”Ni är inte bättre än de djur ni dödar.” En existentialistisk läsning av Butcher’s Crossing möter ett ekokritiskt perspektiv.

Abstract

This paper examines how John Williams novel Butcher’s Crossing can be understood through the perspectives of existentialism and ecocritisism. The novel depicts the Midwestern United States in the early 1870s; Butcher's Crossing is the name of a small isolated hunting city in Kansas, where the novel's protagonist Will Andrews travels. Inspired by Emerson and his thoughts on nature, he gives up his studies at Harvard to experience the wild frontier. The purpose of this thesis is to study the colonized and fragmented country depicted in Butcher's Crossing, and explore how the expedition affects Andrews understanding of his own existence.