Teaching Ecological Awareness Through Literature: A Case Study of Ghassan Kanafani’s Returning to Haifa

Abstract

Theories like Feminism, Marxism and Post-colonialism work on the contextualization of literature. Exponents of these theories promote the employment of such approaches in the field of education in order to raise the students’ awareness towards social and political issues, and help them inculcate and develop the skill of critical reading of literary texts. In the 1990s, a new approach evolved in the domain of literary studies that called for the same task but from a different perspective, i.e. Ecocriticism. Hence, taking Ecocriticism as a theoretical framework, the paper in hand has discussed Ghassan Kanafani’s novella Returning to Haifa with a special focus on the use of nature and environment with their various meanings and connotations in the novella. The paper’s main objective is to contribute in the promotion of Ecocriticism as a tool for critical reading. It also aimed at raising students’ awareness of environmental crises, particularly those caused by conflicts and wars.  The paper has postulated that Ecological awareness would help students to gain better understanding of the consequences of conflicts and to be more cautious in their treatment of the environment around them. After the analysis of Kanafani’s novella, the researcher found that the author attempted to convey messages to the readers through his treatment of nature. Most of these messages lament the loss of the natural elements as well as the human intuitive nature due to wars and conflicts that result in displacement of people and hence the destruction of environment and imbalance in the ecosystem.