Anthropocentric Labefaction and Eco- Warrior: An Eco-critical Study of Ranjit Lal’s Faces in the Water

Abstract

Children’s Literature, in our present scenario, has contributed immensely through deep excavation of the psychological fields of children with the chance of reacting to literature and amplifying personal ideas. It upholds deeper sphere of child’s mind with emotional intelligence directing to the modern materialised dystopian realm where children are rigorously exploited and inflected to the strange and unknown world of fear and mystery. Children and nature are quite equally weighted on the ground of purity, innocence and spontaneity. The present paper aims to map out the process of exploitation and subjugation of female child along with the natural aspects through the sordid topic of female infanticide by anthropocentric despotism and destructive mind of ‘male-gaze’ society. Ranjit Lal, being a defiant champion of the green world in the present global literary vistas, endeavours to set up a link between literature and environment through the honest portrayal of Gurmeet as eco-warrior in his novel Faces in the Water, who struggles to resist the destructive nature of other male characters to save the children, especially female child, as well as nature or environment. This present paper mainly concentrates through theoretical narration to place the novel into the sentimental ecological model of nature writing.