Ecologia e rappresentazione dello spazio: Saviano, Tournier, DeLillo

Abstract

The main subject of the essay consists in the literary representation of environment as a mixed system, half natural and half human. The symbolic value and the great significance of ecological themes in the contemporary literature are related to this environmental double entity. The essay particularly highlights the presence and the importance of trash, waste, garbage in three contemporary fiction and non-fiction novels: Les meteores by the French writer Michel Tournier; Underworld by Don DeLillo; Gomorra, the docu-fictional report of the Italian journalist and writer Roberto Saviano about the illicit traffics of ‘Camorra’. The word ‘waste’ and his synonyms define composite and impure materials, that sometimes slips every clear distinction between nature and handicrafts: on this subject, we can think about the Pacific Trash Vortex, a sort of island or ‘Atlantis’ of garbage formed in the Pacific Ocean by the rubbish and shaped by the oceanic streams. If we can’t identify clear boundaries between nature and human activities, we can’t either separate the two dimensions from an ethical point of view. The literary works considered in the essay show the importance of admitting the weakness of the boundaries to go beyond obsolete distinctions (such as city vs country, nature vs culture).