Illness Narrative Tactics and Eco-philosophy in Rick Bass’s Nature Stories

Abstract

Rick Bass’s nature stories are the stories of people adventuring in the wilderness. It is different from the traditional nature works mainly focusing on nature or animals to show the de-anthropocentric thoughts straightforward. In Bass’s nature works, ill people exist in most of his stories. The narrative tactics of ill people and their diseases play an important role in expressing Rick Bass’s ecological thoughts. In some stories, the description of ill people is long and complicated, but the narrative of animals is short; and in some other stories, the narrative of ill people is simple, but the narrative of animals is long and detailed. With such imbalanced narrative, Rick Bass shows the imbalanced situation between human beings and non-human beings in his stories to reflect and respond to the imbalanced situation between human beings and non-human beings in reality directly, and convey his ecological philosophy: On one side, in the short and simple narrative of ill people, he let readers understand the helpless situation of non-humans at the moment by empathy, which conveys his de-anthropocentric thoughts; and on the other hand, in the long and complicated description of ill people, he has revealed the therapy function of illness narrative, and the way to improve the relationship between human beings.