The Representations of The Environment in Bleeding of the Stone and Midnight's Children: A Critical Comparative Study

Abstract

This paper discusses the representations of the environment in Ibrahim Al-Kouni’s Bleeding of the Stone and Salman Rushdie’s Midnight's Children through ecocriticism. Although the novel "Bleeding of the Stone" concentrates on the relationship with others and the spiritual and cultural practices involved in the pattern of living in the desert, it includes environmental issues. This is also reflected in the novel "Midnight's Children ", whose narrative structure focuses on India's social and political issues after independence. However, this paper attempts to provide a dialectical argument that both narratives can be delved into ecocriticism to explore the philosophical and ethical perspectives of narrative structures on raising human awareness of the environment and its issues, and the impact of those issues on the structure of narratives in these novels. In addition, this paper aims to provide a dialectical critical analysis of literary texts that may not be concerned with environmental issues and can be read via the angle of ecocriticism. Hence, the paper finds, most notably, that the centrality of the environment and its issues are an important part of the narrative's structure.