper explores how Frank Norris in The Octopus deals with the distorted economic or moral attitude of the Western farmers and railroaders toward land and the crops it produced. The Pacific & Southwestern Railroad and the farmers' League both are obsessed with the price of land and the profits from wheat, hardly recognizing the essential, material values of those two elements of nature. Such a tenacious attraction to the capitalistic value of land and crops is necessarily accompanied by a process of lopsided, reckless conceptualization of nature. Such conceptualization of matter turns out to function as a destructive force for the life of the Westerners. Land is the fundamental life-giving basis for all living things, and wheat is a staple food for human beings. Those two elements of nature serve as sustenance for human beings only in terms of their material values. But the two groups of the Western pioneers fiercely pursue conceptualized capitalistic values from nature and agriculture, such as property and profit, while totally ignoring the material values of them. The P. & S. W. Railroad, a symbolic combination of contemporary capitalism and technology, treats the land grants which they received from the federal government solely as an object of speculation. Likewise, the ranchers in San Joaquin Valley, who run agribusinesses through employing a number of farmhands and by taking advantage of the latest farming machinery, are apt to conceptualize the ownership and monetary value of their ranches. Norris makes most of the main characters who have fought for the property, farmers or railroad agents, perish in the end of the novel. Yet wheat, a symbol of nature, prospers, and the railroad, a combination of capitalistic and technological systems, goes on. Thus he calls our attention to the destructiveness of psychological human desire which tends to excessively conceptualize nature in its materialistic pursuit.
Abstract
This paper explores how Frank Norris in The Octopus deals with the distorted economic or moral attitude of the Western farmers and railroaders toward land and the crops it produced. The Pacific & Southwestern Railroad and the farmers' League both are obsessed with the price of land and the profits from wheat, hardly recognizing the essential, material values of those two elements of nature. Such a tenacious attraction to the capitalistic value of land and crops is necessarily accompanied by a process of lopsided, reckless conceptualization of nature. Such conceptualization of matter turns out to function as a destructive force for the life of the Westerners. Land is the fundamental life-giving basis for all living things, and wheat is a staple food for human beings. Those two elements of nature serve as sustenance for human beings only in terms of their material values. But the two groups of the Western pioneers fiercely pursue conceptualized capitalistic values from nature and agriculture, such as property and profit, while totally ignoring the material values of them. The P. & S. W. Railroad, a symbolic combination of contemporary capitalism and technology, treats the land grants which they received from the federal government solely as an object of speculation. Likewise, the ranchers in San Joaquin Valley, who run agribusinesses through employing a number of farmhands and by taking advantage of the latest farming machinery, are apt to conceptualize the ownership and monetary value of their ranches. Norris makes most of the main characters who have fought for the property, farmers or railroad agents, perish in the end of the novel. Yet wheat, a symbol of nature, prospers, and the railroad, a combination of capitalistic and technological systems, goes on. Thus he calls our attention to the destructiveness of psychological human desire which tends to excessively conceptualize nature in its materialistic pursuit.
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