This essay analyzes the cultural concepts of wilderness, utopia, and the pastoral in relation to The Beach from ecocritical and postcolonial perspectives. Evidently, the pastoral is critical in shaping the Western idea of wilderness, and the utopistic mindset plays an equally crucial role in wilderness gazing. The backpackers in the novel seek authenticity—which they feel their everyday lives lack in society—in the remote, ostensibly pristine nature to escape people like themselves. As established in the analysis, the beach dwellers thus undermine their own ideologies when colonizing both nature and people and, in some ways, culturally slum their existence at the beach. They feel better about themselves when living under so-called harder conditions with moderated luxuries and provisions; this ultimately presents how the Western backpacker’s view of nature and indigenous cultures is highly influenced by American pop culture.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:hh-48494 |
| Date | January 2022 |
| Creators | Strömberg, Hanna |
| Publisher | Högskolan i Halmstad, Akademin för lärande, humaniora och samhälle |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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