Climate Change in Bessie Head’s <i>When Rain Clouds Gather</i>: An Ecocritical Perspective

Abstract

Generally, this research is an eco-critical study. It particularly interrogates the representation of climate change in the novel under study. Ecocriticism elicits considerable interests in environmental issues such as pastoral, pollution, landscape, biodiversity, migration and so on. When ecocriticism focuses on any environmental issue, it becomes a movement from the general to the specific. Ecocriticism as a relatively recent literary theory is fundamentally viewed as the study of the environment in literature although the environment has been an unavoidable phenomenon in literary studies, manifesting in the earliest literatures. This study explores, through ecocriticism, the representation of climate change in Bessie Head’s When Rain Clouds Gather not only as a reading of the environment in literature but also interrogates and reveals the sociocultural contexts that shape human attitude to the natural environment.. The discovery is that climate change is represented as a direct result of human’s negative interactions with the natural environment in the novel. The novel is chosen based on its thematic and archetypal relevance to the study. The study advances the process of rethinking African literature and criticism

Key Words: Ecocriticism, Climate Chance, Bessie Head.