Decoding ‘The Natural’ in Marquez’s Innocent Erendira

Abstract

Exploitation is the central theme that looms over Marquez’s short story The Incredible and Sad Tale of Innocent Erendira and Her Heartless Grandmother. But unlike its other readings, this paper is an attempt to view this text as an ecocentric discourse.  This ‘green reading’ considers the central character of the story Erendira as the soul force of Nature, upon whom humans exert their dominance and relentlessly wage war with one another for her possession. Within the text, instances can be identified where this power relation becomes evident. A close analysis of such elements is made from an ecocentric perspective to bring out an effective discourse that pleads against the careless treatment of nature. A closer analysis of the text will open before us the argument that Nature cannot exist - unbruised and free - where Man and his anthropocentric ideologies exert dominance. The ‘natural’ images made use of in the short story compliments to the argument of this project. This paper seeks to analyze the role of these images in transcending the meaning of the story and to bring out the various ecological concerns behind them.