Warnings and Indictments in Postwar and Contemporary Literature Reflecting Humanity’s Reckless Behavior toward the Natural Environment

Edward R. McDonald (Easton, Pennsylvania)

Email: emcd@ptd.net

ABSTRACT:

In as much as our Mother Earth is currently home to more than 6 billion people, an acute concern has been growing since the end of WW II that human beings at large are gradually destroying their natural habitat through a generally aggressive behavior; not only through reckless warfare and ethnic conflict, but also unbridled pollution of the planet’s basic life-sustaining elements. Thus, there is a waxing concern manifested in the literature of socially engaged thinkers that the danger to the natural eco-system is moving from a creep to a gallop, a shift that in no small part has been exacerbated by the force of the greatest enemy confronting humanity, namely the insatiable appetite of the human species for social, political and economic empowerment, along with its dominance over nature in order to acquire more and more materialistic creature comforts. To highlight this theme, the focus will be on select short pieces of postwar and contemporary literature – Ernst Schnabel; Wolfdietrich Schnurre; Heinrich Böll; Sarah Kirsch; and Anni Becker et al. – all of which draw attention to the concerns of these socially minded writers that the irrational drive in the human species, if not kept in check, will result in humankind’s inevitable self-destruction.