John Steinbeck's To a God Unknown and Wendell Berry: An Ecocritical View

Abstract

John Steinbeck's To a God Unknown actively engages an ecocritical imagination. This article is an ecocritical exploration of Steinbeck's work, in particular this novel. Elements of the human desire to have power over the land, the connection between the physical body and the land, and mystical underpinnings are points of focus. Wendell Berry's agrarian and communal arguments are used alongside these themes to show that Steinbeck may have been questioning how human beings can be connected with the land and with other people in a constructive, rather than a dominating or destructive manner.