Two Exercises in Consilience: Annie Dillard and Kurt Vonnegut on the Galapagos Archipelago as the Archetypal Darwinian Setting

• Authors: Oramus Dominika
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The aim of this essay is to compare how Darwinian references are used in the writings of two late 20th century American authors, Annie Dillard and Kurt Vonnegut who both choose the Galapagos archipelago as the focal setting of their symbolical narratives, as we see in Vonnegut’s novel Gala´pagos and in Dillard’s essay ‘‘Life on the Rock: the Gala´pagos.” As far as Dillard’s prose is concerned, she also depicts the archipelago in other short narratives from Teaching a Stone to Talk and Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. Although neither Dillard nor Vonnegut have a conspicuously political agenda, they both consider the theory of evolution a heavily ideological subject and both apply the Darwinian paradigm to describe nature and the human race within nature.

Keywords

EN

prose fiction; Anne Dillard; Kurt Vonnegut; Charles Darwin; the Galapagos Islands; science-fiction; social satire

• Publisher: Institute of English Studies, University of Warsaw
• Journal: Anglica. An International Journal of English Studies
• Year: 2014
• Issue: 23/1
• Pages: 19-29

Contributors

author

Oramus Dominika

• University of Warsaw

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