AN ECOCRITICAL PERSPECTIVE ON SIMULATED THEME PARK IN ENGLAND, ENGLAND

Abstract

England, England (1998), Julian Barnes’s novel highly acclaimed as a postmodern criticism of history, also sheds light on how humans’ separation from nature ultimately results in their separation from reality and their own identity, consequently confining them into a hyperreal world with artificial needs. In the novel, a businessman called Sir Jack Pitman, who has an inexhaustible thirst for profit, desires to construct a huge flamboyant theme park on the Isle of Wight, which would include most popular historical landmarks and figures of England such as White Cliffs of Dover, Big Ben, Jane Austen and Queen Victoria. Without taking into consideration the sustainability of natural life on the isle, Pitman, the embodiment of capitalist greed and recklessness for nature, carelessly changes the island’s nature and culture to build his money-making theme park despite the protest of some of his environmentally concerned colleagues. They rebuild an England with its most beautiful, significant tourist attractions, and also recreate its history as the hired actors playing famous people from history such as Robin Hood and Samuel Johnson perform some historical scenes during the day. Just as history, nature is also reconstructed and cultivated after destruction in order to attract the attention of tourists for material gain. Though this simulated theme park is advertised to be more convenient, cleaner, friendlier, and more efficient than the real country, capitalist perception of nature as a disposable market commodity without any moral and ethical concerns is shown throughout the novel. The writer skillfully criticizes how this inauthentic, simulated, hyper-real and human-construct theme park called England, England becomes more alluring than the real one as, after a while, people prefer to visit this replica instead of the real country. This study aims to present an ecocritical perspective on Barnes’s England, England by focusing on how simulation of environment and history under the control of profit-driven capitalist companies may lead to the degradation of humans and nature.