“Nature Shrieking” and Parasitic Wasps: Mark Twain, Theodicy, and the War of Nature

Abstract:After Susy’s untimely demise, Mark and Livy’s near obsession with Tennyson’s elegy “In Memoriam” was similar to that of many other bereaved parents of the era: it had become the preeminent “grieving book” of the nineteenth century. The poem powerfully captures the growing spiritual disillusionment and uncertainty of the century, and its depiction of the underlying violence of nature foreshadowed Darwin’s “war of nature” metaphor in his book On the Origin of Species. This article proceeds into three areas of related interest: first, a brief genealogy of the war of nature metaphor and its use prior to Twain; second, a look at how this concept is manifested in various written works of his; and third, a brief look forward at how the war of nature metaphor has continued to be deployed in literary works after Mark Twain—especially by Cormac McCarthy.