Matricide and Other Crimes against Mother Nature: Earth as a Non-human Witness of Ecological and Environmental Degradation in Agha’s A Tale So Strange

Abstract

In our contemporary times, human life faces great existential threat resulting from serious environmental issues. In such situation, Ecocriticism has emerged gaining momentum owing to its main focus on relationship between man and nature as well as literature and environment. So, this study aims to explore ecocritical perspectives in Wazir Agha’s long narrative poem A Tale So Strange (1998) which is, indeed, a strange tale of ecological disaster and environmental degradation caused by man’s own lust and paranoia of power, progress and materialistic development. As man himself raised this war against Mother Nature and started violence and other crimes, he stands as a tyrant and nature as a victim. So, this study further focuses on the validity and authenticity of nature’s capacity to narrate its own tale in case of man’s being at the opposite side. Earth is seen as a valid witness of all that violence in Agha’s A Tale So Strange (1998). So, this exploration of ecocritical perspectives along with focus on nonhuman witness may strengthen the cause of ecocritics and environmentalists who are trying to plead nature’s case to save its environment for the survival of life. Moreover, it may provoke researchers and writers to give nature and other non-human objects the power and space to narrate their own accounts of terror and violence. By highlighting ecological disaster and environmental degradation in the text, the study finds in Agha’s poem A Tale So Strange (1998) a considerable contribution in the field of ecocritical and environmental literature as well as the theory of witnessing beyond humans.